‘Alien Nation II’? No, It’s Traci Lords in ‘Skinner’

For attractive actresses, playing dowdy and drab has always been considered a rite of dramatic passage.

Joan Crawford and Grace Kelly threw off the Adrian and Edith Head gowns and shimmied into Sears’ housedresses for their respective roles in “Mildred Pierce” and “The Country Girl.” More recently, Michelle Pfeiffer scrubbed her face clean and donned ill-fitting beige sweaters for “Frankie & Johnny.”

And then there’s the case of vivacious, young Traci Lords, who in her upcoming film “Skinner” plays a scalped, one-eared morphine addict whose left side of her body has been completely flayed.

“Skinner,” a Cannon Pictures release due in theaters early next year, is being described as “The Silence of the Lambs” meets “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.” In the gruesome flick, Lords--in her most challenging role to date--plays Heidi, a woman who pre-flaying was “really beautiful and never had to do anything else because of her looks.”

“But then,” continues Lords, “she becomes the victim of this sick serial killer (played by Ted Ramey). He carves off half her flesh but before the skinning is completed, he’s interrupted.” After being disfigured, Heidi “goes bonkers” but sets out to end Skinner’s reign of terror.

“It’s not a typical slasher movie,” says Lords of the film. “The entire thing is played out through the killer’s eyes. It’s very intense and weird and bleak and I’m sure it will be very controversial.”

For Lords, 24, the part of Heidi was “something I was dying to do. . . . I begged for this role.” After her much-written about beginnings in adult films (most of which were shot when she was underage), Lords made the leap into mainstream cinema by playing a flashy tart in John Waters’ 1990 film “Cry-Baby” and immediately found herself typecast.

“I was bored with playing sex symbols,” she says. “In Hollywood, there seems to be more bimbo roles than there are parts like the one Kathy Bates played in ‘Misery,’ and that stinks. So I was very challenged by playing this woman. It made me think, ‘If I’ve got to get ugly to get the role, hell, I’d rather be ugly.’ ”

Lords corrects herself. “But I should say that Heidi really isn’t ugly. There’s something mesmerizing and sexy about her.” Especially in the scenes where she wears a Veronica Lake wig, thigh-high boots and a trench coat to hide her disfigurement. “Maybe I’ll launch a trend with this film,” she giggles. “Maybe trench coats over lingerie will become the next big look.”

Although playing Heidi was a liberating experience for Lords, donning her hideous makeup was something of a nightmare. Slapping on the prosthetic facial pieces, the skin cap wig and the latex body epidermis was a daily four-hour process.

“They also glued my ear down and that was really tough,” she says. “I lost my equilibrium and kept bumping into things. Two people had to lead me out to the set. I was like a mute, man.” After one 15-hour shoot, Lords went home in the body makeup. “My husband said it was like sleeping with Freddy Krueger.”

Lords’ transformation from beauty to oddity isn’t the only shocker in “Skinner.” The movie also contains a scene in which a woman is graphically skinned. But the tableau may be cut before the film is presented for a rating.

No matter what the commercial or critical reaction to “Skinner,” Lords says she’s very pleased with her work and the lesson she learned while making the film:

“We finished shooting a month ago, and two weeks later I sat for the cover of German Vogue. Albert Watson shot it, and I was unbelievably dolled up. People kept saying to me, ‘How do you get your skin to look like that?’ What was equally weird was people said the exact same thing when I was playing Heidi. People treated me the same, they had the same kind of awe.

“So what I learned,” she concludes, “is that in this business, no matter if you look good or if you look bad, hey--it’s all an illusion.”