Written and directed by Larry Blamire
Starring: Fay Masterson, Andrew Parks, Susan McConnell,
Brian Howe, Jennifer Blaire and Larry Blamire.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an homage to the dollar-budget science fiction B-movies of the 50’s. The plot concerns a meteor made up of the element “atmospherium,” and the three parties trying to get it: a scientist and his wife, who want to study it; a pair of aliens, who need it to get home; and an evil scientist, who would use it to reanimate the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, a talking skeleton with plans to conquer the world.

Keeping with the old B-movie lovers’ creed, “It’s so bad it’s good,” Lost Skeleton tries to be the worst and therefore the best. On top of the two scientists, two aliens and one scientist’s-wife, there’s also a wonderfully ridiculous mutant space creature which escapes from the aliens’ care and terrorizes, a helpful park ranger named Ranger Brad, and an animal-woman who’s there because… well, because why the fuck shouldn’t there be an animal-woman? She’s very endearing, especially when she says, “Rowr,” and she dances. The aliens also dance. The film takes great care to emulate the look and feel of a 50’s B-movie, from its use of mostly wide master- and medium two-shots to the wall-to-wall background score to the awkward, stilted dialogue.

This is where Lost Skeleton is most successful: the dialogue. The script by writer/director/star Larry Blamire takes the worst traits of the genre – circular conversations, meaningless-but-vaguely-scientific-sounding claptrap – and plays them up to the point of absurdity. There are parts where characters say basically the same thing to each other repeatedly, for minutes on end. The hero, Dr. Armstrong, tells his wife, “This scientific discovery could mean actual advances in the field of science.” It works because the actors play it completely straight – no winking, no “ha-ha, we’re being very silly” – true to form, they deliver their lines like the words they’re saying actually mean something. The aliens – who don’t look any different from the humans – have some of the best lines (“Sometimes my wife forgets that she is not an alien from outer space”), delivered in the smug, condescending tone of This Island Earth or Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Andrew Parks, playing lead alien Krobar, nails it exactly and it’s hilarious. Trying to objectively critique a film that’s intentionally bad is futile. You either dig the joke or you don’t. As one who finds 50’s sci-fi camp endlessly amusing, I thought Lost Skeleton was a funny tribute to an ultimately self-parodying genre.

And goddamn, was that Animala cute. Rowr...