In the 1950's and 1960's a large number of cheesy horror/sci-fi movies were produced, most on shoestring budgets.  With ridiculous deadpan dialog, bad acting, daft plots, and laughable special effects, these terrible movies became favorites for many of us.  Now from writer and director Larry Blamire comes a new 50's style horror/sci-fi movie so true to the format and so stunningly bad that I enjoyed it immensely...

I don't want to give too much away, but here's a basic synopsis:

Dr. Paul Armstrong and his wife Betty are staying at a cabin in the country to search for a meteor that Paul belives may contain a rare radioactive element "atmosphereum".  "If I can find this meteor, Betty, it could mean real advances in the field of Science."  In the same area Dr. Roger Fleming is in search of the legendary Lost Skeleton of Cadavra cave.

That night both scientists note a falling star which turns out to be the rocketship of Lattis and Kro-Bar, two remarkably human-looking aliens who have crashed on Earth.  The powersource of the Alien spacecraft is drained and needs to be replenished with... atmosphereum.  The Aliens' pet, an 8 foot tall mutant, escapes and begins to wreak havoc on the countryside.

Meanwhile Fleming discovers the sentient and telepathic Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, who enlists Fleming to fully resurrect it so it can take over the world. In order to complete the resurrection, the skeleton informs him, he needs to bring it a rare mineral, none other than good old atmosphereum.

Armstrong finds his meteor, and is delighted. "You know Betty, the atmosphereum in this meteor could benefit mankind in many ways... and some of them good."  But everybody has designs on the atmosphereum, and some of them bad.

Enter the last character, Fleming's so-called wife "Animala", a bewitching cat-suited beauty, artificially created from four forest animals via alien technology, and the stage is set for hilarity.

The first thing I liked about this movie was that it was not a typical send-up.  This wasn't Attack of the Killer Tomatoes nor was it Lobster Man from Mars.  Both of those movies tried painfully hard to be funny--the fact that they were slapstick silly comedies was in-your-face.  They were full of specific references to scads of movies, many of those references cheap, obvious, and boring.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is a more complicated concept of acting and producing... like a giant game of pretend.  Here you have a director who wants to produce a movie that looks like it was his absolute best, and have it be terrible.  You have actors who aren't playing cheesy characters, they're playing bad actors who think they are playing genuine characters.  During an interview the actor who played "Ranger Brad" (Dan Conroy) said something which pretty much sums it up.  I'll paraphrase it here:

"On the first day of shooting Larry took me aside and said 'Okay listen, you're not an actor.  Imagine you got this part because you actually are a real forest ranger or you just happened to own a ranger uniform.  You're pretty nervous about messing up and so you should deliver your lines fairly woodenly without too much emotion.'  So I said, 'But Larry, won't that just make me look like a bad actor?' And he said 'That's it!  THAT'S what I want!'"

Written in 5 days, shot in 10, with a painfully small budget this movie's first priority is to pay homage to those bad 50's and 60's flicks we love.  After that, it is a comedy, and a smart comedy... not just pure slapstick, though there are slapsticky moments.

Further, as a movie that's supposed to be "a really bad movie made by people that thought it was really great" you can enjoy it on more than one level.  You can enjoy the straightforward comedic aspect of the film, and then on another level you can enjoy how much it reminds you of films of the era it is a tribute to (remember how much Spinal Tap reminded you of a real Rockumentary?), and on yet another level you can appreciate how hard talented people worked to make sure it looked like the best effort of talentless people.

Lost Skeleton of Cadavra was shot in digital video format, giving it a slightly grainy quality that is sure to recall old films, and was converted to black and white in post processing.  The DVD includes a blooper reel (shot in color), a featurette showing Q&A with the actors after a screening, and various other special features.

One warning that I have to be up front about, don't bother renting this film if you don't like bad movies, or if you're not in the right frame of mind.  This movie is intentionally bad--that's the point, really.  It deliberately makes the same sort of mistakes you would expect from classic horror and sci-fi movies... you can "see the strings", long shots, bad acting, bad dancing (yes, I said dancing) and so forth.  There is definitely a group of people who simply cannot enjoy a bad film (not that there's anything wrong with that) and if you are a member of that group, don't bother with the Lost Skeleton, you won't enjoy it.  Likewise, if you're not in the right frame of mind (i.e. if you're not in the mood to watch a bad 50's style horror flick) don't bother.

But otherwise, dig in, it's a riot...  OBEY THE LOST SKELETON!  Go out and rent this flick.