Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

An affectionate pastiche of low budget 50's sci-fi movies filmed in ten days which marks the return to the big screen of Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles: strong, silent star of many of that era's cheesiest productions.Director Larry Blamire and Fay Masterson make an attractive couple as scientist Dr. Paul Armstrong and his wife Betty. As the exotic hybrid creature, Animala, Blamire's wife Jennifer Blaire looks electrifying in her boyish beatnik haircut and black catsuit (probably borrowed from one of the Cat-Women of the Moon); she looks even more electrifying in colour in the blooper reel.Blamire's amusing script is unfortunately let down by his sluggish pacing, and by the drabness of the black & white transfer from film to video (although - possibly by accident - in the exterior scenes Animala's outfit vividly stands out against the washed-out greyness that otherwise serves as her backdrop).

I love send-ups of inept old movies and TV shows when they're done right (i.e. 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace') so I wanted to have a good time with this. But unfortunately, despite the makers obviously having a healthy appreciation of the kind of movies they were aiming to parody, every aspect of Lost Skeleton seemed heavy handed. The whole approach was too obvious and knowingly dumb, and I felt like I was constantly waiting for the actors to start nudging each other and winking at the camera. This kind of stuff needs to be done deadpan with the deadest of pans, but the pans here were too alive. The result is an awkwardly self-conscious attempt at making a bad movie - ironically it is bad, but not in the way they intended. The more recent 70s blaxploitation send-up 'Black Dynamite' suffered from similar pitfalls, but was more entertaining.

Any attempt to rate this as "awful" would mislead readers to an expectation of kitsch, so with no other choice I have opted for an innocuous "2". Sadly this production has little hope of achieving any Ed Wood-like bad taste horror film status. Instead, it is an example of just how far many have strayed from the age of innocence. By innocence, I am not referring to a lackluster script nor to the my-mates-will-do casting, which all of us, with any true community theater experience, will recall with fond, if only privately recalled, pleasure. No. By a loss of innocence I refer to the inability to recapture and communicate through film the experience of, whilst on holiday, reaching out for a beach towel and having a rat drop on your head, or a cockroach run along your arm...these things stay with us, even if we have only experienced them through media and not personally.Lost Skeleton's Director's lack of understanding in the depth of the modern and sophisticated audience's requirement to be treated as a quasi-innocent, even a momentary "idiot-savant", where suspending ones disbelief is a far more subtle, historical and complex contract than ever before, gives him away and fails him abysmally. MST3K may be of interest, if not keep it local...for our sake, 'cause cute as you are...we don't know you and so have little affiliation.

The 1950s were the Golden Age of schlock sci fi films- ranging from films so bad they've become classics- Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Robot Monster, to some better than expected films like The Brain From Planet Arous, and Them. It's the first set of films that is taken aim at by the film The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra- replete with actors playing bad actors, who recite intentionally bad dialogue, that's repeated ad nauseam, as well as bad special effects and a determined 'humanitarian message'. This spoof of such films was written, directed, and starred in by Larry Blamire.The best part of this film is that, to enjoy it, one need not be drenched in the films it spoofs- it plays as both a 'straight' schlock film, and a satire. Blamire plays Dr. Paul Armstrong, a heroic scientist, in love with science, even as he notes scientists believe in nothing, out to retrieve a meteorite containing 'atmosphereum'. Fay Masterson is devoted wife, Betty. Susan McConnell and Andrew Parks are aliens named Lattis and Kro-Bar- descendants not only of nineteen-fifties alien stolidity, but the old Saturday Night Live Coneheads couple, in their forced imitations of human customs. Brian Howe and Jennifer Blaire (Blamire's real life wife) are mad scientist Dr. Roger Fleming and his woman-beast Animala- created using the alien's ray gun- a direct knock off of Plan 9's Vampira…. The schmaltziness, choppy editing, black and white, stock 1950s sci fi score, stock nature film footage of the animals Animala's created from, bad special effects- a miniature rocket ship, bad Geiger counter-like devices, and a cheesy inside to the aliens' rocketship, plus typically inappropriate Cold War-era morality playing, make the film an unexpected delight. Some critics think that camp can only occur unwittingly- such as in the cases of Ed Wood, or the worst of the Roger Corman films- and they may be right. But, The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra isn't camp- it's satire, and there's a difference- self-awareness. Viewed seriously Plan 9 From Out Of Space may well be 'the worst movie ever made'- with classic lines as 'You humans are stupid, stupid, stupid!' meant to be social commentary. Fortunately, its unintended camp quotient, and myriad laughs, make it far more enjoyable than many sober, and somber films that reek. The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra does not have that problem, for it's knowingly being bad. While you may not think a scene or line funny, there's an 'insider'-type meta-quality to the film that practically insulates it from any criticism. If you loathe 'good' bad films along with 'bad' bad films you'll never get this film on any level. If you can discern the difference you cannot help but, at least, love- if not revel in the film. It was even shot in Bronson Canyon, outside Los Angeles, where films like Robot Monster, and many others, were shot.