The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

A few weeks ago, I put out a call to my listeners for films to include in my semi-regular feature, a movie you might have missed. So far, I’ve gotten some great ones from friends, colleagues, and complete strangers. But the very first recommendation I received was from Q90.1’s very own Adam Gac who produced that episode. As soon as he turned off the mike and took off his headphones, he asked, “Have you ever heard of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra?” I had not, but with a title like that, I knew I needed to. Adam described it as the perfect film for people who love cheesy, low-budget sci-fi movies of the 50s. This sounded like my kind of nerdiness, and so it went straight to the top of my Netflix queue. 

Released way back in 2001, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is the brain-child of Larry Blamire, an artist-turned-playwright-turned filmmaker. Coming as the fruition of several projects about science fiction, moviemaking, and absurdity, Lost Skeleton is a kind of distillation of everything Blamire finds both fascinating and hilarious about the low-budget sci fi boom of the 1950s.

The entire story is told completely deadpan but is intended to be an absurd comedy. Dr. Paul Armstrong, played by Blamire himself, is a scientist with a capital S and repeatedly tells people throughout the film about how serious he is about “doing science.” He’s accompanied by his relentlessly cheery and vapid wife, Betty, as they drive into the forest to track down a meteor made of the rare and valuable element, atmospherium. While the Armstrongs look around, another scientist, Dr. Roger Fleming, is in the same forest looking for the legendary Cadavra Cave, supposedly the home of a supernatural lost skeleton. When he finds it, the skeleton, in a display of fantastically crappy special effects, comes to life and commands Fleming to find the atmospherium so the two of them can take over the world with it. At the same time, a pair of aliens lands in the same forest, looking for the only element that can power their ship – you guessed it – atmospherium. Oh, and while they are stranded, their pet mutant escapes the ship and starts mauling people in the forest.

Shakespeare, it’s not. But that’s intentional. The whole thing is played as a gag and the terrible writing, astoundingly bad special effects, and acting more wooden than Captain Ahab’s leg are all on purpose both to make audiences laugh and to celebrate some of the more ridiculous elements of the genre it imitates. 

Thanks to the space race and the atomic age, sci fi replaced westerns as the go-to mass produced film genre in the 1950s. As it is any time a particular subject begins to saturate a market, you end up with some high quality stuff like 1956’s Forbidden Planet, which actually is Shakespeare – or at least an adaptation of the Bard’s play, The Tempest. But you also end up with a ton of down-and-dirty, out-to-make-a-buck space junk like 1953’s Robot Monster and Ed Wood’s 1959 schlockfest-a-rama, Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Blamire’s film is a cheap hymn of praise to that second kind of movie, the so-bad-it’s-fun kind of movie. It was even shot in Bronson Canyon, a craggy, isolated-looking section of Griffith Park in California, a famous shooting location and home to other 50s B-movies such as Night of the Blood Beast, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Earth vs. the Spider, and Teenage Caveman.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an acquired taste to say the least. My irony-loving 17 year old loved it, as did my wide-eyed 9 year old who gleefully pointed out that you can see the zipper on the monster’s costume. But that’s the attitude with which you need to approach it – loving the absurdity and glorying in the low-quality rather than criticizing it. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra undoubtedly is a movie you have probably missed, but now’s your chance to remedy that.