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.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Happy New Year everyone. Here we are at the outset of 2019 with lots of things coming in the year ahead, both in the theaters and in the world in general. As we head back to work, school, and regular life after a holiday break, I want to suggest a film to consider as a possible theme for the coming year.

Morgan Neville’s 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor focuses, of course, on Fred Rogers, the Presbyterian minister-turned children’s performer-turned cultural giant, the creator and driving force behind Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Using archival footage, talking head interviews with family members, friends, and co-workers, and animation featuring a young Daniel Tiger meant to represent the man himself, the film tracks Rogers from the moment he saw television for the first time and thought to himself, “This would be a great tool for preaching.” 

We meet Rogers’ widow as well as his two adult sons along with the actors who played Mr. and Mrs. McFeely, Handyman Negri, and Officer Clemons. Each one of them describe Fred Rogers as the real deal, someone who was exactly who he was both on screen and off. They detail Rogers progression from a Pittsburg minister doing puppets on a local show called the Children’s Corner to a man beloved by millions, testifying before congress, and consulted by world news organizations.

While not exactly a hard-hitting Frontline expose, it is also not just a cloying hagiography. It’s a fascinating document of an important figure and program in American cultural history. It’s disarming but wonderful to see behind the scenes footage of the Land of Make Believe, to see burly Pittsburg teamsters moving X the Owl’s tree into place while Mr. Rogers mugs for the camera. For anyone who grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, the familiarity and the newness of what you see is striking.

While at times, it seems like he was close to being a saint, the film also shows that Rogers wasn’t perfect. We find out, among other things, that at the family dinner table, when Rogers wanted to say something less kind, he would use the voice of Lady Elaine Fairchild, the selfish, impulsive ID of the Land of Make Believe. We also learn Rogers told François Clemmons that if he came out as openly gay, he would be off the show because it would lose important sponsors. 

Rogers’ imperfection is an important component of the film and part of why I like Won’t You Be My Neighbor as a film for the new year. Here was an imperfect guy using his skills and insight to reach out to the weakest and most vulnerable among us, a man of a very specific religious faith who, nevertheless, did his best to accept and be kind to literally everyone he met, regardless of how they differed from him. He wanted each person to understand their own individual value, to feel heard and understood.

The film discusses Rogers’ use of silence and slowness, how they allow viewers to let an idea really sink in. The documentary illustrates this in its last moments as it plays one of Fred Rogers’ final commencement addresses in which he encouraged his audience to pause and think about everyone who had enabled them to get to the point in life where they were. The various participants in the documentary are encouraged to do the same and the final minute or so of the film is them quietly thinking of those important people as Rogers words are heard. It is a remarkable and unabashedly moving moment that is fueled by Rogers’ insight. There are people who love you completely.  

See Won’t You Be My Neighbor and as you go to work or school or home or wherever, think about each person’s inherent value and how Mr. Rogers taught us that we can be different but still love one another. Here’s to a happy, peaceful year in our neighborhood.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

I never feel comfortable making Best Films of the Year lists. I love reading those of other critics, but my movie watching habits are so uneven and idiosyncratic sometimes, I don’t often feel I’ve seen enough films to make a fair, informed list. However, while I can’t tell you the ten best films released this year, I can tell you about the one best film I’ve seen this year, and it comes from both a likely and an unlikely source. 

 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was written, produced, directed, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, two of America’s most talented filmmakers. So the fact that their latest film is wonderful is no surprise. What is surprising is that despite a very limited theatrical release that began on November 9^th, this newest offering from the makers of Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit was released primarily on Netflix. The streaming giant has been backing dump trucks full of money up to the houses of big name filmmakers like Martin Scorcese and Guillermo Del Toro for a couple of years now, trying to get their mainstream credibility to add a sheen to Netflix’s sometimes lackluster original programming. So far, these bigger projects have been hit or miss, but with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Netflix has its first bona fide great film on its hands. (Roma is the second.)

The film is an anthology, a collection of six shorter films that are linked on setting and theme. As some of their best films are, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a western, set somewhere between the end of the Civil War and the end of the 19^th century in the majestic, beautiful, brutal American west. Each vignette shares the Coen brothers’ trademark dialogue – original, strangely formal, utterly polite even in the face of violence. They also share the filmmakers bleak outlook on life – absurdity and death are regular partners, profound violence can strike at any moment, death comes for us all and when it does, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

It’s rare that anthology films work. All too often, they are uneven. But in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, each piece is a polished jewel. They vary in tone and cast, but each one is perfect all on its own.

While there isn’t a weak section at all, there are a couple that stand out.

In “Meal Ticket,” Liam Neeson plays a traveling impresario who carts around a performer billed as The Wingless Thrush, an armless, legless man who recites poetry, the Bible, and the Gettysburg Address. Neeson’s character takes care of the Thrush’s needs, feeding and cleaning him and setting him up for performances as they travel from one Rocky Mountain mining town to another. Except for the Thrush’s orations, the film is almost entirely silent, and it’s that quiet and stillness that draws the viewer in, making you wonder what’s going to happen at the end of the story’s long, slow burning fuse.

“The Gal Who Got Rattled” is my favorite section of the six. It features the very best of the Coens’ courtly, unlikely dialogue; the closest the filmmakers get to making a love story; and an ending so bleak and heartbreaking, it’s got me thinking about it weeks later. As the gal of the title, Zoe Kazan plays one of only a couple of female characters in the whole film and practically walks away with the whole thing. It takes some of the western genre’s most familiar tropes and makes them fresh, visceral, and devastating.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is violent, odd, poetic, and perfect. Like all great art, it stays with you long after its over and invites you to come back for more. It is one of the very best films of 2018, and lucky for us all, it is inexplicably streaming on Netflix for your enjoyment.