Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 19, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra writer/director/star Larry Blamire has said that his intention with the movie was not exactly to spoof ’50s B-cheapies, but to create a replica that would be humorous by virtue of its appropriation of those films’ tacky “qualities,” rather than through overexaggeration. That’s not entirely what has resulted, though; there are numerous moments (some of them quite funny) where the dialogue tips over from nostalgically corny to deliberately silly. “Maybe this is one advance even science couldn’t make for you: the advance of emotional expression,” says the heroic scientist when a heretofore impassive alien sheds his first tears on Earth, “though it isn’t considered very manly.”
Visually, Blamire gets the details right, from the opening credits through the static photography, simplistic cutting and cheeseball FX. Blamire shot the movie on digital video and converted it to black-and-white, and this (plus the blowup to film prints) leads it to replicate the flat monochromatic look of period schlockers, as opposed to the more artful, shadowy imagery in more accomplished films of the period. The sound also conveys the proper mood, particularly in the use of old library tracks for the music, and even in the occasional abrupt audio cutting. There’s a difference between duplicating the cut-corners ambience of a vintage genre feature and making it look like your own movie is skimping, and Blamire gets it right.
His plot is a grab bag of elements culled from any number of sci-fi and monster flicks, with a couple of clear specific antecedents: the dialogue occasionally drifts into tortured philosophy reminiscent of Robot Monster (“Where on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet? Yet I must…but I cannot!”), and the stiff extraterrestrial couple (Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell) are direct descendants of Eros and Tanna from Plan Nine from Outer Space. The ensemble also includes the aforementioned “meteographer” (played by Blamire himself) and his perky wife (Fay Masterson), a bad scientist (Brian Howe) and the seductive beast-girl Animala (Jennifer Blaire) that he creates. And then there’s the creature quotient: a ridiculous-looking mutant that escapes from the aliens’ downed spaceship and goes on a rampage, and the Lost Skeleton itself, which—once it is restored to “life”—talks in booming voiceover and has many of the best lines.
It’s all done in the right spirit, though a little of this sort of homage can go a long way, and here it goes longer than its influences. Most of the schlockers that inspired Lost Skeleton were only about 70 minutes long, while this movie runs around 90, and the extra length is palpable; the repetitive dialogue is at times funny, at others just repetitive. The tradeoff Blamire makes in faithfully replicating the flat technique of his models is that the pacing sometimes goes slack in the bargain, though it’s usually not too long before some amusing bit of business arrives to perk things up. And while all the actors put the right wooden/deadpan spin on their lines, it’s true here as in straight genre fare that the performers playing the baddies are the most fun. Particularly impressive is Blaire, whose slinky, almost wordless performance is the film’s best—more than any of the others, she comes off as truly acting where the others are aping a bygone “style.”
The real challenge facing Blamire on this project was to create a movie that’s as humorous intentionally as many of its models are without trying. The paradox is that an audience anticipating that a film will be funny automatically raises its expectations, while bad laughs are elicited by thwarted or diminished expectations. That’s a highfalutin way of saying that it’s harder to create honest amusement than to get it by failing with serious intent, and if Lost Skeleton of Cadavra isn’t quite the laugh riot that Plan Nine or Robot Monster are, it’s easier to admire and appreciate what Blamire has achieved than what Ed Wood or Phil Tucker wrought.
