Dr Paul Armstrong (Larry Blamire) is driving through the countryside with his wife Betty (Fay Masterson) on the lookout for a crashed meteorite that he believes to have landed in the area. They are seeking the local cabin first, as they need somewhere to stay for the night, and ask a local farmer for directions, which he gives them though the couple are slightly worried about the ominous placenames the surroundings have. Not to worry, says the farmer, folks round here are superstitious, and they go on their way, as after all, what are the chances they will meet anything sinister out here?
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra was the first of auteur Larry Blamire's spoofs of vintage entertainment, and its low budget worked in its favour when they recreated the impoverished nature of much of what they were lampooning: old sci-fi movies from the fifties, in this case. There was obviously a lot of affection involved in manufacturing this, although you could argue the targets were as broad as a barn door, not that this stopped Blamire and his cast and crew from their near-obsessive dedication to their craft. Oddly, you were unlikely to be fooled into thinking you were watching an actual artefact of the past.
That's because here they thought that stilted meant authentic, and after you got the idea of what they were aiming for, if you were not completely sympathetic to their cause you could find the film dragging. With all the actors approaching this in the same way, having evidently studied what their predecessors came up with for thespian stylings, the utterly arch atmosphere did grow wearing very quickly, even as you admired the skill that had gone into the production. With its deliberately shoddy special effects and laughs so subtly buried in the plot that you might find your mind wandering, this Lost Skeleton was weirdly close to an academic exercise.
Or at least some kind of art project, though what the point was other than to pay homage to much loved pop culture of yesteryear was obscure. The thing was with those originals, it may have been easy to laugh at the lower powered examples but there was still a certain resonance that evolved from the era it came from, so even Plan 9 from Outer Space had a serious point to make about the new proliferation of world-destroying weaponry. Here, there was no such allusion to the world outside of the film, so there was no context except for, hey, remember that creaky old movie you saw all those years ago? Wasn't it goofy? Well maybe it was, but that was not the intention.
This, however, was goofy and nothing but, yet if it tested the patience too regularly, that was not to say it was a dead loss as every so often it would recover your interest with a genuinely funny, deadpan line or a quaint image, such as the aliens' space rocket landing in the forest. As so often with the sources, this was filmed around Bronson Canyon, so the appearance was authentic if nothing else - did the characters have to break out into laughter so much, for instance? Thrown into the mix were a rampaging mutant (a man in a suit, naturally), a rival scientist (Brian Howe) out to secure the meteorite to revive the titular skeleton with, and best of all the scene-stealing Jennifer Blaire as Animala, the catsuited woman created from four woodland creatures: if the events onscreen were starting to drag again, you could keep your eyes on her to see what amusement she was up to. You couldn't be too harsh on this, it meant well, but it was hard to take all at once.
