Filmed in glorious black-and-white and "Skeletovision," Larry Blamire's sporadically funny The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra pays homage to sci-fi trash classics like Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and Phil Tucker's Robot Monster (1953).
A scientist (Blamire) and his wife Betty (Fay Masterson) drive to a mountain cabin to locate and study a meteor made of "atmospherium." At the same time, a couple of aliens (Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell) crash-land nearby and need atmospherium as fuel. An evil scientist (Brian Howe) also wants the glowing rock to bring the title skeleton back to life and rule the world. How he plans to do this is no clearer than how "Plan 9" was supposed to work. Meanwhile, a dangerous mutant, inspired by Robot Monster's man in a gorilla suit and deep-sea diving helmet, is on the loose.
Blamire tires to re-create Wood's stilted dialogue, but just because Wood was bad, it doesn't mean this is an easy job. Blamire keeps repeating single words during lines of dialogue and hopes that we will laugh at the joke again and again.
He also relishes tossing in bad special effects and costumes, but for us, they're funny only at first glance.
Fortunately, Masterson, a veteran of Sam Raimi and Stanley Kubrick, turns in an appealing performance as Betty, while Jennifer Blaire as Animala does a nice job, especially during a gratuitous dance sequence.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra almost wants us to take it seriously. As such, it feels less like a spoof and more like a copy of those 1950s films, but without the innocence. As difficult as it may be to believe, Wood and Tucker were actually doing the best work they knew how under the circumstances, while Blamire deliberately sells himself short.