The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001): C

Nothing more than a bland inside joke for genre aficionados, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is writer/director/star Larry Blamire’s campy ode to square ‘50s sci-fi adventures. Shot in faux-amateurish black-and-white by Kevin Jones, and featuring a group of largely unknown actors who deliberately go overboard in caricaturing the stilted acting performances of those bygone Cold War-era fantasies, it’s a one-note goof-off that, although largely painless, will only appeal to serious sci-fi lovers. The story concerns a scientist and his wife (Larry Blamire and Fay Masterson) who, while searching the countryside for the rare mineral “atmospherium,” become embroiled in a three-way tussle for the prized chemical compound with an alien couple (Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell) and an evil scientist (Brian Howe), his sexy sidekick Animala (a woman, played by Jennifer Blaire, who was created from forest animals), and the legendary titular skeleton who requires atmospherium to “live.” Since The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra’s ancestors are such easy targets for affectionate ridicule, there’s nothing very comical about purposefully making the skeleton’s puppet strings visible or staging a pointless dance sequence in the midst of the action, and there’s valid reason to question the necessity of spoofing inherently ridiculous movies in the first place. Still, those who think a bad joke gets funnier the more often it’s repeated will surely enjoy Blamire’s Dr. Paul Armstrong regularly talking about his desire to continue “doing more science.”