ometime during the era of black and white, scientist Paul Armstrong travels into the woods to do science, taking along his scientist's wife, Betty, who knows that it's hard, very hard, to be the wife of a scientist. Paul is searching for a meteor which he believes to contain atmosphereum, which, as a scientist, he knows to be very scientifically important to the field of science.
Unknown to Paul, these woods are also being prowled by evil scientist Dr. Roger Fleming, who is obsessed with finding the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. The Skeleton has godlike powers and will help Roger rule the world, and perhaps get a date. Roger has been twisted by the conviction that skeletons in general have always hated him, even when he was a child. He soon finds out that the only element capable of reviving this particular evil skeleton is the exotic element atmosphereum, and is naturally delighted when he emerges from the skeleton's cave only to find Paul and Betty cooing over all the atmosphereum in the meteor they just found. Soon, he cackles insanely, he will rule the world.
Meanwhile, two aliens named Kro-bar and Lattis, who look just like middle-aged white people except in shiny jumpsuits, have just suffered a crash landing in the immediate area. To power their spaceship so they can escape Earth, they need a plentiful supply of atmosphereum. Unfortunately, the crash has bent the special mutant bars in the mutant cage caging their pet mutant, and the creature has escaped into the surrounding countryside. The local authorities think the consequent series of horrible mutilations must be the handiwork of a bear, since (as the helpful Ranger Brad notes) bears will sometimes do things that even a bear wouldn't do.
The evil Dr. Fleming tracks the aliens to the cabin where Paul and Betty are staying. Observing the aliens use their advanced technology to create Earth clothes for themselves, Fleming appropriates the same wizardry to transform several forest creatures into a slinky, cat-suited female companion he cleverly names Animala. And dinner is served ...
Struggling to spoof the unspoofable
Among the most difficult tricks to pull off, for those spoofing lame source material, is achieving the same degree of awfulness without becoming equally lame yourself. It's almost impossible to do "so-bad-it's-good" deliberately, without instead achieving "so-bad-it's-bad." It's harder still if you avoid the temptation to lace your work with gags. Broad spoofs like Airplane!, Hot Shots! or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes can be funny, in their rude slapstick way, but they have less to say about the subject matter being parodied than they do about just how many corny jokes can be hung on any particular frame.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra travels the harder route, by reconstructing its source, the late 1950s/early 1960s horror/SF films written and produced by no-talents of Ed Wood caliber, as faithfully as possible. It presents us with stiff actors, poverty-row production values, dialogue with no ear for logic or the way people speak, and special effects that wouldn't fool the most uncritical six-year-old on the planet. It has a hero who rarely utters a single sentence without including some reference to the word "science," a bad guy whose crazed maniacal laughter goes on so very long that he gives away just how hard he must work to keep it going, a pair of slow-witted aliens who are supposed to look alien just because they're conservative-looking white people in shiny clothing, and not just one, but two, of the most unthreatening monsters in cinema history. One, the Skeleton, is scary only if you accept the visible effort the actors endure onscreen, both to facilitate its movement and pretend they don't see the strings that animate it the rest of the time. The other, the Mutant, is played by a guy in an unconvincing rubber suit, who has visible troubles seeing where he's going while carrying the unconscious heroine. All of this is played with genuine fidelity to the source material, and a real understanding of the right way to bring the ludicrousness into sharp relief.
The dialogue is particularly fine, with every single line a fine example of the tin-eared writing that made films of Ed Wood caliber such a perverse hoot. Kro-bar intones, "Let us Ready the Preparations!" Paul says, "With the atmosphereum, Mankind can benefit in many ways, many of them good." Roger says, "I fear I'm afraid we're dreadfully lost, I'm afraid." There's a dinner party from hell, where everybody tries to ignore how strangely everybody else acts. There's even one lengthy exchange worthy of Monty Python, where Roger and the two aliens, who have revealed their true purposes to each other, discuss sharing the atmosphereum; they not only cover the same basic point over and over again, but then underline and italicize it, leering at their own alleged cleverness while they use up several minutes rephrasing what the others just said. It's the kind of tortured dialogue B-movie producers used to orient audiences they believed too stupid to follow the plot, exaggerated well past the point of parody into downright lunacy.
Alas, the film is also faithful to its source material in one other way. Ed Wood films, and other poverty-row SF films, usually moved at a snail's pace, with frequent lulls and intermittent dull spots. By nailing their rhythms so precisely, up to and including the (deliberate) stiffest acting on the planet (performed with great glee by everybody involved), this film outstays its own welcome. Even at 93 minutes (with lengthy credit sequences), it remains something like 20 minutes too long, with a number of scenes that succeed only in running previous jokes into the ground. The worst of it is aggravating. But the best of it is hilarious.
