The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

With so much unwitting awfulness in theaters already, it seems like overkill to try to make something bad on purpose. But that’s the point of this often very funny, straight-faced spoof of 1950s sci-fi movies like Robot Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Writer/director Larry Blamire shows his affection for the semi-competent cinema of the Atomic Age by assembling his deliberately nonsensical story from a mix of walking Ed Wood cliches. Aliens and mad scientists, none of whom can act, fight over a space meteor made of “atmosphereum”; a “living” skeleton (clearly operated by strings) tries to take over the world; a mutant monster played by a stagehand in a cheap rubber suit is gravy. Cadavra relies too much on jokes about cheap sets and clumsy writing, but Blamire has a fine ear for parodizing banal, repetitive dialogue—our hero, fatuous scientist Dr. Paul Armstrong, wakes up his wife with “It’s your husband, Dr. Paul Armstrong.” And the cast is adept at getting laughs without descending into unbearable camp. Cadavra screens with the 1937 Ub Iwerks-directed cartoon Skeleton Frolic, a visually inventive, Halloween-y gem from Disney’s Silly Symphonies.
Lagoon; 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com