PG, 90 min.
Director/Writer: Larry
Blamire
Starring: Larry Blamire, Fay
Masterson, Andrew Parks, Susan McConnell, Brian Howe, Jennifer Blaire, Dan
Conroy, Robert Deveau, Darrin Reed
“The Lost Skeleton of
Cadavra” is a joy of a spoof of a 1950s era sci-fi horror b-movie. It has
everything that made such films nearly unwatchable—poor quality black &
white cinematography, bad acting, inane dialogue, absurd plots and even more
absurd twists, horrendous special effects, and impossible monsters. I’ve seen
spoofs like this one before, but none that were so spot on in the production
design and film quality.
In fact, even the acting
seems to be the real thing; and that must be a feat to pull off, because bad
acting is a quality that most good actors have lost touch with and bad actors
cannot put it to any sort of comedic use. This cast must be very good actors
indeed. It helps a little that much of the dialogue appears to have been dubbed
in after the fact, another common practice of the era in which they are
spoofing.
I had read comments that
this joke gets old before the film is finished, but I have to disagree. Just as
the perfect spoof of the clichés of the genre are beginning to wear, the writer
changes things up by using those clichés to set up jokes about the notions of
aliens trying to blend in as Earthlings. First of all, like so many aliens
depicted in the 50s, these aliens look exactly like humans, but here they have
a transmogrifying gun that will chance their appearance to make them look
exactly like us, which as I said, they already do. The gun just changes their
clothes. Unlike, the clichéd aliens of the 50s sci-fi scene, however, these two
have a little more difficulty assimilating to our culture. They don’t really
know an Earth language. They can’t remember their cover names, and they allow
another person who is actually an animal that was transformed by the
transmogrifying gun to teach them dining customs. The results are juvenile, but
still very funny.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment