Film: Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Well, previous blog has reminded me of "lost skeleton of cadavra" which reminded me that I’ve seen this cute film only once. So I took it and watched it again.
There has been a renaissance of old 40ies and 50ies SF/horror. Time gap has made us perceive these naive campy films with affection. Sure, one of catalysts of the renaissance was Tim Burton’s "Ed Wood", biopic of officially the worst director of all times, but also acknowledging of influence of this period of cinematography by him and other top directors of today. public remembered that a lot of big names of
Parts of the renaissance are rather affectionate parodies. I got "Lost skeleton of cadavra" and "Killer clowns from outer space" at one expense.
"Killer clowns" was mostly a disappointment; even though advertised as a parody, this is more of a plain throwback, homage. The novelty in a story about aliens terrorizing the city is that these aliens are clowns. There's no real laugh, and I doubt authors actually intended to make us laugh. Then again, there's no scare either, as, even though clown masks are bizarre and gruesome, storytelling is too familiar to surprise us. Film has an aura of 80ies camp rather than 50'ies camp, and it's closer in sensibility to deliberate kitsch films like "Toxic avenger" than to old horrors. There's one film I don's see a point of being made, as it does nothing, except for saying that the author likes old horrors.
"Lost skeleton" is, however, very different: it is amazing to which extent the director, Larry Blamire, managed to recreate the era: not only stupid plot and dialogues full of inane, repetitive, foreshadowing chatter, but also flat performances by actors and clumsy storytelling; like introducing a ranger who says "I hope someone needs ranger's help" just in case someone didn't notice his uniform; and, of course, shabby masks and special effects.
Film language is recreated perfect too: here, you'll see those clumsy moves like cutting in the middle of action, actors entering from the side of a static shot; use of camera from hand to emphasize action in desperately static scene; overall inability to hide the fakeness of the set; obligatory number of film goofs; even shots of forest animals that were made to look like reused stock footage.
The level to which the director brought up everything bad from those films works like a parody alone (unlike in "killer clowns" where the intention was recreated, but not the execution), but it's the script that steals the show: it's forcefully informative: main character keeps repeating that he's a scientist as if we're going to forget; the alien named Kro-Bar never says "our planet" without adding it's name: "Marva"; it's redundant and long-winded; it's crutched by those sayings from old films like "I wonder" and "oh, well", repeated to the level of irritation; it's full of puns that might've passed as unintentional if we didn't know the real nature of the film; the amount of nonsense that characters say is high. Yet, it's all low key so much that you can even miss them.
It's actually surprising that this works as an affectionate parody: being low key and restrained, film never slips into a farce even though the director seemed often tempted to do it; this might mean less laughs for some, but I can't help but admire to author, who avoided running jokes to the extreme where they would, granted, probably be hilarious, but would completely ruin the tone of the movie. I can't help thinking, if the film was directed by Mel Brooks, you could expect a monster to jump and do a dance number, which was the usual save of Brooks' for when he didn't have better idea; it kind of pinpoints how Brooks' parody can be shallow and how Blamire's is subtle.
But then, even though Blamire is screenwriter, director and (nominally) main hero, this is not a one-man-film, as he is aided by a bunch of actors, who manage to be lovely in a way they switch from reading lines flat-out to instant overacting; in a way they manage to act bad and to say those silly lines with a dead-serious face, all performances are wonderful, including those one-minute-long.
Now the story goes like this: a scientist Paul Armstrong (Blamire) arrives to a cabin with his wife betty (Fay Masterson) to investigate a fallen meteor in search of the most powerful radioactive material, atmospherium; as I mentioned, "scientist" is the word he says most often, and he even swears with "scientist's honor". Curiously, he never even specifies what kind of scientist he is; frankly, every scientist would rather specify his area of research, but dr. Armstrong sticks to general "scientist" as if he's not even sure himself.
Then there's Brian Howe as dr. Roger Fleming, obviously a cynical kind of scientist unlike enthusiastic dr. Fleming; his famous quote, an answer to whether he believes in old legends: "I’m a scientist. I don't believe in anything"; he intends to conquer the world by resurrecting the title skeleton, lying forgotten in some cave around there: a plan that can measure up with "Plan 9 from outer space" in stupidity. For resurrecting the (useless) skeleton, he needs atmospherium, what a coincidence...
Then there's a third party looking for atmospherium: alien Kro-Bar (Andrew Parks) and his wife Lattis (Susan mcConel) whose space ship has crashed nearby: atmospherium can power it back; to make more mess, an obligatory mutant monster is there, escaped from a cage in alien's ship.
Now, Armstrong has found atmospherium and intends to examine it, thus saying to his wife: "If you keep distracting me, I’ll never change the course of mankind." but atmospherium brings other parties to their cabin, Kro-Bar and Lattis, and then Fleming and a women he made out of four different forest animals, using alien transformator; she is called Animala, played by Jennifer Blair, and she fits to this cat-like role so well that the assumption that the role must've been written for her is in place. The unlikely lot tries to act like casual, ordinary passers by.
Now, even though confused, earthlings show themselves strangely tolerant to alien's strange behaviour, even when lattice drinks a bit too much and Kro-Bar says "my wife sometimes forgets she is not a space alien".
But then a ranger appears too, to inform them of activities that we know are doing of a mutant: “A farmer was horribly mutilated so I thought I’d go and tell other folks like yourself about it so that maybe, just maybe, you wouldn't be horribly mutilated too". Clever dr. Armstrong is for one moment very close to solving the mystery: "mutilate? Mutant? Hm, I wonder. Oh, well..."
Plot gets conveniently confusing from time to time as everyone including the skeleton tries to get to atmospherium placed in scientist’s room, all in a very unarticulated manner. In constipation, Fleming informes aliens that he knows of their real nature, to which Kro-Bar gives himself away: "Aliens? Us? Is this one of your earth jokes?"
Fleming talks them into cooperating with him; what follows is hilariously longwinded and pointless talk about sharing, along the lines of: "if you help us and we help you, we will be helping each other."
Next morning, just as Armstrong goes to work on examining atmospherium, saying: "Let's see what happens if I add water to it... Good old-fashioned H2O, I call it", Animala snatches the stone from him. But then, Fleming double-crosses aliens and take the stone away by himself; putting it into skeleton, he resurrects it.
Armstrong is Confused when aliens try to explain the situation: "Wow, wow, I’m a scientist and this is still too fast for me!" no wonder, explanation has sentences like: "She's really Animala, part women - part four different forest animals".
They are joined by Betty, who, meanwhile, had close encounter with the mutant and saw goodness in it's eyes, which is where film goes Frankenstein routine as she realizes that "it probably never meant to horribly mutilate anybody".
Then Armstrongs and aliens have a nice chatter and become best friends: "on Marva there's no cleaning up because there's never a mess. We gave up messes eons ago." later, they encounter the mutant again, after which Armstrong concludes: "I guess I should stick to science and leave battling alien mutants to experts".
Now, skeleton is alive which gives opportunity to some of the worst doll-on-a-string special effects ever seen. Skeleton and it's two minions capture aliens and skeleton decides to start it's conquest of the earth by marrying alien's wife (even if there are more attractive women all around him).
Looking from bushes, Armstrongs have to help their alien friends. After dr. Armstrong brings up a dangerous plan, Betty replies with: "If I wanted a boring life, I guess I wouldn't have married a man who studies rocks."
The plan includes luring a mutant, and at the end there is an obligatory showdown of two resident monsters with special effects that 50ies audience wouldn't fall for; Fleming is choked by his own master and Animala is turned back to four different forest animals. All's well, happy ending.
Which wraps this lovely little flick that never sinks into anything less than funny, subtle and surprisingly accurate.
posted by Srdjan @ 11:26 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home