Larry Blamire (who also wrote and directed the film) plays Dr. Paul Armstrong, a scientist who, along with his wife Betty (Faye Masterson), sets out to find a meteor that has landed on Earth and which is made of atmospherium.

At the same time that the Armstrong's are searching out the meteor, an alien spaceship lands on Earth. Its inhabitants are Kro-Bar (Andrew Parks) and Lattis (Susan McConnell) have somehow let loose their pet mutant and need to retrieve it before it lays waste to the nearby human population. They also need to get some atmospherium to power their rocket so that they can return to their home planet, Marva.

Meanwhile, the sinister Dr. Roger Fleming (Brian Howe of K-Pax) is trying to resurrect the notorious skeleton who resides in Cadavera caves. When he finds the legendary bones, the skeleton tells him that the only way that he can be resurrected is if Fleming can find him some, your guessed it, atmospherium. Fleming uses the aliens ray gun to create a woman out of four different kind of forest animals, dubs her Animala (Jennifer Blaire), and sets out on his quest.

Ultimately of course, all of their paths cross with the Armstrong's trying to save the planet, the alien's trying to capture their mutant and get home, and Fleming and Animala trying to resurrect the skeleton so that it can bestow upon them untold powers.

If the plot sounds like something out of an Ed Wood movie to you, you're on the right track. Shot over two weeks in Bronson Canyon using props mostly bought on eBay, The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavera is a tongue in cheek throw back to the old sci-fi/monster movies of the 1950s. Parts of it work, parts of it don't but you've got to give the cast and crew points for trying. Bronson Canyon was the perfect locale to shoot on and anyone even remotely familiar with the movies that this film is striving to recreate should recognize the location from the hundreds of b-movies that were and still are made in the part just outside of Los Angeles.

The dialogue is intentionally stilted and, well, dumb. Think Plan Nine From Outer Space written by a five year old. It's repetitive and chauvinist and actually pretty funny in its accuracy. This is the type of movie that Mystery Science Theater Fans are sure to enjoy. At the same time, the repetition of the same jokes over and over again is also the films biggest downfall. While it's hilarious for the first fifteen to twenty minutes, by the time we get around to the ending we've been there and done that and it doesn't really hit any new ground.

That aside, the film does a great job with its low-tech effects. Seeing the plastic skeleton come to life and climb a cliff through the aide of some very obvious wires is a blast, and I couldn't help but chuckle every time the mutant shows up on screen. The heroes are likeable and the villains despicable, which gives it a nice b-movie flavor and makes it worth checking out if you've got a high tolerance for bad jokes and a love of big dumb monsters.

Video:

The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavera receives a surprisingly nice 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Seeing as the film was shot on video and in color not less, the picture looks pretty good here (it was down-converted to black and white). There is some digital noise in a few scenes but overall it's nice and clean and not too obviously a shot on video production. Edge enhancement, while present, isn't really a problem and compression artifacts don't really creep up at all. Given the origins of the source material, I was surprised to see the movie look as good as it does on this DVD.