Some the the best movies are the worst!!!!!
Not necessarily because the film-maker intended them to be so either. Sometimes movies are so bad, its a test of oneself just to be able to watch the entire thing. Bad acting, bad dubbing, inane writing and cheesy fake visual effects can make a bad movie just plain hilarious.....
This page is dedicated to those movies, I'll try to add one once and a while or as time allows.......
If you've read some of the other WORST OF THE WORST reviews, you've no doubt picked up on my fondness for those crappy B-flicks of the 1950's and 1960's. You know the ones, like those classics made by Ed Wood et al..
Movies you watch not because of the great stories or special effects or great acting or any of those things that Hollywood seems to prize so much these day, but movies you watch because you just know they are gonna NOT have any of those things. Movies that entertain you because they are flawed. Movies dripping with cheese, and filled with ham. Movies where the C-word is unheard of and the special FX are really 'special' (like in the olympics).
Now when I heard someone was making a movie in the here and now that was going to emulate the fun of these sorts of movies, I was a t first excited, but then an apprehension came over me. The fun of those old B-flicks was not usually intentional on the part of the film maker, how can someone purposefully recapture that accidental hilarity? Would I be disappointed? Would intentionally trying to be stupid just make the movie stupid (the unentertaining CAVEGIRL ISLAND: BEACH BABES II kinda stupid) or would it take the stupidness (the campy fun kind) to a whole new level?
Read on and find out while I review:
THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA
The thing that first impressed me about this flick was that it was filmed in SKELETORAMA. How fricken cool is that? I've watched this flick several times now and still haven't got a clue what Skeletorama is, but sure does sound cool. Kinda like Terror-vision or 'Illusion-O' or 'Percepto', only it doesn;t actually do anything.
But does it deliver the 1950's B-movie experience? Well it does have all the elements, and some of them work but others don't quite. Let's start with the negative first. Yes this movie has loads of inane Ed Woodian dialouge...in fact it has too much of it. It works at first, but then it continues throughout the movie so much as to start to become unbelievable. Not that it isn't funny sometimes, but you can tell it's intentional.
On the other hand, the story itself is great. Right out of the 1950s. It has everything, aliens, a mutant, scientists (both good and evil), a bimbo, big convertable cars, an animated skeleton, transmutaions, just everything. It's like the script was written over a game of GRAVEROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE! It's simple yet convoluted. There is a scientist and his wife searching for a meteor which he believes contains the elusive element Atmospherium.
There is a couple of crash landed space aliens who also need Atmospherium to fix their rocketship.
There is the alien's escaped Mutant who horribly mutilates people but falls in love with the scientists wife.
There is an evil scientist who seeks power and world domination by seeking out the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and inlisting it's evil aid. And of course, there is the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra itself, who needs the Atmosperium to animate and seeks the female alien as it's bride.
The acting is pretty cornball and hammy, just like a 1950's B-movie, and I'm still undecided if it's just good performances playing bad performances or if they are truly authentic hamminess or if it is a bit of both.
The special effects, however, are right on the money. I mean you can't fake that. They used the some 1950's technology that they used back then. The mutant costume and that rocketship..amazing!!
All in all, sure I liked the movie, but is it an authentic recreation of a 1950's B-Movie???
I have to say no. No, it's more of a campy parody along the lines of PROBOSCIS.But if you have never seen crappy 1950's B-movies and wondered what there is to enjoy about them, give this a watch, and imagine that in the film makers mind this was going to be Star Wars....
Click the picture and get your copy for cheap!!!
