Double Feature Theater

Summer Reruns

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

THE technical effects of "This Island Earth," Universal's first science-fiction excursion in color, are so superlatively bizarre and beautiful that some serious shortcomings can be excused, if not overlooked. Featuring Rex Reason, Faith Domergue and Jeff Morrow, this William Alland production, at the Victoria, can also boast reasonable acting and plucky, even literate, writing. It sorely needs a pair of shears, a less conventional musical score and a director of considerably more drive and less awe toward his subject than Joseph Newman. Just where Raymond F. Jones' novel leaves off and the scenario (Franklin Coen and Edward G. O'Callaghan) begins we can't testify. After a dawdling introduction the camera looks in on a remote mansion in present-day Georgia, where an international assortment of top scientists has been lured by a strange-looking, smooth-talking world altruist, or so Mr. Morrow claims. Mr. Reason and Miss Domergue, the brainiest and handsomest guests, correctly peg him as an invasion scout from the unknown. And Mr. Newman can take full credit for a dandy scene with the pair eluding a death ray in a station wagon. Absorbed by a huge, revolving disk, they are briefly deposited on a disintegrating planet and just as abruptly escape back to earth for a conventional sweet-hearts-together ending, for all the churning stratospheric commotion around them. And most of the commotion is pretty wonderful, once the Universal art wizards take over, as the disk streaks toward its goal in a vast, brilliantly spangled, interplanetary void. One setting alone, a panoramic vista of the doomed planet "Metaluna," should leave anyone bug-eyed. So, if the real stars of the picture will step forward, we have; Clifford Stine, William Fritzsche, Alexander Golitzen, Richard H. Riedel, David S. Horsley, Russell A. Gausman and Julia Heron, technical artists.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie

To recreate the feel of a low-budget 1950s sci-fi film, Skeleton had to be photographed accordingly, meaning bountiful two-shots and master shots with centered framing and little, if any, coverage. Jones was somewhat familiar with the genre's style of cinematography, which he labeled "Mexican soap opera," but a quick crash-viewing of a few classics enabled him to emulate the style to perfection. "I'd say, 'Oh my god, this looks terrible,' and be laughing about it, and Larry would say, 'Yes, it's perfect!'," Jones recalls. "And it was absolutely perfect for what he wanted." "There is a certain art to making a film not look good, and Kevin, like the rest of us, had to fight a natural inclination to do good work," admits Blamire. "I felt we were doing good work, but we were doing good work that looks like bad work." "People who don't get the movie think I'm the worst cinematographer in the world," says a chuckling Jones. "To explain to somebody that you did it deliberately requires an extra step in the résumé process. I told Larry that I'm never going to get another project because of this film!"

The photography, the dialogue, the acting, the script, the special effects and especially the props (such as a spaceship that looks like it would get a D in shop class) are all deliberately bad in the way that such films were bad when they were really being made. The locations remind me of the old "Captain Video" TV series, in which the same fake rocks were always being moved around to indicate we were in a new place on the alien planet. The writer and director, Larry Blamire, who also plays the saner of the scientists, has the look so well mastered that if the movie had only been made in total ignorance 50 years ago, it might be recalled today as a classic. A minor, perhaps even minuscule, classic. ... "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" has been made by people who are trying to be bad, which by definition reveals that they are playing beneath their ability. Poor Ed Wood, on the other hand, always and sincerely made the very best film he possibly could. How rare is a director like Russ Meyer, whose work satirizes material that doesn't even exist except in his satire of it, and who is also very funny; no coincidence that the "Austin Powers" movies are always careful to quote him.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

“MST3K” looks easy enough that anyone could do it. But although we can all shoot a basket, not all of us are Michael Jordan, and the key to the program is in the scripting. My guess is that the show's hypothetical audiences consist of brainy technonerds with a wide and eclectic familiarity with pop culture, politics, literature and the movies. And to keep audiences on their toes, the program occasionally throws in esoteric references that may be completely meaningless to all but a few viewers. Part of the appeal of the program is in the wisecracking. But the movies themselves are also crucial. They are so incredibly bad (many of them are not only out of copyright but perhaps were never worth copyrighting in the first place) that they get laughs twice--once because of what they are, and again because of what is said about them. The odd thing about “MST3K: The Movie” is that its target is not that bad--or at least, not all that bad. On second thought, maybe it is. Let's put it this way: I liked it a lot more when I was 12 than I do now. The movie is “This Island Earth” (1955), starring Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason and Faith Domergue. It got fairly good reviews 40 years ago, although today the props and makeup are ludicrous, and whoever gave Morrow his towering forehead was seriously overestimating the credulity of the audience. As the film opens, Reason is saved from a plane crash by a mysterious and cheesy green ray, and soon receives a mysterious shipment of strange scientific parts, which he assembles with the assistance of a TV-like device that functions about as helpfully as the directions that come with mail-order bookshelves. The equipment allows him to contact an alien (Morrow), who invites him to dinner (much hilarious comment from Mike and the robots about good manners in seeming not to notice that the aliens look weird). Soon the humans board an airplane that looks from the outside like a DC-3, and from the inside like a plywood set. Mike boasts, “I'm fully instrument rated for Microsoft Flight Simulator!” They fly to alien headquarters, where they discover only they can save the Earth from the evil plans of one of the alien factions. “This Island Earth” was 87 minutes long, but “MST3K: The Movie” is itself only 73 minutes long, and since it has scenes of its own, we only see about 55 minutes of the original movie. Nothing I saw made me want to see more.