If you haven’t had a chance to watch it, grab it on Netflix! One of the funniest movies I’ve seen this year. My only regret was that I watched Plan 9 From Outer Space before watching this movie. I wish I’d waited on Plan 9, since it’s obvious they took so much from that movie.
D’oh! Thanks, neuroman.
I saw this movie in theaters a few months back. It was a great homage to all those horrible sci-fi movies from the 30s and 40s. I highly recommend renting it if you manage to find it. I’m still contemplating if it’s worth the $20 to get it from Best Buy, but it’s definitely worth a NetFlix (or even $5 Blockbuster) viewing.
A must for any MST3k fan!
I saw it in a theater last year, and I have to admit I laughed far more than I had any right too. I guess if the whole film is “designed” to look cheesy, then laughing out loud at its cheesiness means it was a very well-made film.
I highly recommend it.
I watched it last week. Oh, man, was it a hoot!
I think the “Evil Doctor”, Dr. Roger Fleming, (Brian Howe) didn’t quite get it right. He said in the documentary that he was going for an over-the-top performance – intentionally acting poorly – but he didn’t quite get the “certain something” that would have made it a good approximation of 1950s B-movie performance. I thought that “Ranger Brad” (Dan Conroy) also didn’t get his performance quite right. He seemed to be a better actor than he was supposed to be, trying to be a bad actor.
The others were spot-on. Jennifer Blaire’s “Animala” was perfect. “Brower!” “Always agree.” Kro-Bar and Lattis (Andrew Parks, Fay Masterson) were right out of an Ed Wood film.
I’m a big fan of the campy 1950s and 1960s science fiction B-films. Some of them were quite good. Others were hilariously bad. One of my favourites is Invasion of the Saucer Men. A great campy film. I still love the line when the kids figure out why the aliens were beating their car: “And we thought they were mad at the car!” Brilliant! And then there’s the sequel, Attack of the the Eye Creatures. (Yes, “the the” appears on the title. 
) Night turns into day, day turns into night, and some of the creatures are running around with just masks instead of full costumes.
Compared to Attack of the the Eye Creatures, if The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra had been intended to be a serious film it would still have been better!
If you like the old monster films, you owe it to yourself to see The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. 
My husband was quoting this movie just today. Paraphrased: “Whoa, slow down there. I’m a scientist and that was a little fast even for me!” We use that when one of us says something too quickly. Gotta buy this one.
Just found the dvd at my local used dvd shop and picked it up. Glad I did. It was hilarious. I agree with the assessment of Dr. Fleming though. He really didn’t seem to get it, and didn’t act…cheesy enough. I wonder… Oh well.
This movie is full of quotables. I’m gonna make all my friends watch it so they’ll know what I mean when I say:
“Aliens? Us? Is this one of your Earth jokes?”
“I sleep now”
“That is your problem and is none of my concern!”
“I wonder as well…”
“Ever since I was a child, skeletons have hated me!”
WOW
I seriously can’t remember the last time I watched a movie twice in a row (it’s been over a decade for sure), but I’m watching Cadavra for the second time in as many days right now.
This is a new addition to my top 10 of all time.
“What orders do you have for us my boney wonder?”
“Shut up!”
It didn’t do that much for me.
I know they set out to make a bad sci-fi movie and that is exactly what they did.
The thing about films like Plan 9 is that they are trying to make a good movie and for what ever reasons can not do so. Maybe their reach exceeds their grasp or perhaps their wallet can not buy what they imagine but this film goes exactly where it wants to go.
Actually, they didn’t want to make a “bad science fiction movie”. They wanted to make a send-up of a bad science fiction movie.
As a fan of the (often really bad) originals, I think Cadavra was brilliant. They weren’t trying to make Plan Nine. They were lampooning “better” science fiction of the 1950s.
This is very definitely a high-quality movie. I don’t know that it’s in my top ten of all time, but it’s definitely up there.
I recently had the opportunity to watch this at the tail end of a sci-fi film festival. I don’t know how much the screening time of 3 am had to do with it, but I was convulsed with laughter at the end of it.
I also have to commend whoever came up with the amazingly spot-on animated title sequence, with the skulls and the cheesy music.
Plus, as far as I’m concerned, the actress who played Animala is officially the sexiest woman in the world.
“I’m a scientist, Ranger Brad; I don’t believe in anything.”
…oh, well…
Wow, this thread keeps popping up every so often. That’s so cool. I still haven’t gotten the DVD yet, but I have some money coming in from a stock buyback, and I’ll probably make a big dent in my Amazon wish list, and include this.
The line is actually from the short story that inspired the film (yes, it was actually based on a published short story) “The Space Frame”. Attack of the the Eye Creatures isn’t a sequel, but a cheesy remake. The same guy remade other 1950s SF dflicks, too, inclusing The She Creature as Creature of Destruction and It Conquered the World as Zontar, the Thing from Venus. In each case the remakes are much worse – worse acting, worse monster costumes, much worse technical quality. MST3K did a great number on Eye Creatures.
I never heard of Cadavra until now, but I saw it at the store last night. I may have to get this one…
Here I thought I was going to have to dig for this thread, and up it pops on page one after I watched the movie last night!
Watched it with a friend of mine. She liked it a lot more than I did. I was amused; she was convulsed with laughter.
Loved Animala. Best part of the whole film. “He’ll only yell at you…he’s always hated you Rogerrrrrr…” I was amazed upon looking at IMDB that so few of the actors have had much in the way of movie careers.
Ranger Brad is hot.
Was the terrific cartoon on the DVD produced for the DVD or did someone dig it out of the archives?
One thing I didn’t get… If everyone jknew where Cadavra cave was adn he was only a few feet from the entrance how could he be lost?
He was lost in an existensial sense, without direction, adrift on a sea of conflicting impulses.
Plus he was, like, under a sheet.
“Sit? What is sit?”
“Quick! Fold yourself in the middle!”
This movie has a prime spot on the top shelf of my DVD collection now.