Gem Alert: The Lost Skeleton Returns Again

So good that I have ordered a copy from Amazon rather than simply pirate the Netflix copy (just kidding, one doesn't DO THINGS LIKE THAT) Larry Blamire's The Lost Skeleton Returns Again is just about every bit as good as the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, of which it is a sequel to.

Both movies are surrealist low-budget parodies of those 50's monster pictures, and both use the same comic strategy. Play it straight, but make the dialogue as absurdly convoluted as possible. Have laughably cheap production values, throw in a sexy babe or two, and keep piling it all on until you can't resist the crazy charm of it all.

LSRA has the added advantage of being in Cinemascope AND color, at least in some scenes. Plus where the original employed the "miracle of Skeletorama" (the strings that held up the lost Skeleton as it lurched from place to place) the sequel boasts "SuperSkeletorama" (same thing.)

I don't want to give anything away but fortunately the plot is nonsense so there's no harm. It concerns a team of government scientists, another team of evil scientists, and a portion of the Lost Skeleton as they journey through the Amazon in search of a rare mineral called Jeranium. Unfortunately the only known source is found in a stone idol worshipped by the Canteloupe People and protected by a horrible cyclopean monster.

I warned you.

Listen, it doesn't matter anway, just as it doesn't matter if you have ever seen the movies this one takes off from. It's just a high-frequency barrage of deadpan silliness that grinds away at you until you start laughing. 'Nuff said. About the only thing that isn't funny in this movie, when all is said and done, is the trilobytes. They're well executed. What the hell are the trilobytes even DOING in there anyway? Now that I think of it, nice detail. That IS pretty funny.