Writer/director Larry Blamire (a guy I’d love to chat with) also plays the lead character, Dr. Paul Armstrong, a scientist dedicated to the study of meteors. Meteors like the one that has recently landed on Earth containing the new element “atmospherium” consume his life because, he tells his devoted wife Betty (Fay Masterson), “you know what this could mean for science...it could mean actual advances in the field of science!” Dr. Armstrong is totally cluelessly in the blandly heroic fashion of 50’s science fiction scientists (the good kind anyway) throwing the word “science” around the way you or I would use the word “and.” Betty and Paul find the atmospherium but they aren’t the only ones who want it. A pair of stranded aliens need the atmospherium to repair their rocketship, and so must disguise themselves as humans for a hilariously awkward dining party. The aliens’ inspirations are thrown together from tons of places, but the chemistry between Andrew Parks as the delightfully named Cro-Bar and Susan McConnell as Lattis is wholly their own. When they are invited to sit on the Armstrongs’ sofa, Cro-Bar beckons “Bend your body in half - NOW!”

There is yet a third party searching for the atmospherium, possibly the greatest one of all. Another scientist, a mad one this time, who is obsessed with unlocking the secrets of the Cave of Cadavra also craves it. Story has it that a Skeleton dwells within, indeed a lost skeleton, and sure enough crazy Dr. Fleming (Brian Howe) finds one. The only problem - the skeleton is dead (DUH! It’s a skeleton!) and requires the atmospherium to revive him. With shallow promises of world conquest, Dr. Fleming agrees to recover the atmospherium from the Armstrongs.

The Lost Skeleton himself is an incredible comic creation. Nothing more than a med school surplus skeleton, it spends most of the movie laying in a cave barking obnoxious telepathic orders at Dr. Fleming, many of them mean-spirited put downs. “SHUT UP!” he repeatedly barks at Dr. Fleming when he continues to beg for orders. He insists “I SLEEP NOW!” when his mind control powers have been revealed as something less than effective. “I HAVE RISEN!” he declares after the atmospherium gives him the ability to have his skeleton body pulled by fishing wire into a sitting position. Less knowledgeable fans might think that Blamire is using The Skeleton as a postmodern comment on the clichés he’s working with; a character who exists outside the traps of the narrative as it were. But The Skeleton, for all his winking obnoxiousness, is actually quite in line with certain characters of the period. He specifically reminds me of the alien soldier Eros in Plan 9 From Outer Space, who claims he wants to help the Earth while he calls all humans “STUPID! STUPID!” When The Skeleton climbs down the side of a cliff while yelling “COME! FOLLOW ME DOWN THE CLIFF!” when he’s clearly being dragged along the ground by a wire I laughed so hard I gave myself a headache.