If I had to unwrap my personal feelings concerning the nature of the Mummy movie, I’d have to be honest and suggest that filmmakers simply leave them buried in their sarcophagus where they belong. Undoubtedly a cautionary metaphor that smacks the legs of colonialists who would loot the shiny treasure of other cultures to store them in dusty museums, it still isn’t as enticing as the more potent message associated with Frankenstein’s Monster. Also, the titular creature usually isn’t that interesting, lumbering around like an ungainly henchman, doing the strangle-happy bidding of a third party.
Well, Hammer’s third Egyptian offering, The Mummy’s Shroud, certainly doesn’t attempt to break the typical mold of other Mummy misadventures and simply offers another clutch of curse-baiting adventurers to enrage the murderous bandaged bastard, but can that trust Hammer style carry things through?
After a lengthy prologue that narrates the tragic history of Kah-To-Bey, the heir of a pharaoh who ultimately died in the desert after his father was slain in a coup, we zip forward to the 1920s to find a group of explorers desperately trying find his final resting place, as per usual. After narrowly avoiding certain death by the fortuitous predictions of the vulcan eyebrowed linguist, Claire, the expedition which also includes the likes of Sir Basil, Paul and Harry, finally hit paydirt when they come across the boy’s final resting place. However, their salvation seems to be at hand when Stanley Preston, the money man behind the search and Paul’s overbearing father, shows up with a rescue party and immediately start trying to take over everything.
In fact, his underhanded controlling methods not only sees him taking all the glory for the find, but he also has a wounded Sir Basil committed to an Egyptian asylum to guarantee that he gets all the plaudits.
While Paul and his wife react with appropriate disgust, there proves to be even greater threats at work than Preston’s monstrous ego, as locals manage to resurrect the hulking Mummy of Prem, the former devoted slave to Kah-To-Bey, who stomps around the place, looking for those who desecrated the resting place of his young charge.
First disposing of the hapless Sir Basil, not long after he managed to escape the asylum (of all the blasted luck), soon Preston starts to feel a little sweaty around the collar as he realises he’s going to also become a victim either sooner or later and so tries every crappy trick in the book to buy, steal or bully his way on a boat outbid Cairo before the Mummy strikes. But a curse is a curse and sooner or later, everyone has to answer to their Mummy.
Yet another Hammer Mummy movie, finds the ubiquitous studio delivering yet another bare bones adventure flick that tries to wrap up its staggering lack of originality in the gauze of a slick, campy production. All the typical hallmarks are there: atmosphere you can chew, more character actors than you can shake an Ankh at, and a nice line in 60s melodrama that delivers the dizzying highs of some overown death scenes and the sickening lows of large amounts of unnecessary brown face. However, it just can’t disguise the fact that we’ve seen it all before and done a damn sight better too as the eerie nature of Hammer’s first crack at the Mummy has long since been swept out with the sand. Unsurprisingly, the Universal Mummy series suffered similar set backs as no one could really think of anything different to do with the classic monster other than have it respond to a curse with all the delicacy of one of those limb twisting Turkish massages, and as a result, The Mummy’s Shroud ends up feeling decidedly samey.
It’s not that John Gilling’s attempt to raise yet another Mummy, is especially bad, and if you had never seen any other movie featuring the dusty danger, you’ll probably find this attempt fairly watchable.
For a start, when it comes to the moments when Prem dispatches the violators of his beloved pharaoh, this particular incarnation of the Mummy certainly doesn’t fuck about. When he’s not crushing their skulls with his bare hands and hiding their bodies in cupboards, he’s pouring bottles of hydrochloric acid on them, or wrapping them in mosquito nets and launching them out of the nearest window. In this respect, it’s a refreshing change from the usual stranglations and it succeeds giving the heavy that necessary oomph a good monster needs, even though its facial markings make it look like a five year-old has done its make up. There’s even some cool details in there too that sees the Mummy’s crusty eyelids opening to reveal glaring baby blues, or its head crumbled like chalk to reveal its skull during its climactic defeat – but it still isn’t a match for Christopher Lee or Boris Karloff.
The cast is pretty solid too. Yes, David Buck and Maggie Kimberley’s leads are a little weak, but it’s more than made up by the self obsessed bluster of John Phillips’ upper class bastard, the glacial acceptance of Elizabeth Sellars’ long suffering spouse and the weapons grade dithering of a spectacularly timid Michael Ripper who could simper and whimper for England.
However, none of this can disguise the fact that The Mummy’s Shroud is just more of the same old thing that rarely moves faster than a loping shamble and it really does bake my noodle when you think that Hammer only made a single werewolf or zombie movie throughout their reign and yet found time to ultimately bang out four Mummy flicks whether you liked them or not. Say what you will about their vampire output, but at least it was varied to the point where they’d sling any old craziness at the wall to see what would stick and even their Frankenstein flicks would regularly change things up whether it made sense or not. Still, with some visibly declining production values (the Mummy looks the wrong kind of stabby and the Egyptian “dessert” looks like it was filmed on a sand pile with the corresponding building site just out of shot), it feels like The Mummy’s Shroud should maybe have been simply folded up and tucked away to be used as a doily or something.
Mid to pharaoh…
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