The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb
                               
Director: Michael Carreras
Year: 1964
Rating: 5.0
Some five years later, Hammer brings back the Mummy. But it's not our Mummy. Not the Mummy that we all loved in The Mummy. That we last saw sinking into the swamp as he gazed at the woman he loved from 4,000 years previously. That was a love for the ages. This is another Mummy and as soon as I watched the opening credits roll by my heart fell. No Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee. They had moved on. Instead, this film and director Michael Carreras get Ronald Howard (son of Leslie Howard), Terence Morgan, Jeanette Roland, Jack Gwillim and Fred Clark. That spells B film to me and in fact this was made to be the second film with The Gorgon as the main feature. And it plays like a B film with a few good surprisingly violent moments but a plot so farfetched and sets so second-hand that I had to roll my eyes.



The Mummy is played by Dickie Owen who gets it all wrong. Gone is the emotion in the eyes and at one point, he slugs someone like a prize fighter. No. The Mummy stalks his prey, crashes through doors and then strangles them as they are too scared to move and can only gurgle. It is hard for me to watch Fred Clark as anything but the neighbor in the old Burns and Allen Show who is always yelling at his wife - "Blanche, come home". And Jeanette Roland though very lovely and nearly inspiring in her heaving cleavage scene in the sewer was not an actress, but someone Carreras met at a party. This was not meant as a serious effort - just a thrown together bit of nonsense for The Gorgon. That seems idiotic - would they do that to Frankenstein or Dracula - well I guess eventually - but you don't take an iconic horror figure and make him B material in the very next film.



But it begins on a high bloody note. One of the archeologists of a tomb that held Ra, the son of a Pharaoh is being held captive by Arab Bedouins. Tied to a stake and out of the blue they stab him in the stomach and cut off his hand. He is the father of the lovely Annette (Roland) who looks sad for about one day before she is smiling again - in the arms of John (Howard). The head of the dig is Sir Giles (Gwillim). They are planning to hand over all the plunder to museums and their Egyptian official Hashim Bey played by George Pastell (who had a similar role in the first Mummy film) insists on it. But here comes the loud-mouthed boorish American (Fred Clark) who financed the excavation and he wants to put the Mummy on the road in a traveling show. 10 cents a dance. Come see the Mummy and Die!



It finally gets mildly interesting when the Mummy disappears and comes back to life and like all good Mummy's he has to kill the people who upset his sleep. An unexpected turn of events is that the sweet Annette falls for another man - a very wealthy one (Morgan) who seduces her right in front of John who just looks exasperated but does nothing. His character is a bit of a mean-tempered twit. No one in the film gets our sympathy besides the Mummy. I was definitely rooting for the Mummy to kill her. It feels so cheap and trashy - though the final scene was beautifully shot of the Mummy carrying her through the sewer, her bosom heaving, her eyes as big as the moon and the Mummy just trudging forward.