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Every mummy movie (good or bad)
has at least a few good parts in it. This is a pretty bad mummy movie (it's not quite a howler,
but close), but some things in it are good enough that it's worth seeing
at least once.
Tale of
the Mummy
suffers a lot in comparison to 1999's The Mummy.
This one is set in the 1930s (for a few minutes) then in modern
London. At the outset, a team of excavators (led by Christopher Lee of
1959's The Mummy) has found a mummy's
tomb--unlike any other tomb. This scene is very eerie and nerve-wracking. Almost all of the team quickly die terrible
deaths (unfortunately, they break into parts that disintegrate into dust--a little too
reminiscent of the fighting mummies who are sliced and diced in the 1999
movie).
Oh, well,
another day at the dig.
Jump forward
to the present day where another team of scientists opens the same tomb
(they are wearing something like space suits--so this looks more like a
moon excavation). This time we see more of the tomb: the mummy's sarcophagus is suspended by ropes from the
middle of a womb-like chamber--funny how the scientists hear the same type
of strange noises that Brendan Fraser heard at Hamunaptra. The difference
is that the noises were used for a good laugh in the 1999 Mummy; here they
are supposed to be scary (unfortunately). There are lots of dead bodies
littering the walls (skewered by spears into the walls) and floor of this
mummy's tomb--and one scientist quickly loses his mind while trying to
take what appears to be an enchanted necklace (the red gem must glow in
the dark--either that or Duracells were invented by the ancient
Egyptians).
Somehow (and this defies belief)
the scientists manage to get the mummy (whose name is Talus--and he is
only wrappings, no body) back to England where he is promptly put on
display in the British Museum. Why he didn't wipe out the workers of the
mummy-freight company is never explained. But it doesn't matter; once he
arrives, he decides to kill Londoners (sometimes people who participated
in the robbing of his tomb--sometimes innocent cleaning ladies; you see,
he is supposed to be an eee-vil mummy). None of it makes much sense...but
the good bits are still there.
Because he
is only wrappings, he can fly through the air as litter. He can take the
shape of curtains or blinds--or in the only humorous scene (and it is too
brief) as the cloth-towels-on-a-roll that are often supplied in gas
station restrooms.
As he kills
more people, he begins to reassemble his body (which is better-defined in
its wrapped form). This is too much like the 1999 movie (and you can
easily see why the movie went straight to video).
The ending
at a London pyramid construction site (don't ask) goes on too long, and
the body count is hard to tally (and I think there was a possibility of a
sequel embedded at the end), but it somehow manages to limp through. In
what other mummy movie will you find the human hero (a detective) kills his girlfriend
(who has until her death appeared to be the movie's heroine in an Evelyn
Carnarvon-type role) because the mummy commands it? This, to my knowledge,
is the only one.
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