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Welcome, welcome once again to the house of fear, welcome once again to the darkness, welcome to... HALLOWEEN HAVOC... Film: The Mummy's Shroud Chosen by: Travis Sheldon Third of four Hammer Films Mummy movies. I picked this film because there's little chance anyone will pick anything older. Or did they??? DunDunDun Reviewed by: Ultimo Necro Come children, let me tell you a tale. It's a tale set in Ancient Egypt. Once upon a time there was a Pharaoh, let’s call him Pharaoh Awesome. Pharaoh Awesome had a needlessly convoluted back story about a jealous brother and a son. Then, one day, the jealous brother and his gang killed Pharaoh Awesome, but not before the Pharaoh’s right hand man, THE SLAVE PREM, whisked Pharaoh Awesome Jnr. to safety. Well, when I say safety, what I really mean is that THE SLAVE PREM led the young Pharaoh Jnr. and some slaves through the desert, just like Moses, or Khaleesi. Unlike Moses or Khaleesi THE SLAVE PREM led most of them to their death in the desert. THE SLAVE PREM then mummified the young Pharaoh in the middle of the desert, performed some Arabic mumbo jumbo and then headed home. Way to protect the Pharaoh’s son THE SLAVE PREM. Fast forward to 1920. We are now in 1920, where men are men, women appear in weirdly-framed solo camera shots for no reason and everyone talks in x4 speed. Here we meet Mr. Stanley Preston, just in case you didn’t get that, Michael Ripper, Preston's butler, makes a point of saying "Mr. Preston" about 30 times in the space of 40 seconds. Mr. Preston is here to investigate his missing expedition which is trying to uncover the tomb of Pharaoh Awesome Jnr. On arrival he literally gets press-ganged into going out with the search party. We also find out that Mr. Preston likes results and cold beer. Given this was filmed in England in 1967 I think Mr. Preston is supposed to be the good guy here. The expedition consists of Preston's son, his best chum who is clearly Mummy-fodder, Claire the linguist and the old Professor. Claire the linguist is played by Maggie Kimberley; I cannot stress how hot she is. I was surprised to see she wasn’t in more things. She was in WITCHFINDER GENERAL and not much else according to IMDB. She is stunning. I'm also fairly sure one of them called her a cunning linguist at one point. We come across them in a tent in the middle of a sand storm, they have enough water for 3 days and need to decide whether to return to base or go further on. They should have listened to Hot Claire as she warned them about leaving on FRIDAY THE 13TH!!! After a quick chat, Claire randomly tells them they should carry on, however, "some of us won’t survive" and they all agree and celebrate by drinking some of their water. Yay, some of us are sure to die! Go team! The sandstorm goes away and they venture outside and IMMEDIATELY find the tomb, right there outside the tent. Literally 10 yards away. "Shall we leave everything?", "Yes, just bring the guns and water". Stupid English people be making stupid English decisions. They run into the tomb's guard, Hashmit Ali aka THE MASTER from DR. WHO, who tries to attack them; good job they brought them guns. From here on out it gets a bit like PROMETHEUS for a while, they enter an ancient tomb, wander around aimlessly and one of them gets bitten by a snake. Luckily for that guy Preston and his search party turn up. They then uncover the tomb, find the mummified remains of Pharaoh Awesome Jnr. and unleash the curse. Now. All of the above took 40 goddam minutes. 40 minutes of literally nothing happening. 40 minutes of English people talking quickly and very easily finding the long lost tomb. So far there has been no suspense, no intrigue, nothing. The setup of the curse could have been done in about 15 minutes. Urgh. The death scenes better be good. The film sort of resets at this point and turns from English family soap opera into a more traditional hammer horror. We meet a creepy old fortune teller who lives in what looks like the Voodoo Woman's house from Monkey Island. For a low budget Hammer Horror movie the set design has generally been okay. Anyway, creepy fortune teller is watching the protagonists through her crystal ball and OH SNAP, HASHMIT ALI is her son and in control of THE MUMMY PREM who has been unleashed as part of the curse from disturbing the tomb of Pharaoh Awesome Jnr. Having unleashed THE MUMMY PREM on our gang of English chums. Death number one comes in around 50 minutes where the old professor, who has now went insane for reasons never really explained other than "must be the curse" or "must be ill", gets Kona Crushed to death by the mummy. THE MUMMY PREM looks pretty neat, he kind of has a leatherface / Jason vibe about him. The next 20 minutes is taken up with the English people arguing with the Egyptian Police (and their awesome Fez hats) about whether they can leave or not. This bit really dragged, I was hoping to see THE MUMMY PREM do more deaths and Hot Claire the Linguist being a dame in distress. I was let down. The second death comes at 64 minutes, but by god is it worth the wait. Mummy-Fodder #1 is developing some photos in his hotel room when the Mummy attacks resulting in an awesome Acid-Fire combo death. There is some more English bickering ad-nauseum; Mr. Preston's wife in particular is an absolute horror. I feel sorry for the old guy, she is a complete bitch to him and stops short of saying "I hope you die" at one point for no real reason other than 1) he is rich and 2) likes to brag about things. She's been married to him for 26 years and is just figuring this out? Such a weird plot point. The deaths are coming-a-ripping now as Michael Ripper's character gets bundled up in some bed sheets and lobbed out of a window by the Mummy in probably the best death scene in the movie. Death number 4 follows pretty swiftly when old Preston finally snuffs it after being choked out /massaged Andre style and having his head mashed against a wall, his wife will be most pleased. Hot Claire then decides now is the time she should do something about it. Enough is enough, she better go and visit the creepy fortune teller woman. She does and discovers the secret to stop THE MUMMY PREM is that she should visit THE MUMMY PREM and simply apologisz in the language of the Pharaohs. Which she does, eventually. There is a short chase scene as the Mummy chases them around the museum, you could speed this bit up, get some lingerie clad lovelies and play the BENNY HILL THEME over it, it’s pretty hokey. This then leads into the best scene of the movie as Claire speaks the "WORDS OF DEATH" which results in the THE MUMMY PREM disintegrating. Pretty awesome special effects piece (for 1967) and really well done. It almost made the soap opera elements of the majority of the previous 85 minutes worth it. The end. You want an epilogue? Nope. Not getting one. This goddam movie though, there were no scares, no frights, no gore and no real suspense. It did, however, have about 10 minutes of out and out awesomeness. Namely Michael Ripper's whole performance and ultimate death, Stanley Preston being awesome and Hot Claire being hot. THE MUMMY PREM was pretty good and not as cheesy as it might have been. The film is fairly well acted as well; Hashmit Ali and his crazy fortune telling mom were both great characters and played with great over-the-top enthusiasm. The downside was that at times it just dragged and felt like a really long crappy soap opera. I enjoyed it though (I also enjoy crappy soap operas, go figure), given it was filmed nearly 50 years ago it holds up fairly well and as the Brits say "it was an enjoyable romp" and perfect Saturday afternoon Matinee fare.