La malédiction des sables

I'm at this very moment debating whether I should even finish watching this "poppycock" of a movie. They had a pretty interesting idea, with the buried movie set, and that was it. So far this incomprehensible mess has no real story. There is the buried set, some wolf headed monster running amok, an amulet, and a bunch of bad actors attacked by the wolf masked whatever it is. What I would have missed, had I had the good sense to eject this nonsense is a dune buggy chase, some really bad C.G.I., some incredibly stupid dialog, more bad C.G.I., and the hero fighting paper cut outs. Other than the original idea, this film has absolutely zero redeeming qualities. My mistake for continuing to watch. - MERK

Over the years I've seen some pretty decent story ideas that the SciFi Channel has used as a basis for original films. They've usually gone to the bad because the money and/or skill needed to make them A quality entertainment just wasn't there.

THE SANDS OF OBLIVION gives them the chance to mess up not a good idea but a potentially awesome one that could have been as exciting as THE MUMMY or RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Unfortunately, the great idea just fizzles out.

The basis of the story is that when Cecil B. DeMille made the original, silent THE TEN COMMANDMENTS the studio bulldozed the elaborate sets in the California desert instead of recycling the lumber and other building materials. It seems that there had been genuine Egyptian artifacts used in the set and something Very Bad had been unleashed.

In the present day people are digging up the old desert location, and Something Bad is once again free to roam the Earth.

The cast is adequate to the job, and the special effects are really pretty decent. But the script and direction are uneven, and the film never finds a consistent tone. It veers into comedy and seems to disregard the numerous people killed by the newly unleashed monster. Near the end there's a dune buggy race that's professionally filmed but seems to have been cut in from another movie.

The original TEN COMMANDMENTS had a segment set in contemporary times (the 1920's) concerning the building of a cathedral with substandard material and the tragedy of putting cost and convenience in too high a position. A similar theme could have been developed with the lumber, which would be very well preserved in a desert climate.

THE SANDS OF OBLIVION is certainly worth watching, but the main thing I kept thinking was what might have been.

I'm rating this movie based on the average tripe that shows up on Scifi, often unfit for the name of the channel. Having said that, this is still an enjoyable escape for an afternoon or evening.

The plot is quite original, and it's a shame it wasn't used in a major feature production. Still, the plot was fast-moving and not too hole-y. And while it was a budget production, the effects were very serviceable and did not detract from the film. The second-to-final fight scene, in particular, sums that up. It has to be seen to be believed.

Having two leads from the Firefly cast didn't hurt, either. So it was a real surprise to find it getting 3.7 on IMDb. I think a bit of it has to do with a question posted on the message board here: what's an Egyptian God, "a false god", doing with the Ten Commandments?

If you're not a fundamentalist like that, I think you can enjoy this film.

Which is actually one of those "Leper with the most fingers" distinctions.

The plot is kind of straightforward. We discover that an ancient evil was entrapped in an artifact. That artifact was moved to the United States by Cecil B. Demille, who used it in his first version of the Ten Commandments, then inexplicably buried the sets in the middle of the desert.

Flash to the present day, where a married couple of archaeologists played by Firefly veterans Adam Baldwin and Morena Baccarin, uncover the city, with the help of an Iraq War vet and his grandfather. What follows are the typical made for TV kills of ancillary characters, a dune buggy chase and some bad CGI.

Still, I'm recommending this film on the basis of the characterizations by Baldwin and Baccarin.

I found "Sands of Oblivion" to be passable entertainment, which I kept watching for the joy of seeing Jayne and Inara together again. The evil entity was pretty lame....what was its goals? Take over the world, or just kill people because he/it was angry about something? The efforts of the hero and heroine were all aimed at saving themselves, which didn't seem to be worth documenting.

I liked the hero, Jayne and Inara did well, the special effects were OK, there was good comic relief with the Buford character, and a really good shock early on in the show. I didn't miss the two hours I spent on this show. For those reasons, I give it a six out of ten.