मौत का श्राप

All four Mummy films by Hammer I like. Curse with atmospheric scenes does give a quality to it. You have fog bound London to add atmosphere. Sets on film re Egyptian biz are quite good.Story so-so various characters who crop up. Then we have the Mummy itself which looks quite impressive, with scenes with Mummy in like in fog top of steps near embankment etc, scene in study where curtains are concealing it. Another scene in house where Mummy ascending stairs, menacing and quite gripping. Odd comical relief in film re certain characters. Overall film has some merit to it!

After a cripplingly slow start, the second-half of this low-budget (even by Hammer standards) tale is quite lively and gruesome. Devotees may miss Cushing and Lee but Hammer alumnus Michael Ripper IS on hand, as an unlikely Cockney-accented Egyptian called Ahmed. Director Michael Carreras liked to shoot all his films in widescreen and the film is probably best seen in its original Hammerscope format.

While definitely not as much a first-rate production as Hammer's first Mummy, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb has some great camerawork, nice supporting performances, and an intriguing mummy plot. Archaeologists financed by an American P. T. Barnum type find a lost tomb and open it despite the curse that says whosoever is present at its opening should die. Hammer production values prevail with lush costumes and sets. George Pastell(from the original) is back as yet another Egyptian naysayer out to prove that the British had no right to take and break the sacred nature of treasure and memory of forgotten kings. Michael Ripper, Jack Gwillim, and Fred Clark excel in their supporting roles, clearly out-performing the rather tiresome and boring leads of Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, and Jeanne Roland. Clark gives an impressive performance(as well as very affable one) as the American out to turn his mummy find into carnival magic, taking the show to the "American Heartland" for a dime a peep. The story is not the fastest paced story around, but once the mummy's casket gets opened....people die. Definitely worth a look for the mummy fan.

Hammer had two great stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. When they tried to make a horror movie without them, what they got was kind of pedestrian and predictable.

I usually try to avoid "Star Quality" as a virtue of film, but Hammer proved it...

The plot is that an archaeological team uncovers the lost tomb of a dead Egyptian prince. The mummy is reanimated and begins to pick off the people who opened his tomb. (Cliche). The twist is that his brother has been cursed to live forever, and wants his brother to kill him, after he took care of those people who desecrated the tomb, of course..

(Now, you'd think that if you were tired of eternal life, you wouldn't focus on snuffing the bit players so much.)

Especially nutty is the evil brother seducing the girlfriend of the head archaeologist....Now you would think that if you are so anxious to die, you wouldn't worry about such side issues...

It's okay to watch, but not great. YOu can see why whoever owns the rights to Hammer films put this on the "collection disk" grouping.

Hammer Films which took over the famous Universal horror icons did a mummy's tale with The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb. A little bit of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray story was weaved into the plot of this movie.

Set at the turn of the last century, three archaeologists unearth the tomb of a crown prince of Egypt who legend has it was slain by his brother a few thousand years BC. But someone with reasons of his own to finance the expedition has used some ancient spells to revive the dead and the prince is out settling a few scores against those who've violated his sleep.

Terrance Morgan stars in this film and he's the fellow with the Dorian Gray situation. He's got an agenda himself working here at it involves putting an end to his Dorian Gray like existence and being reunited in eternity with his true love. In that sense a leaf is borrowed from the classic original Mummy film that starred Boris Karloff.

Which happens to be my favorite horror film of all time so every other mummy film just pales in comparison. Still The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb has enough on its own merits to rate some comparison and Terrence Morgan who is best remembered on the big screen for playing Laertes to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet does a fine job here as a most tortured soul.