La Malédiction du pharaon

The happenings depicted in The Curse Of King Tut's Tomb somehow didn't make it into the history books. If you're looking for the story of how Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter found the tomb than you'll be disappointed.

Instead we find Casper Van Dien doing a pale imitation of Indiana Jones as archaeologist, right down to the fedora. Van Dien knows he's in a Thanksgiving special and he overacts accordingly.

That of course is nothing compared to what Jonathan Hyde does as the master villain of the film. Hyde runs the gamut of villainy from Snidely Whiplash to Darth Vader with a lot else thrown in. Hyde in his villainy is backed by the Hellfire Club headed by Malcolm McDowell. But Hyde's ambitions extend far beyond just ruling this world. Tut's tomb is a passageway to the demon world and Hyde's working with them.

A lot of talented people get wasted in this Hallmark TV movie which is downright mediocre. And the end switches from Indiana Jones to Stargate.

As for Carnarvon and Carter that's covered too, but you'll have to sit through almost three hours to find out.

My son is 8 and he enjoyed it. At three hours it was a too long for me, but I remember watching Tarzan movies for hours on Saturday mornings when I was his age, including those awful Mike Henry in South America Tarzan movies. This was better than those. So, even though I didn't like it much, I'm glad movies are still being made that a kid can watch and get lost in. One thing I thought was puzzling, they kept introducing characters that they never really did anything with. Steven Waddington was the only supporting character that managed to shine. The history was of course pretty silly, but they "fixed" that at the end. It made my son want to know more, so we went on the web and looked up what really happened. Definitely a "B" movie, with limited special effects and wooden acting, but still fun for kids.

What else can we expect, this is an example of production companies to make films for 'entertainment' only and not have to pay the high Hollywood star wages.Even the 'bigger' name stars are working for less and as the scripting,historical accuracy is lacking the players get paid the producers can sell it, no real quality needed. Not to mention the new actors (esses) get some experience and become known. Goood movie to watch on a cold rainy day like,today. Anyway how can every movie be as great as Casablaca or Gone With The Wind, and at least its better than a 'teen movie'.The best factors are there is no swearing just to swear and no unnecessary sex.

It's sad to see. Really. With Russell Mulcahy being the director of Highlander - a must see of my 80's teenage - I thought maybe it was a return to form when I caught a trailer on Sky. I duly tuned in...

That was the start of my troubles. This lack lustre schizophrenic wannabe Indiana Jones clone lacked any sense of pace, character or credibility, and that's leaving the dubious special effects alone. My woes were doubled when I found that at the end of transmission I had only seen the first half of this two part torture.

Through some freak happenstance I collided with part two a week or so later. I accepted the wafer thin plot, the unlikely OTT villains, the stereotypes, the surface characterisations, and even the Very "Special" Special Effects. And from somewhere came the impetus to want the film to be finished. It went into free-fall and became a demon laden action type thingy effort, sort of... You see, it just ended and I thought "There is a God". All I wanted was to see it finished. And mercifully I did.

Please Russell Mulcahy, I beg you, read the script before you say yes to your next film! The Lost Battalion wasn't bad at all! As far as viewers are concerned though - save yourself a couple of hours of your life, because this film is certainly Cursed!

One of the most fascinating things about this film (apart from Jonathan Hyde's extraordinary resemblance with Henry Daniell)is watching how the plot meanders and wanders with no destination in sight as if it were an Art Nouveau filigrain.

I suspect that the archeology academics would seriously object at the unorthodox -but revolutionary- system that the protagonist and his buddies use to find the legendary Pharaoh's tomb, namely, by sitting in the terraces of Cairo's seediest bars and leaving them without alcoholic stock. Their interest is, however, scientific, except for the legionnaire buddy who is more interested in gold statuettes accidentally getting lost in his greatcoat pockets (Having mentioned the legionnaire, I must say that I admire the courage of the scriptwriter, who reveals to us -for the very first time- that Egypt was at the time a French protectorate, and not, as we've been led to believe by the official history, associated to the British empire)

The bad guys stick to the old, slow, boring system of studying the terrain and excavating carefully according to old Ieroglyphs, while our hero and his friends discover the tomb the legendary grave by happily throwing dynamite sticks at random: a new path is opened thus for archeology.