The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)

Even lower-end Hammer films tend to be worth a watch, and this follow up to THE MUMMY is no exception. Despite the extraordinarily slow pacing (the first hour of the film does nothing except to set up the various characters and their relationships), the production values – even in a film relatively cheap by Hammer standards – are top drawer, the costumes and sets are fun (love those Egyptian backlots), and there's even a smattering of graphic gore for those who enjoy that kind of thing. Imagine the year this film was made. Now watch the film complete with multiple hand-choppings, bludgeoning, beating and – most graphic of all – an offscreen but horrific (thanks to the sound effects guy) head-crushing underfoot – and you can imagine that the film must have been considered pretty terrible when it was first released. Sure, today it seems tame, but I still get a kick out of gruesomeness that is readily achieved WITHOUT excessive bloodshed and through imagination more than anything else.The storyline is very predictable and doesn't need re-telling here, other than it contains the usual themes of cursed siblings (one good, one evil), the mummy falling in love with a beautiful girl, immortality and the bumping off of those who first defiled the Egyptian tomb. The leading characters all seem pretty stuffy but the actors do manage to put in more than adequate performances (aside from Jeanne Roland, who's pretty but hopelessly miscast). Terence Morgan is devilishly evil as the slick bad guy; Ronald Howard more than acceptable as the decent hero; Fred Clark steals the show as a P.T. Barnum-style sideshow hustler who wants to get the mummy working for HIM. Then there's a trio of great supporting performances from George Pastell, Michael Ripper (killed all too early), and Jack Gwillim.The mummy makeup is imposing but not necessarily all that scary, and an interesting touch has the mummy heavy breathing as he goes about his business, kind of like a prototype Darth Vader! After the slow first hour, things pick up for the climax, throwing in some genuinely nasty shocks (one death scene is one of the juiciest in the whole Hammer repertoire) and a climax that must have seemed good on paper but doesn't work all so well. Would sewers really collapse that easily? Still, despite the ambiguity of the climax, this is a fun enough ride for genre fans content to happily sit through well-done ripe dialogue and costume drama to get to the good gruesomeness.

This is what a horror film should be.This is exactly what a Mummy film should be.It is undeniably one of the best Mummy films, if not the best.That's because we get all of the elements.We have the "curse" upon those who dare to infringe upon the mysticism of the culture.We also have the beautiful woman who is to be the Mummy's love interest.We also have an array of interesting, even believable characters for science fiction purposes.Most importantly, we have the "brother" angle here. We know, of course, the Mummy is one brother, and it isn't long before we learn who the other one is.Which one will want to kill the girl? Which one will fight to save her? That is what makes the Mummy films so great.Everything this does, this does well. The cast is superb. If a few are annoying, it is because they do their jobs at playing annoying characters. That's called "good acting". It's something many of today's prima donas would never do. Can't blame them. They would lose their fan base of dorks.This was done in the days when fan bases were much more mature.The atmosphere here is very good, too.

After Hammer's first successful stab at a mummy film (THE MUMMY - 1959) it's pretty rough going with their bandaged follow-ups. This one was not quite as unwatchable as I feared, but was still a limp and rather average affair that I don't see myself revisiting any time soon, if ever. A typical group of treasure seekers uncovers another Egyptian carcass which ultimately gets put on public display by a sleazy American showman, but mysteriously disappears and starts killing people. There's a lot of dull filler through most of this, but by the time the mummy starts stomping there was more action than I was lead to believe from others' reviews. This mummy's makeup isn't too bad, and he's more inventive than most with some of his killing techniques.** out of ****

The key problem with this handsomely mounted, but extremely pedestrian picture is that it quite simply takes too long to get going and start cooking the way that it should from the get go. Writer/director Michael Carreras alas allows the opening half to plod by at a leisurely clip and crucially fails to build any tension or momentum that would sped things along better. It doesn't help that the story is totally routine: Once again a lethal shambling mummy springs to angry life in order to avenge itself on several people who are foolish enough to desecrate its tomb. Fortunately, the movie finally begins humming and delivers a few effectively rousing mounts after the mummy awakens. Dickie Owen as the mummy makes for an impressively fierce and fearsome monster. The violence is shockingly brutal and gruesome stuff. Plus there's a nice unexpected plot twist involving one of the central characters. The game cast do their best with the mediocre material, with especially stand-out contributions by Terence Morgan as the charming Adam Beauchamp, Ronald Howard as the huffy John Bray, Fred Clark as the blithely crass P.T. Barnumesque American showman Alexander King, Jeanne Roland as the fetching, sensitive Annette Dubois, George Pastell as the helpful Hashmi Bey, and Jack Gwillim as the hearty, morally upright Sir Giles Dalrymple. Both Otto Heller's sumptuous widescreen cinematography and Carlo Martelli's robust, stirring score are up to par. But overall this film is way too bland and meandering to be anything more than a merely watchable and acceptable time-waster.