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An ancient tomb containing the "evil Queen Tera" is discovered by some Brits in
Egypt. A curse is unleashed on one of the archeologists' daughter when he
steals
a ring from the severed hand of Tera. "Is the voluptuous young woman now a
reincarnation of the diabolical sorceress or has the curse of the mummy
returned to reveal its horrific revenge?" They also note that the movie was
"plagued" by the deaths of the director and the wife of Peter Cushing and that
this lead to rumors of a "real-life curse." The movie is called a
"supernatural shocker" and one of the stars (Valerie Leon) is described as
"luscious." 1971, 93 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
This is the Hammer movie famous because everyone that worked on it croaked or
something, giving it a nice sense of realism, because we all know that everyone
that ever robbed the tomb of an ancient Egyptian super villain also died in
real life. Remember the infamous King Tut's tomb curse (not to be confused
with the curse of Al Capone's vault or anything)? Well, I did a little
checking with the Sultan of Egypt or whoever is in charge over there and
found out that ten years after Tut's burial chamber was opened, six people of
the twenty-six people that were present for that had all died! That's a
whooping 23% death rate after a decade (Equally shocking was that
computing that percentage involved me locating and using a calculator on my
computer! Who knew computers could also be calculators?). That pretty much
cinches things if you ask me. As far as this movie and its curse goes (and we
all know that mummies are really hyper-sensitive as to how they're are
portrayed in British horror movies) two people died and a body double was used
in one nude scene! Unbelievable, I know, but let's let the facts speak for
themselves. Just one day after shooting began, the wife of star Peter Cushing
bought the farm from emphysema! Then just before filming had finished,
director Seth Holt checked out due to a heart attack! And if that doesn't
convince you of the curse, star Valerie Leon reveals in the short (nine minutes
long) documentary included with the DVD that a body double was used in
the scene where she gets out of bed and we see her (or rather someone else's)
rump!
It's positively ghastly! Despite the efforts of these ancient creatures and
their curses, the movie was finished and came out in 1971. Now it is available
on DVD from the brave, but obviously foolhardy chaps at Anchor Bay. I, of
course, put no stock into this supposed curse (I mean, if Peter Cushing was
really being punished for his work on this film, wouldn't it have made more
sense for his wife to have croaked during the making of something like At The Earth's Core?), but I have noticed that ever since opening the DVD up and watching it that I
have had a runny nose and have been fairly gassy, but that's probably from all
the grilled cheeses I've been eating lately. Right? Right?  This isn't your typical mummy movie (even aside from everyone that ever heard
of it dying) and that's because it is based on Jewel Of The Seven Stars, which is a lesser known novel by Bram Stoker that you probably haven't read
either. Thankfully, the plot ditches all the hokum about guys wrapped up in
ratty toilet paper shambling around after people in tents and swamps and
universities (boy, those Universal mummies sure were well-travelled), but
instead features some type of reincarnation plot line involving a babe named
Tera, Queen of Darkness. Margaret Fuchs, the very buxom daughter of Dr. Fuchs,
has been having these nightmares about ancient Egypt. There she sees this Tera
person (who looks a whole lot like Margaret) all laid out in a tomb surrounded
by a
bunch of high priests. We've all seen enough movies set in ancient Egypt to
know that when you're being surrounded by a group of high priests, they ain't
there to bless you or hear your confession or anything. In fact, we all know
that usually a situation like this will involve some sort of hideous
mutilation like having your tongue ripped out or some part of your body
chopped off. Often, it can also involve a good old fashioned mummification
while you're still alive (an oldie, but a goodie). In this case, the high
priests have decided that they are going to use this small thing that looks a
bit like a garden hoe and chop off the hand of the lovely Tera. This is
accomplished along with a bunch of dire sounding talking and the like and then
the boys exit the tomb, slapping each other on the back for a job well done,
and are ready to head off to the local tavern for an after work brew, when all
of a sudden this hand starts running around. That's a bit odd, thinks they.
Didn't we just leave a hand laying around back with that one-handed dame? Now,
I'm not going to do any research for you to tell you about the history of the
whole dismembered hand gag in horror films, but this isn't exactly virgin
territory and we all know what sort of trouble Thing from The Addams Family could get itself into on a weekly basis, so you can imagine that this hand is
probably up to no good. There's some wind, some jackal howling, and some
screaming and the next thing you know everyone has died from having their
throat ripped out or from emphysema or something. Cut back to the present day
when we see Margaret's daddy waking her up (don't shake too hard or she'll pop
right out of that low cut nightie!) and we notice that she has a scar on her
wrist.  The next morning, Dr. Fuchs gives his daughter a ruby ring as her present.
It's way too large and ugly for any woman with any fashion sense to ever
consider doing anything with except pawning it, but Margaret is the type of 21
year old gal that galavants around her dad's house in tight nightgowns that she
must know could give the old geezer a seizure so she eagerly puts in on. She's
got a boyfriend named Tod Browning (I don't get it, really I don't) and he sees
the ring and asks about it and she says her daddy gave it to her and he's all
about what else is you're daddy giving you and that sort of thing. See, he's
one of these guys with too much hair and a beard that is studying the
paranormal and he wants to know about the last expedition that Dr. Fuchs went
on. Fuchs though will say nothing about what went on during the trip or what
he may have found there. About this time, a smarmy looking fellow named
Corbeck appears and hangs out at the house across the street from the Fuchs'
residence. Corbeck also visits the insane asylum where some dude is locked up.
Corbeck harasses the guy and is trying to find something in the guy's cell when
he goes bananas and Corbeck is forced to leave. It turns out that this crazy
guy has a statue of a cobra in his possession that Corbeck needs for some crazy
scheme. Somehow or other we learn about the secret tomb raiding mission that
Fuchs went on about um, I'd say, twenty-one years before. He and a group of
colleagues enter this tomb which has some sort of an ancient Egyptian version of
a "No Trespassing" sign posted, though they were more colorful with their
warnings than we are today. There they find the tomb of Tera and bust it open,
only to find that she has been preserved perfectly. While there, they also
notice that blood begins to ooze out of her wrist. Meanwhile at the exact same
time that her tomb was opened up, back in London Fuchs' wife who is preggers
goes into labor and dies in childbirth. The child is dead as well. Or at lest
she was for a second or two, because suddenly the little girl is breathing and
is going to be just fine. Back in the tomb, Fuchs and friends cart off all the
goodies, including the body and all these really cool relics that include a
really sweet statue of a cobra. All these years later, these relics are
scattered amongst the people that were at the tomb. The crazy guy has a cobra,
Corbeck has found the scroll of life (that thing always seems to be turning up
just when you need it), someone's got a cat statue, somebody else has a skull,
basically it's a collection of knick knacks that the old lady would probably
make you put away your Stars Wars action figure collection for, so that she
could have room to display them.  Soon, Magaret's dad has a Tera-induced stroke (that's what you get for keeping
the Queen of Darkness in your basement), Magaret periodically goes under Tera's
control, and Tod goes and gets himself killed when he gets in Magaret's face
about going into rehab for her possession problem. Corbeck has Margaret go
"shopping" for all the relics. This involves her going out to the people who
were on the expedition, killing them and getting all the bric-a-brac that was
ripped off from the tomb. These people get their
throats ripped out by some invisible force, like the ancient high priests did.
Once all the relics have been
reassembled, Magaret, Corbeck and Fuchs (recovering nicely from his stroke,
thank you) all reconvene in Fuchs' basement where he's pretty much
reconstructed the tomb. Fuchs and Corbeck have a difference of opinion as to
the whole Tera situation. It seems that Tera's soul has been wandering around
for thousands of years and was just waiting for a body to inhabit so that she
could be resurrected. She used her mummy super powers to lure Fuchs to her
tomb, and to transport her and all the relics back, then she arranged to have
herself reborn inside of Margaret. There's a whole lot of babble about seven
stars (I seem to recall seeing the Big Dipper at some point during the film)
and how the constellations have to be just so before she can come back. I
wasn't too clear on exactly what all this meant, but I got the impression that
Fuchs wanted to wait until the stars were in proper alignment before trying to
restore Tera to life, while Corbeck thought everything was close enough and
that they should get on with it already. I'm not sure what Fuchs' position was
on the ultimate fate of his sort-of-daughter, but he did have a stroke
recently, so I'm sure the fault was his and not mine even though I wasn't
taking copious
notes. In any event, it's decided that they are going to do all the mumbo
jumbo now (mainly because Corbeck told Fuchs he would kill him otherwise) and
the three of them all stand around and Corbeck starts reading from the scroll
of life. As Tera slowly comes back to life, Fuchs and his daughter start to croak and
they have a brainstorm and decide that maybe resurrecting the old hag isn't
really such a kick ass idea after all. Fuchs attacks Corbeck before he can
complete his movie-style incantation (showing everyone in the crowd that it is
possible to lead a very full and vibrant life after suffering a stroke induced
by a mummy) then he and his daughter stab Tera. This brings the house down,
literally. Everyone is buried in a cave-in and crushed beyond recognition.
Except one person. At the hospital, no one knows who this one-handed person
is. As the film ends, we get a good look at a very familiar girl who is staring
at us with her whole body wrapped in bandages except her eyes. This was a
welcome change of pace from the usual mummy
fare, chiefly because there was never really any mummy in it! They ditched the
usual nudity and gore that characterized your run of the mill Hammer movie in
the early 1970s and concentrated on making this one more atmospheric and
dream-like (which is a good thing). In style then, it owes more to Universal's
original film, The Mummy than to any of Hammer's previously unrelated mummy movies. I'm not saying
this movie is anywhere near as good as the Karloff classic, because it ain't,
but it is evocative of the same type of nightmarish chills you found with
Karloff's version. Both don't feature any mummies per se, but instead
concentrate on the whole reincarnation aspect and use flashbacks and dreams to
tell their tales. The Hammer film falls down though in comparison to the
original because of it's sometimes messy way of presenting all the details that
explain who Tera is and what she's up to. It also doesn't have the narrative
power, because this is really just a story about a guy trying to bring a
monster back to life for no particular reason, whereas The Mummy was about Im-Ho-Tep's forbidden love surviving through the ages and the
afterlife (a much more engaging story). Compared though to some of Hammer's
other mummy movies such as The Mummy's Shroud, which was basically a slasher movie, Blood From The Mummy's Tomb is very entertaining and a breath of fresh air amidst the generally musty
smell of the genre. Andrew Kier who battled dead Martians as Dr. Quatermass a
few years before this one, steps in and ably fills the shoes of Peter Cushing
who bowed out after the death of his wife. There really wasn't a whole lot for
the character of Dr. Fuchs to do in this movie, so I don't think that losing
Cushing was that damaging (plus Kier is as good a substitute as a Hammer
afficionado could ask for). Valerie Leon does a good job, looking slightly
feline and portraying someone that is shifting between good and evil whenever
Tera takes control of her (she's able to get this dead stare in her eyes
whenever she's possessed and about to do something particularly nasty), and
she's very good at holding up those nightgowns. Another very good addition to
the Hammer library available on DVD, leaving only 1964's The Curse Of The Mummy's Tombas the last Hammer mummy flick to be MIA in the format.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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