The Mummy’s Shroud, 1967.
Directed by John Gilling.
Starring André Morell, John Phillips, David Buck and Maggie Kimberly.
SYNOPSIS:
A renowned scientist and a team of expert archaeologists are on a journey to find the lost tomb of pharaoh Kah-to-Bey. Having ignored warnings of a deathly curse, the expedition unearths the pharaoh’s final resting place, accidentally unleashing a vengeful spirit…
There’s nothing quite like a good mummified horror film set in the golden age of Egyptology. So it’s really quite a shame that The Mummy’s Shroud is nothing like one of those horror films.
From scene one onward, it is a constant struggle to maintain interest in this story. We’re spoon-fed every single morsel of plot, and it quickly becomes annoying. Over-egged narration, campy flashbacks, gypsies with crystal balls; you name a clichéd story mechanic, and you can be certain John Gilling has wedged it right in there.
Anyway, let’s pretend to care about this plot for a moment. It’s 1920. We’re in Mezzara, Egypt, on an expedition to find the lost tomb of Kah-to-Bey. This was a pharoah betrayed and driven out before his time, who died soon after, buried in the wilderness by a devoted servant who pledged to defend him beyond the grave. Now Egyptologists who have uncovered his tomb find themselves picked off one by one by a tall man in bandages who smells oddly of embalming fluid.
Well, now you know everything. This film is spoiler-proof, if only because it completely runs out of story halfway through. It might be bearable if we had some kind of screen presence to take us by the hand and lead us through it all. Even Gilling’s previous mediocre efforts The Scarlet Blade and The Brigand of Kandahar had the inestimable Oliver Reed’s villainous antics to tide us over from scene to scene. So who do we have here of his style and calibre?
Andre Morell’s Sir Basil Walden is about the best we can expect, a sort of bronzed and weathered Allan Quatermain type you might expect to see the whole adventure through and keep us interested. Fat chance. No sooner than this Mummy awakens, Walden is first on his list. Marvellous. Now we’re left with two chinless wonders and a pseudo-mystic blonde who really can’t bring herself to change her facial expression. Not once. Chosen for her exotic looks rather than any acting prowess, Maggie Kimberly’s entire acting career consists of four feature films, and it’s not hard to see why.
John Phillips plays Paul, putting on an indignant, heroic manner that ill suits him. Still, with a script that demands precisely nothing of him, it’d be a hellish job for any actor to save from mediocrity. Seriously, our hero and heroine Paul and Claire do precisely nothing all the time the mummy murders are happening around them. Even the quietest viewers can expect to be screaming “DO SOMETHIIIING” at this useless pair before long.
Even seasoned TV villain-of-the-week Roger Delgado only has one great scene, his first incantation of raising the dead Mummy to avenge those who disturbed his master’s tomb. Those powerful, expressive eyes light up with zealous rage and a perverse delight at seeing Walden throttled to death at his command.
Sadly, by then we’ve settled into a tediously comfortable routine of awakening the Mummy, sending it after somebody who was in the tomb, watching them suffer a grisly demise, then an utter look of bafflement crossing the chief investigator’s face. The Mummy’s Shroud quickly becomes a dull, predictable exercise, badly disguising its lack of substance with some admittedly impressive special effects.
Believe it or not, this is one of those rare Hammer productions where the special effects deliver the horrifying, convincing pay-off they were supposed to. Newton the photographer (Tim Barrett) might not have made any impression at all if not for a truly horrifying death scene that sees him burnt alive by his own dark-room chemicals. The Mummy itself boasts a supremely grisly demise, crumbling in plain sight to mere dust and bones. It’s an incredibly convincing practical effect, nothing short of a triumph for long-uncredited effects men Les Bowie and Ian Scoones.
Hammer’s trademark style is there, make no mistake. It has the visual flair; the blinding brightness of sand in sunlight, the dread pitch darkness of a Pharoah’s tomb, even those wonderful Eastern carved lattices that are the perfect architecture for spying on people in the dead of an African night. For this we can thank Don Mingaye’s marvellous art direction.
For wasting such talent on a patently limp and lifeless story, all credit must go to consistently inept director John Gilling. Save your hard-earned money pounds for the other two Hammer releases out today, featuring the electric screen presence of one Mr Christopher Lee. More on those here and here.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★
Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.
