In my personal opinion, mummies
have not been well used in cinema, generally speaking. I’m talking about the shambling, bandaged
(like a masking-tape-and-shoe-polish-decorated bottle a kid made for a grade
school art project) monstrosities here.
When it comes to these creatures, I prefer the kind that stalk over the
kind who scheme. Make no mistake, I
adore the hell out of Karloff’s turn
as Imhotep in 1932’s The Mummy, but
let’s face facts, all of us would have liked to have seen much more of Jack Pierce’s withered and enwrapped
makeup in action. Yet, mummies always
seem to get short shrift in the movies.
Rarely are they much more than unstoppable hulks (hypocritical as that
may sound based on what I just said), pawns of a more malevolent human with no
distinct personalities of their own (part of my problem with some of Universal’s
sequels to the Karl Freund film). Christopher
Lee managed to imbue loads of character to his turn as Kharis in Terence Fisher’s 1959 The Mummy, and even here, using only his
eyes and body movements, his onscreen rapport with Peter Cushing is evident. I’m
also a sucker for Paul Naschy’s gory
portrayal of Amenhotep in 1973’s The
Mummy’s Revenge (aka La Venganza de
la Momia), though if I really think about it, a lot of that film’s charm on
me comes from the divine Helga Line. But in Fred
Dekker’s otherwise fantastic The
Monster Squad (a movie I’m always surprised never elicits conversations
about the 1976 television series from which it takes its name), the mummy gets
a great character makeup which is barely seen at all and then is dispatched
almost offhandedly (this pisses me off to this day). Stephen
Sommers’ 1999 The Mummy did try to
develop their Imhotep into a more well-rounded character, but the film also
undercuts any of the menace of the monster by focusing more on action and
spectacle and cramming two pounds of horrid, computer-generated effects into
the proverbial one-pound bag (I’m not a fan of these films in the slightest,
and don’t even get me started on the same director’s Van Helsing). Thankfully, the
mummy Safiraman in Frank Agrama’s Dawn of the Mummy stays wrapped up and
desiccated for the film’s entirety, and he even gives off a fairly creepy, evil
vibe. Unfortunately, the vast majority
of the film and its participants are so godawful, it detracts massively from
the few (very few) good points it possesses.
In 3000 BC Egypt, the sadistic
Pharaoh Safiraman is entombed with the curse that if his resting place is
disturbed, both he and his army of slaves will rise up and kill. Cut to the present where jerk/tomb raider
Rick (George Peck) busts into said
tomb, preparing to rob it of its riches.
What better time than now for a wandering band of fashion models and their
photographer to show up and decide to use said tomb for a shooting
location? Needless to say, corpses are
disturbed, and murder ensues.
This is one of those films (much
like the previously-reviewed Maya)
where the Ugly American characters are so insanely overblown, you can’t wait
for them to die. Gary (John Salvo) is a narcissistic
pothead. Bill (Barry Sattels) is a narcissistic slave driver/boss. Melinda (Ellen
Faison) is a narcissistic horndog.
June (Diane Beatty) is just a
plain, old narcissist. They push their
way into the tomb and immediately set about desecrating every inch of the place
in pursuit of their commercial interests.
Watching the photo shoots set against the musty crypt nails home the
feeling of crassness these characters depict.
Their prioritizing of glamour and surface beauty only highlights their
shallowness (especially considering how one-dimensional they all are), and this
(more than Rick and his thieving cohorts) is what sets Safiraman off on his
rampage, in my opinion. The Americans
bring with them nothing but abrasive self-involvement, and this deserves death
in the film. Worse, the Americans’
effect on the local community marks those innocents for death as well in a
“guilt by association” way.
There are a couple of interesting
things going on in the film aside from this aforementioned theme, but they are
predominantly from a technical standpoint.
The shot where Safiraman rises is extremely effective, and, as stated,
the makeup and performance for the monster create a mildly intimidating aura
whenever he’s around. Additionally, it’s
somewhat refreshing to see a mummy film where the villain isn’t pining for some
long lost love who just so happens to bear a striking resemblance to the female
lead (yeah, it’s meant to give some depth to the character, but some on, the
trope is way overused). The scene of the
undead army (let’s just call them zombies, since they behave like zombies of
the Italian variety in every conceivable way, shape, and form) rising up is
loaded with atmosphere. There is a
nicely edited sequence which intercuts zombies attacking and eating people and revelers
dancing and partying at a wedding (the inconsequential character whose nuptials
these are is given an inordinate amount of time in the story). The gore is disgusting in the best possible
way, and the score by Shuki Levy
strikes a nice balance between traditional orchestration and funky pop.
Nonetheless, there’s far, far
more in the film to warrant passing on it (unless you truly savor garbage and
can stay awake for the duration). A lot
of this comes from the thespian skills of the cast which vary from moribund
(funny enough, this criticism doesn’t include the mummy and his army) to
Renfield-ian (in purest Arte Johnson
mode). In fact, I would be hard-pressed
to choose only one winner for the Robert
Marius Award in this movie, because the entire cast is truly worthy. Everyone seems to be mugging like Harpo Marx at almost every instant, and
when they’re not doing that, they’re grinning inappropriately at each other
like they’re wasted out of their minds (and hey, maybe they were). It gives the film an unhinged quality, but it
stinks more of incompetence rather than planned cinematic texturing.
And then there are the things
which simply boggled my mind. For
instance, how do set lights make a mummy’s body melt and wake him from his
eternal rest? How did the models pack
all of the shit they have with them on two horses and a jeep? If Safiraman’s slaves were originally killed
in his burial chamber, why are there no remains when the tomb is opened, and
why are the zombies rising up out of the desert rather than from the
sepulcher? Why does some random Egyptian
guy take to Gary and invite him to his wedding just because Gary shows up to
smoke some weed at this guy’s café? Why
does Rick wake Melinda up in the middle of the night to get some after she’s
fainted from stress a very short while ago (okay, this one I could kind of understand,
but it’s placement in the film is just odd)?
Why does Rick allow Bill and the models to boss him around when he could
merely kill them all and bury them in the desert (or let the scavengers pick
them apart, which also brings up the question of how a Bedouin’s decapitated head
managed to last as long as it did without being gnawed at or buried in the
shifting sands)? It’s not so much that
the film raises questions like this in a viewer’s mind; it’s that these
questions become more intriguing (and distracting) than the film itself. If you can answer any of these questions, or
if you’re okay with what they conjure in your mind, this might be the movie for
you. Everyone else can leave this one
buried.
MVT: The untethered property
of the film certainly makes it stand out as an oddity, for sure.
Make or Break: By about the
second or third scene involving Rick and his gang, I realized that the way
these people were acting was intentional.
Score: 3/10
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