When Pharaoh (Bruno Barabe) is overthrown his devoted servant Prem (Dickie Owen) spirits away Pharaoh’s son Kah-To-Bey (Toolsie Persaud). Prem and a few loyal servants wander the desert with the young heir. Unfortunately Kah-To-Bey succumbs to illness and dies. Prem buries the boy in a makeshift tomb.
In 1920 Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell) leads an expedition to find the tomb. With him are Claire de Sangre (Maggie Kimberly), Harry Newton (Tim Barrett) and Paul Preston (David Buck). Paul’s father, the rich, snobby and overbearing Stanley Preston (John Phillips) has been financing the expedition. When Walden and his team are overdue Preston sends out search parties. Preston himself mans one of the parties.
Having survived a vicious sandstorm the expedition finds the tomb. They are challenged by Hasmid (Roger Delgado), a Bedouin whose family have guarded the tomb for centuries. Hasmid is chased off.
Before they can enter the tomb they are found by Preston. With him is his lackey Longbarrow (Michael Ripper). Altogether they enter the tomb and find the young king covered by a shroud with hieroglyphics written on it. They hieroglyphics are a warning, a curse. Claire refuses to speak the words on the shroud. She says they refer to the spirit of the tomb and are the words of life and death.
Returning to Cairo the young Prince’s mummy is placed near the mummy of Prem. Hasmid steals the shroud and, repeating the words on the shroud, revives Prem sending the mummy after the tomb raiders. One by one those that entered the tomb are murdered by the mummy.
“The Mummy’s Shroud” was released in 1967 and was directed by John Gilling. It is a British horror film produced by Hammer Film Productions. It is the third of Hammer's four Mummy movies. The others were “The Mummy” 1959, “The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb” 1964 and “Blood from the Mummy's Tomb” 1971. It is also the last Hammer mummy movie to feature an actual mummy, bandages and all.
Eddie Powell, who was often Christopher Lee’s stunt double, plays the mummy in the film. The narrator in the beginning of the film was Tim Turner. The design for the mummy's mask was fashioned after the face of a real mummy on display at London's British Museum. Roger Delgado, who plays Hasmid, the tomb protector with bad teeth, also played “The Master” in Doctor Who’s “The Mind of Evil”.
As mummy movies go it was pretty decent. There are a few plot holes, like where did Prem’s mummy come from? How did he die and when? Who buried him? Why was he buried as a Pharaoh? The entire movie is premised on the assumption that the mummy Preston already has is not the Pharaoh but of Prem. Where it came from and how it was determined that it was really Prem is never really explained. Despite ignoring the fact that a servant was mummified and buried as a Pharaoh, the rest of the film was your basic mummy run amok movie, death destruction and a decent amount of blood.
As far as I’m concerned the movie’s real claim to fame is the fact that, long time Hammer character actor, Michael Ripper is one of the main characters in the film. As the brow beaten Longbarrow he is actually wonderful. His death is the only real sad part of the film. It’s bad enough he had to bow down to the egomaniac Preston but to be murdered by a mummy was depressing. The only reason he was in the tomb in the first place was to placate his boss.