He’s living in the past. It’s 1900 you have to pick modern.
In the year 1900 three Egyptologists discovered a mummy. Not just any mummy but a prince. Prince Ra-Antef. John Bray, Sir Giles Dalrymple and Professor Eugene Dubois. Aiding in the expedition is Professor Dubois’s daughter and Bray’s fiancée Annette Dubois. Annette is also an Egyptologist. Everything is brought to London by the backer of the expedition Alexander King. He is a showman (of the worst kind) and plans on exploiting the find to put money in his pocket. Bad idea.
Lot’s of things happen to hamper the project. Annette’s father is murdered in the beginning of the film. His hand cut off. There really wasn’t any explanation to that. There is a warning about a curse on the tomb. Hashmi Bey who is a worshiper of the mummy wants the artifacts to stay in Egypt.
And there is a man, Adam Beauchamp, who is a wealthy arts patron. He manages to weasel his way into the lives of Annette and John. Then there is a medallion. Adam seems far too interested in it. Someone steals it from John. Then on opening day of King’s exhibit someone steals the mummy. John believes that someone wants to use the medallion to bring the mummy back to life.
And someone does. With the mummy shuffling around people start dieing.
In 1964 Hammer Film Production did its second mummy movie. Called “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb”. It was the second of four Hammer “mummy” movies and was directed, produced and written by Michael Carreras. It stared Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, Fred Clark and Jeanne Roland, whose voice was dubbed. Apparently her French accent wasn’t good enough.
I will admit that it lacks a certain Hammer flair. And there is some blandness to the directing. Almost choppy. Too many threads going at once and Caarreras appears to have lost control of the directing. It’s definitely not as good as “The Mummy” with Christopher Lee. Plus the mummy itself isn’t near as good as Lee’s. He had a way of injecting emotion into a pile of rags that no one else could. But it still has those wonderful sets. And I found that it had a good pace to it. I wasn’t bored. There was enough going on to entertain me, although there was a twist to it I wasn’t crazy about.
So even though the movie was entertaining and kept my interest it didn’t live up Hammer’s first mummy movie. That being said if you did not know it was Hammer and just saw it as a plain old mummy movie it was good. Not every movie can be a Hammer movie and not every Hammer movie is a Christopher Lee movie.
A bizarre little tidbit: Union rules in Britain decreed that one person could not be credited as the writer, producer and director of a film. Michael Carreras being such a person adopted the name Henry Younger for the screenplay for this movie. (It was an analogy to the “John Elder”, which was Hammer producer Anthony Hinds’ writing pseudonym.)