Professor Douglas McCadden (Ben Murphy) is doing some research in King Tutankhamen’s tomb when an earthquake happens. The quake brings down a wall of the tomb. Behind the wall he finds several skeletons and a coffin. The coffin is taken back to The California Institute of the Sciences.
The sarcophagus is opened and the mummy inside revealed. A green powdery substance is sprinkled over the mummy. McCadden has one of the interns take a sample of the powder for analysis. Peter Sharpe (Kevin Bophy) and his assistant take X-rays of the mummy. Jack Parker (Robert Random) notices that the X-ray machine is calibrated incorrectly, and the mummy has been subjected to radiation ten times what it should have received.
When Peter develops the x-rays, he notices something unusual. Returning to the sarcophagus he finds a hidden compartment. Inside the compartment he finds some round objects that look like crystals. He takes them. To cover his tracks, he subjects the mummy to another jolt of radiation to replace the x-ray that shows the anomaly. Peter takes the crystals to a jeweler who tells him they aren’t worth anything. Not being able to sell them he uses them to pay off debts he owes his various friends.
Because of the radiation, the green substance on, and around, the mummy turns into a green slime. When the slime touches an organic substance it grows and eats it, especially people. The radiation makes the mummy come back to life. When the mummy disappears the president of the institute, Dr. Wendell J. Rossmore (James Karen), believes frat boys stole it as a joke. What no one knows is that the mummy is really an alien from outer space, and he wants his crystals back.
“Time Walker” was released in 1982 and was directed by Tom Kennedy. It is a rather low budget science fiction horror story that combines the mummy sub-genre with the alien sub-genre and containing slasher elements but very little in the way of gore.
It takes a while to get to the alien mummy, but when you do it is actually kinda creepy. You also don’t know it’s an alien until sometime later in the film. The movie got trashed by almost everyone, but I found it fun and campy. I stayed interested in it all the way to the ambiguous ending. Except for the trite ending, the movie ended up being a lot of fun.
There is a very brief boob shot in the film. Somehow it still ended up with a PG rating. The film was distributed by New World Pictures which is owned by Roger and Gene Corman. Although it is his company, Roger had no hand in actually making the film, just its distribution.
Shari Belafonte, Harry Belafone’s daughter, has a small part as a radio DJ.