On his death bed an old and sick occultist (Jose Mojica Marins) calls together archeologists and collectors from all over the world. He shows them a map that he has torn into eight pieces. He gives each one a piece of the map telling them that it points to the location of an Egyptian mummy named Runamb (Anselmo Vasconcelos). In order to find the mummy, they must work together to reassemble the map.
Mad scientist and adventurer Professor Expedito Vitus (Wilson Grey) stalks and kills each person who has a piece of the map. Once he has retrieved all the pieces he puts the map together, launches an expedition, and locates the burial place of the mummy. Runamb was a military officer who was in love with a dancing girl named Nadja (Tania Boscoli). When Nadja spurned his advances Runamb went crazy and, seeing Nadja’s face in every woman he encounters, began kidnapping and killing women. Runamb is arrested and sentenced to death. He was then mummified cursed and buried.
After unearthing Runamb’s mummy, Vitus brings it back with him to Brazil. Professor Vitus had been criticized by his peers in the past. The professor was the inventor of a serum he called The Elixir of Life. Vitus promised that the elixir would make people immortal. He tested his formula on his assistant Igor (Felipe Falcao). His fellow inventors, however, called him crazy. Now, instead of being criticized, he is being praised for his new discovery.
Vitus decides to use his Elixir of Life on Runamb to bring him back to life. Once revived, Runamb continues his mission of kidnapping random women. As Runamb is kidnapping women, Vitus is lost in his latest round of experiments, turning the kidnapped women into hairy beasts. Trailing Vitus to get a story is reporter, Everton Soares (Evandro Mesquita) and his partner, Meriam (Tania Boscoli). Meriam looks exactly like Runamb’s former love, Nadja.
“The Secret of the Mummy” AKA “O Segredo da Mumia” was released in 1982 and was directed by Ivan Cardoso. It is a Brazilian horror comedy film.
This is a strange movie. There’s very little horror, but it does have a lot of boobs. It’s a bit of a lame comedy and somewhat of a sex farce. The movie bounces around from subplot to subplot and from timeline to timeline. To add confusion, some of the film is in black and white and some of it is in color, although I couldn’t see any reason for the color profile to change all the time. At first, I thought it might have something to do with flashbacks being different than current day events or because one of the subplots was in color to make is stand out but nothing seemed to warrant the change, as far as I could see.
This is not your standard mummy movie. It takes quite a while for the mummy to make an appearance. The mummy looks good, as far as mummies go, but for the character to be the main event in the title, I would expect it to have more scenes. Emphasis is placed more on the sex scenes than on the horror. To me, the highlight of the movie is the soundtrack’s use of the Beatle song “I Should Have Known Better” sung in Portuguese.
Jose Mojica Marins, who was known for his portrayal of horror icon Coffin Joe, has a cameo as the dying occultist in the beginning of the film.