I'm a huge fan of Hammer horror, but the mummy has long been my least favourite 'classic' monster and this Technicolor revamp of the Universal series does little to change that fact.
The story is run-of-the-mill mummy guff: Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), a devotee of Egyptian god Karnak, revives mummy Kharis (Christopher Lee) to exact revenge upon the archaeologists who desecrated the tomb of high priestess Ananka. John Banning (Peter Cushing) attempts to defeat the crumbling creature, which has designs on his wife Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux), who, for some unexplained reason, bears an uncanny resemblance to Ananka.
With such a creaky script (from the usually reliable Jimmy Sangster), there is precious little director Terence Fisher can do to bring the story to life, and the film offers very few thrills, with only the attack on John Banning's father (Felix Aylmer) in a locked padded cell generating any excitement. Fisher also seems to have laid his hands on a job lot of green bulbs and uplighters, transforming Ananka's tomb into something akin to a trendy Egyptian-themed wine bar, while the African exteriors consist of a few potted palm trees and some random jungle shrubbery, all of which fails to convince.
Still, this film was successful enough to spawn three more mummy films - The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1967), and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971) - the last of which is the only one I have seen (and hated). I'm not expecting much from the other two...
The story is run-of-the-mill mummy guff: Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), a devotee of Egyptian god Karnak, revives mummy Kharis (Christopher Lee) to exact revenge upon the archaeologists who desecrated the tomb of high priestess Ananka. John Banning (Peter Cushing) attempts to defeat the crumbling creature, which has designs on his wife Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux), who, for some unexplained reason, bears an uncanny resemblance to Ananka.
With such a creaky script (from the usually reliable Jimmy Sangster), there is precious little director Terence Fisher can do to bring the story to life, and the film offers very few thrills, with only the attack on John Banning's father (Felix Aylmer) in a locked padded cell generating any excitement. Fisher also seems to have laid his hands on a job lot of green bulbs and uplighters, transforming Ananka's tomb into something akin to a trendy Egyptian-themed wine bar, while the African exteriors consist of a few potted palm trees and some random jungle shrubbery, all of which fails to convince.
Still, this film was successful enough to spawn three more mummy films - The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1967), and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971) - the last of which is the only one I have seen (and hated). I'm not expecting much from the other two...