Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964) Review
- Director: Michael Carreras
- Writers: Michael Carreras
- Stars: Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, Fred Clark
- Run time: 1 Hour, 21 Minutes
- Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/39nIkHz
Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)
Synopsis
As the credits roll, the camera gives us a point-of-view shot of the explorers walking into the tomb. They open the (cheap and wooden looking) doors and we see all the treasures inside. This all takes place in the year 1900.
A group of Egyptians ride up and kill a white man who is tied up and held prisoner. They take something from him. We then see John and his fiancée, Annette, wondering where her father is, since he hasn’t come back to the camp. John’s Egyptian servants, led by Hashmi, carry in the father’s body, and John has all kinds of racist comments for the servants. Hashmi says they’ll all be dead soon, because of the curse of the mummy’s tomb!
At Sir Giles’ suggestion, Hashmi arranges to license the artifacts to the London museum for seventy thousand pounds, but Alexander King, the American investor, wants to take the whole mess on an international tour and make a lot more than that as he references P.T. Barnum. Sir Giles and Hashmi are offended at the very idea and are quickly fired.
Mr. King takes John out to dinner to discuss the new arrangement. While they are there, someone breaks into the storage area and ransacks the room. None of the treasures are missing, but they find Achmed’s dead body and the inventory list that John spent months making has vanished.
On the boat back to London, Sir Giles and John are knocked out, but the man who attacked them falls overboard after fighting with Adam Beauchamp. Adam is very friendly with John and Annette, and he invites them to come stay with him.
We hear Annette explain the legend about Ra and Be, two Egyptian princes. Be was the sensualist, and Ra was more of a philosopher. Ra was eventually exiled, but when he became King of another region, the people there gave him the secret of life and death, written on an amulet. Be’s men attacked and killed Ra and all his men. Adam asks what happened to the amulet, and he starts getting annoyed when Annette doesn’t know.
Not long after, Adam starts pursuing Annette romantically. When Annette shows everyone an amulet that her father gave her right before he died, they all suddenly get very interested. Adam insists it’s from the Old Kingdom, but John says it’s probably from the mummy’s tomb. John takes it to Sir Giles for help in identifying it, but someone knocks him over the head and steals it.
Hashmi warns King again about what he’s doing, and King doesn’t care about anything but money. While John is laid up from his attack, Adam keeps working on Annette. King gets up on stage and begins his spiel about the mummy. Then he loads up a 1900s PowerPoint presentation– I mean a slideshow– demonstrating the story so far. It’s an elaborate presentation leading up to the opening of the sarcophagus. He opens it up and everyone gasps when they see it’s empty.
John wakes up and goes to see King. He thinks the same person who stole the amulet of life also stole the mummy to use them together. Someone could cover up a real murder by using the old legend. King blows him off and dismisses him. King says he thinks he’ll walk home tonight… Which is a really bad idea as he’s killed by the mummy on the way home. Not long after, Sir Giles gets beaten to death by the mummy. John and Hashmi team up and go to the police.
Adam has worked himself up to the point where he’s reading tacky love poems to Annette, and of course, she’s all captivated with the mushy stuff. He asks her to go away with him and leave John tomorrow morning. She literally writes John… a “Dear John” letter. Before they can leave, the mummy attacks Adam while Annette watches. John and Hashmi break in before anyone actually dies.
Later that same night, John and Hashmi trap the mummy with a net, and Hashmi apologizes to him for raiding the tomb. The mummy escapes from the net and crushes his head with his foot. He looks at John, turns, and walks out. Why didn’t he kill John?
Adam shows Annette his basement, where he keeps his own personal Egyptian museum, including a pharaoh’s crown, which Adam claims, “was always mine.” Adam explains that Ramses cursed Ra’s brother, Be, with everlasting life, and then admits that he is really Be. The only one who can release him from his own everlasting curse is his brother, Ra. Adam/Be activates the mummy, while John beats at the door.
Adam orders the mummy to kill Annette, but the mummy turns on him and kills him instead. The mummy then takes the amulet and causes a cave-in. which buries him.
Commentary
All of Annette’s lines are dubbed, and she has a lot of lines. I wonder what was wrong with her original voice…
The film is really slow getting started in the beginning, and then it wraps up a little quickly at the end. It doesn’t explain why the mummy didn’t kill John or Annette, and there really wasn’t much in the way of foreshadowing about who Adam really was. Why would Adam want to run away with Annette if his real goal was to die? I he wanted to die, why kill Annette as well? Overall, it was pretty good, but played out a lot like many of the other Hammer films, and still didn’t bring much new to the mummy’s lore.