‘Half-bone, half-bandage and all blood-curdling horror!’
The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb is a British horror film produced, written and directed by Michael Carreras for Hammer Films. The movie stars Terence Morgan, Ronald Howard, Fred Clark and Jeanne Roland.
The film was released in the Britain on 18 October 1964 and, in the US, by Columbia Pictures on 31 December 1964. Unlike most Hammer films of that period, it was filmed at Elstree Studios, rather than the company’s permanent home at Bray. With the exception of (for example) character actors Michael Ripper and George Pastell, director Carreras and designer Bernard Robinson, most of the cast and crew were not Hammer veterans.
“Egypt in the year 1900”. A mummy is discovered by three Egyptologists: Englishmen John Bray (Ronald Howard) and Sir Giles Dalrymple (Jack Gwillim) as well as French Professor Eugene Dubois (unbilled Bernard Rebel, who died three weeks before the film’s UK premiere). Assisting in the expedition is Professor Dubois’ daughter, and Bray’s fiancee, Annette (Jeanne Roland), herself an Egyptology expert.
All the artefacts are brought back to London by the project’s backer, American showman Alexander King (Fred Clark), who plans to recoup his investment by staging luridly sensational public exhibits of the Egyptian treasures. Soon after arrival, however, the mummy revives and starts to kill various members of the expedition, while it becomes evident that sinister Adam Beecham (Terence Morgan), a wealthy arts patron whom members of the expedition meet on the ship returning to England, harbours a crucial revelation of the mummy’s past and future.
Reviews:
Time Out Film Guide editor Geoff Andrew described it a “limp Hammer sequel” that is “resolutely unimaginative”. Steven H. Scheuer’s Movies on TV gave it two stars and called it an “undistinguished horror thriller”. Mick Martin’s & Marsha Porter’s DVD & Video Guide described it as a “turkey” and denigrated it as “wholly unmemorable flapping-bandage horror.”
Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide initially found it to be “low-grade horror” deserving of only one-and-a-half stars.
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