‘A severed hand beckons from an open grave!’
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is a 1971 supernatural horror film about an archaeological expedition that brings the coffin of an Egyptian queen known for her magical powers back to London. Her spirit returns in the form of a young girl and when she is twenty-one she gains the queen’s powers.
The Hammer Films production stars Andrew Keir (Quatermass and the Pit), Valerie Leon (The Spy Who Loved Me; Queen Kong; Carry On Up the Jungle; Zeta One), James Villiers (Asylum), Hugh Burden (Ghost Ship, The House in Nightmare Park), George Coulouris (The Antichrist; Tower of Evil; Womaneater) and Aubrey Morris (The Night Caller, Lifeforce, Legend of the Mummy).
Peter Cushing was originally cast in the film and completed one day’s filming before leaving the production after his wife was diagnosed with emphysema. Cushing was hurriedly replaced by Andrew Keir.
This was director Seth Holt’s final film – he also directed Taste of Fear and The Nanny – Michael Carreras took over when Holt died of a heart attack during production). The screenplay was by Christopher Wicking (To the Devil a Daughter; Demons of the Mind; Scream and Scream Again) very loosely based on Bram Stoker‘s 1903 novel The Jewel of Seven Stars.
Writer Chris Wicking said the film was one of the last projects that James Carreras brought to Hammer. Wicking wanted to use the title of the book but Carreras wisely refused. They brainstormed titles and came up with Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, which Wicking assumed they would never use, yet they did.
Wicking worked with Seth Holt on the script. The film had to go into production early because there was a gap in the production schedule. Wicking said he had a falling out with producer Howard Brandy and was barred from the set but he continued to work with Holt in the evenings.
Producer Brandy later claimed Wicking’s script was “unshootable” and that Holt constantly rewrote it. He also says he and Holt wanted to cast Amy Grant in the lead but James Carreras insisted on Valerie Leon.
The film’s score was by Tristram Cary, a notable composer whose only other horror film score was for Quatermass and the Pit and the 1968 TV series Late Night Horror.
In Britain, the film was released as a support feature to Hammer’s Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde. In the US, it was released by American International Pictures (AIP).
Plot [contains spoilers]:
An expedition led by Professor Fuchs (Andrew Keir) locates the unmarked tomb of Tera, an evil Egyptian queen. A cabal of priests drugged her into a state of suspended animation and buried all of her relics with her. Fuchs is obsessed with Tera and takes her mummy and sarcophagus back to England, where he secretly recreates her tomb under his house.
Four days “before her birthday”, his daughter Margaret (Valerie Leon) – who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tera and was born at the instant they recited her name – has recurring nightmares. Fuchs gives her the old queen’s ring and tells her to “wear it always”. This only makes matters worse. Queen Tera’s evil power begins to tempt Margaret, as she learns how she is feared by her father’s former colleagues.
Margaret notices a man lurking in the vacant building across the street. He is Corbeck (James Villiers), an expedition member who is now her father’s rival. Corbeck wants to restore Tera to life, and he persuades Margaret to help him gather the missing relics.
However, each time one is given up the person who had held it dies. When they have all the relics, Corbeck, Margaret and Fuchs begin the ancient ritual to reawaken Tera. At the last moment Fuchs learns that the queen’s revival will mean Margaret’s death. Together Fuchs and Margaret overpower and kill Corbeck, as the house quakes above them. Queen Tera awakens and kills Fuchs, but not before Margaret stabs her. As Margaret and Tera grapple for an ancient dagger, the house finally collapses on them.
Later in the hospital, a woman’s face is wrapped in bandages. She is the sole survivor; all the others in the Professor’s basement were “crushed beyond recognition”. The bandaged woman slowly opens her eyes and struggles to speak, leaving it ambiguous whether she is Margaret Fuchs or Queen Tera.
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“Although it undoubtedly contains some of the strongest set pieces in any of Hammer’s latter day oeuvre, it would be wrong to pass off its disjointed and sometimes incomprehensible narrative as befitting an otherworldly ambience strived for by its director. Equally, it would be prosaic to claim that this unhappy film, beset by tragedy, was cursed from the start.” Marcus Hearn, Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story book
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” … it shows no sign of any directorial distinction at all, and the script makes a fearful hash of Bram Stoker‘s excellent novel… ” The Times, 1971
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‘Given all the circumstances, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb would remain a curiosity, not without its moments, but ultimately there is just something too literal about the way it is made. It needed the distance of dreams and it gets a succession of big sharp-focus close-ups.’ David Pirie, A New Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema, book
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Trailer:
Movie timeline:
Cast and characters:
Andrew Keir … Julian Fuchs
Valerie Leon … Margaret Fuchs/Queen Tera
James Villiers … Corbeck
Hugh Burden … Geoffrey Dandridge
George Coulouris … Berigan
Mark Edwards … Tod Browning
Rosalie Crutchley … Helen Dickerson
Aubrey Morris … Doctor Putnam
David Markham … Doctor Burgess
Joan Young … Mrs Caporal
James Cossins … Older Male Nurse
David Jackson … Young Male Nurse
Technical specs:
1 hour 34 minutes
Aspect ratio: 1.85: 1
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