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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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10
= Highest Rating |
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I can see why this low budget gut-muncher has
sometimes been mistaken for a film in the Italian
zombie-cannibal cycle of the late 1970s-early
'80s. In tone and spirit it's very similar to
such fare. But though the director of photography
and gore effects supervisor were indeed Italian,
Dawn
of the Mummy
was financed with American money, stars (mostly)
American actors and was directed by "Frank" (Farouk)
Agrama, an Egyptian immigrant who graduated from
UCLA. Whatever merits he may have possessed as
a filmmaker (and the subject of this review isn't
exactly a masterpiece), Agrama was a fortuitous
choice to helm a project lensed almost entirely
on location in Egypt... Since most of the crew
was hired locally, he could at least order them
around in their native tongue.
Virtually every mummy movie
made revolves around the same theme: an ancient
tomb is defiled, whether for archeological knowledge
or greed, and the undead occupant shambles forth
to destroy the violators. Dawn
of the Mummy
is no exception. Instead of Kharis or Im-ho-tep,
the monster here is named Safirman —
apparently some kind of fearsome warlord before
he died. He's shown being embalmed and interred
in a pre-titles prologue, set in 3000 BC, complete
with high priestess placing a curse on his sealed,
treasure-laden tomb. Should anyone enter to steal
the gold, Safirman is pledged to "rise and kill."
He won't be all by his lonesome, either. His guards
and retainers, buried alive with him, will also
return to life to serve their master.
Enter a trio of modern day
fortune hunters, led by an excitable American
named Bill (George Peck, who resembles Owen Wilson
without the funny-looking nose). They break into
Safirman's tomb but can't immediately locate the
hidden treasure. One of the men, dimwitted Karib
(Ibrahim Khan), is severely spooked by the legends
surrounding the place but Bill holds him in check
with his wild-eyed enthusiasm for gold. Their
search is interrupted, however, by the arrival
of a group of Americans out on a fashion shoot
in the Egyptian desert. These New York fashionistas
— three female models,
a male model, a makeup/wardrobe assistant and
the photographer —
make camp at a nearby oasis. Bill and his cohorts
can't easily brush them off so they let them use
the tomb as a backdrop without telling them about
the treasure.
Unfortunately
this rather modest setup takes nearly 40 minutes
to transpire. Though the curse is supposed to
kick in as soon as the mummy's tomb is unsealed,
it takes the heat from the photographer's portable
lights to truly activate him. Once
Safirman gets his lazy ass in gear, his "army"
of soldiers —
all six of 'em —
rise up from the desert
sands with the breaking of dawn, like zombies
emerging from the grave. (This is actually an
effective sequence, despite the fact that Safirman's
servants were buried inside the tomb with
him.) Things pick up considerably now, as the
mummy starts knocking off models and treasure
hunters one by one. Ultimately, the rather contrived
and episodic proceedings culminate in a surprisingly
gory flesh-munching frenzy as Safirman and his
living dead acolytes attack a wedding party in
a nearby town. The mummy's soldiers, you see,
devour the people they kill just like the zombies
in those Romero-inspired Italian flicks.
While the makeup and
gore effects are better than expected (the look
of the reanimated Safirman is reminiscent of Christopher
Lee's portrayal in 1959's The
Mummy), just about everything else in the
film is a disaster. Fortunately, some of this
nonsense is unintentionally funny. The acting
is especially abominable. Top (or
should I say bottom)
honors in that department go to Peck (Curse
of the Puppetmaster) as Tomb Raider Bill.
His hammy, over-the-top mugging is a thing to
behold. Other sources of
amusement include a handful of white mice being
tossed onto an actor from off-camera —
they're supposed to be rats
— and
a severed head that inexplicably drops from the
ceiling. (How'd it get there?) Also inexplicable
is the ability of Safirman and his legion of zombies
to get from the tomb to the oasis and the town
(and sometimes back again) on foot, faster
than the characters riding horses and driving
jeeps. (Hey, wait a minute... nobody said
nuthin' bout no teleportin'!)
Despite
a few chuckles, though, there are just no two
ways about it: Dawn
of the Mummy is
a really crappy movie. But if you've the capacity
to laugh at atrocious acting and enjoy a bit of
gore (of the innard-pulling variety) — and
you possess a certain degree of patience — it
might prove an agreeable time-waster... On second
thought, probably not. None of the women get
naked. Better to watch Fulci's Zombie
again for umpteenth time.
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This
is the Region 1 DVD of Dawn
of the Mummy released by Madacy, a company
specializing in generally
poor-to-mediocre transfers
of public domain titles. The disc at hand is obviously
a VHS dupe (probably
bootlegged) — tracking
lines are visible for a minute or so during a
desert driving scene about 12 minutes into of
the film. Night sequences are much too dark and
some daylight scenes are washed out; there's quite
a bit of grain, too.Basically, the fullframe transfer
leans to the crummy side but is tolerable given
the disc's fire-sale price. (It can be purchased
at retail chains like Best Buy for $6.) The same
can be said of the audio, which exhibits omnipresent
tape hiss and occasional moments of scratchiness.
The packaging text tells
some bald-faced lies about the extras included.
It lists "Theatrical Trailer" and "Other
Theatrical Trailers", although there's actually
only one on the disc (and not for the main feature):
Road Ends, a 1997
direct-to-video action thriller which shows just
where actors like Peter Coyote, Dennis Hopper
and Chris Sarandon disappeared to in the last
few years. (I would have much rather seen the
Dawn of the Mummy
promo instead.) Surprising for a Madacy DVD,
this one comes with a full-fledged audio
commentary by director Agrama, moderated by actor-entrepreneur
Del Howison (Renfield in The
Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula). I don't
think it was recorded for this particular release,
so it must have been "ported" (i.e.,
stolen) from another source. (Anchor Bay issued
a Region 2 version in Europe but I'm not familiar
with the contents.) It's an amiable Q & A
session that imparts genuinely interesting factoids
about the production, with major emphasis on the
shooting conditions while on location in Egypt.
2/09/04
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