Starting a new 20-film watch-a-thon project. All previously unseen, all free to watch. The twist for this one is that I typed the word ‘mummy’ into Tubi’s search engine, and just chose the first 20 films that showed up. I already know this is going to be terrible, and I’m really interested to see if any of the films I’m going to watch will score higher than 5 out of 10. Here goes…

The Mummy Resurrected (2014) – Tubi

Straight out of the gate comes this steaming pile from Halcyon International Pictures, a production company in the same vein as The Asylum, UnCork’d, and Wild Eye. HIP had a go at ‘reinventing’ a bunch of classic horror stories, and for this one they claim it is based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, a tenuous claim at best.

It does indeed feature an archeologist called Trelawney who is obsessed with resurrecting an Egyptian queen, but that’s as far as the connection goes. Instead, we get a tedious tale about Professor Trelawney entering a hidden tomb in Egypt (L.A.) with five young female assistants, of course. One of them is supposed to be his daughter, but you wouldn’t know it, the way he behaves with her.

When they arrive at the tomb they are immediately trapped inside, and get bumped off one-by-one in mostly undramatic fashions. The mummy itself doesn’t show up until well over halfway through, and though it’s a decent practical costume, the rest of the film is half-assed and poorly made.

The acting is dire (girls find one of their friends dead: “Oh no.” walk away slowly), the use of greenscreen at the beginning is rubbish, at some point a mysterious sixth girl appears in the party with no explanation, and the whole thing is over-lit and dull.

Another half mark docked for using The Mummy logo in an effort to hoodwink fans of the franchise.

2/10

Ugh. 19 to go.

Blood Scarab (2008) – Tubi

When I was 15, I was enraptured by the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back, written by Donald F. Glut. Two decades later, I stumbled across a film directed by the same person. “Oh, cool,” I thought, “Donald F. Glut.” So I sat down and watched The Mummy’s Kiss (2003), and was immediately buried in dodgy acting and pendulous knockers.

Here is a man with more than one arrow in his quiver.

This brings us to Blood Scarab, a fairly awful flick about the Countess Bathory making a deal with Egyptian Goddess Hathor in order to get up to her vampiric ways in the sunlight. Yes, she’s a vampire now, having entered into a marriage of convenience with Vlad Dracula (portrayed here as the worst Drac you’ve ever seen), and biting babes’ boobs just isn’t enough for her any more.

Meanwhile, at the local museum, a mummy has just wandered off for no reason, then collapsed, and been sold to a pawn store. The Countess needs it for her ritual, so she kills the store owner and takes it, along with a scarab sculpture that looks like a potato.

Helping her in all this is Renfield, horribly miscast, who mostly mopes around thinking about bugs and dusting relics. Along the way a lot of good-looking women get their kit off and make out, and you have to admire Don Glut’s commitment to exposing every possible breasticle at any opportunity.

It’s all fairly tame titillation, and daft as a bag of ferrets, but the actual mummy action was lame, and this one did nothing to improve my hopes for this project.

3/10

Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy (1997) – Tubi

During a plague of movies that puffed themselves up with author names (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Benny Hill’s Ernie), there were plenty of flicks banged out to capitalize on the trend, and here’s another one.

Despite once more taking inspiration from Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars (and being a little closer to the plot than The Mummy Resurrected), Legend of the Mummy (also know as just The Mummy) is a dreadfully dull affair. It’s the same old Trelawny tale; Egyptologist grows obsessed with resurrecting mummy queen, brings curses down on everyone involved, rinse and repeat.

Although this all takes place in 1990’s San Francisco, half the cast speak with bizarre British accents — one especially (Police Detective Daw) sounds so much like Sean Pertwee that I really thought it was him at first. The plot moves along like a mummy with its wraps stuck in a turnstile, and the horror elements are not very good. In fact, the whole thing is awfully directed by Jeffrey Obraw, which makes no sense because he made The Kindred, and I dig that film.

The one saving grace is Louis Gossett Jr. chewing the scenery (with a British accent), but on the whole it was a 90 minute movie made to feel like 4 hours.

4/10

Plodding onwards…

The Mummy: Rebirth (2019) – Tubi

Sebek and Reheema are forbidden lovers in Spirit Halloween knock-off Egyptian costumes, who are tracked down and killed by the Pharoah’s guards. Centuries later, and a pair of dull tomb raiders are working for a collector who is after a magic stone that grants immortality. They inadvertently awaken various mummies and beasts, and have to contend with Sebek wanting to destroy the world, and the collector going all back-stabby and obsessive.

Where to start with this? The writing is dire, the direction is terrible, the DP didn’t know how to frame a shot, the acting is terrible, the effects are laughable (Playstation 1 quality CG), and the whole thing is utterly boring.

Good grief. I truly hope I’ve hit rock bottom and the only way is up, but something tells me there’s worse to come.

1/10

Frankenstein vs. The Mummy (2015) – Tubi

A year before he fully introduced a new horror franchise to the world with Terrifier (following Art’s introduction in All Hallow’s Eve), Damien Leone was an FX artist with a couple of films already under his belt, but this is where he started to hit his stride.

Victor Frankenstein is a professor of medicine at an American college by day, and an obsessed builder of bodies by night. His girlfriend, Naihla Khalil, is a professor of Egyptology at the same college, and she has just returned from a field trip with the mummified remains of an evil Pharoah called Usekara.

You’re not going to believe what happens.

In a bid to save my sanity, I’m trying to make every fifth film in this project a fun one — and I succeeded! It may be a bit ponderous at times due to a romantic subplot that we don’t really care about, but when the bolts hit the wraps, it gets bloody good. Leone based the monster on Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations, and this was a good choice, as was making Usekara a bit nippier than your usual mummy.

However, the most inspired idea was casting Boomer Tibbs as a fellow Egyptologist, as he looked more cadaverous than either of the creatures. The gore starts off tame, but goes full-on Leone towards the end, and it’s a lot of fun.

A lovely palate-cleanser between crappy wrappings. Check it out.

7/10

Day of the Mummy (2014) – Tubi

Back to our regularly scheduled garbage, this one at least has a bit of an interesting gimmick attached.

Jack Wells (William McNamara), an Indiana Jones wannabe, is recruited by Danny Glover’s ‘Carl’, a collector of antiquities who is after a huge diamond called the Codex Stone. Wells is told to join a group of Egyptologists searching for the lost tomb of the cursed King Neferu, and retrieve the gem no matter what the cost.

Part of the deal is that Wells has to wear glasses and an earpiece that keep him in constant communication with Carl (who appears in a small frame in the corner of the screen), and so the film becomes a ‘found footage’ affair, complete with tiresome glitches and nonsensical POVs. It’s actually not as bad as your usual found footage film, and has the effect of putting you in the role of Wells as if you are playing a video game.

Glover looks like he sat in front of a greenscreen for a day and read his lines, then pocketed a nice fee that will go towards a kitchen remodel, and the rest of the cast go through the motions. However, the most egregious issue this film has is that the actual mummy doesn’t turn up until an hour in, and then gets less than ten minutes of screentime, which is a shame because it’s quite an impressive creature.

Ultimately a bit of a dull excursion, recommended only to fans of well-lit caves or voices in your head.

4/10

American Mummy (AKA Aztec Blood) (2014/2017) – Tubi

Ooh, I got tricked. This ain’t no mummy movie, although it does feature a corpse more desiccated than a coconut strand, wearing a fancy Aztec mask. The poster is a lie; there’s no shambling creature, nor a tomb, but these things are to expected when a movie is repackaged to catch suckers unaware.

That said, there is a small redeeming feature to this film. We’ll get to that in a minute.

A sketchy team of archaeology students and scientists have uncovered the resting place of Tezcalipoca, Lord of the Smoking Mirror. No idea why his corpse has been dragged from Mexico to… I’m assuming, New Mexico? Anyhoo, everyone in the tented compound is horny, someone gets killed, someone else starts having ancient flashbacks, and everyone ends up being possessed by Tezcalipoca’s spirit and tries to kill each other.

It starts off promisingly enough, but the low budget hampers all efforts. The acting isn’t great, the cinematography is extremely changeable, and the sound design is terrible. It sounds like all dialogue was spoken into a wooly sock, and the main jump scares come from an inappropriate jingle of harpsichord notes that blare out at any given time.

The saving grace for this one though is the gore, and the story turns full Evil Dead as the violence ramps up. Some fun practical effects and lots of blood. Ho hum.

4/10

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?
Fan of the Cave Bear
There, Wolves
What a Croc
Prehistrionics
Jumping the Shark

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Neil Baker’s last article for us was Part III of Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits. (AprilMoonBooks.com).