DAWN OF THE MUMMY (1981 - HORROR) * out of *****
(I wonder if those mummies are just pissed-off because they got so much sand in their butt-cracks during their thousand-year sleep...)
CAST: Brenda King, Barry Sattels, George Peck, John Salvo, Joan Levy, Eileen Faison, Diane Beatty, Ibrahim Khan.
DIRECTOR: Frank Agrama.
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and compelling reasons to keep your ass as far away from the sands of Egypt - straight ahead...
IT'S LIKE THIS: Ah, the stupidity of youth. How else to explain how you can think a movie is awesome as fuck when you are a kid - and then watch it again as an (arguable) adult, only to discover to your utter horror that it is, well, a gigantic turkey? Well, folks, that is DAWN OF THE MUMMY, a movie whose trailers made me so eager to see it as a kid that you would have thought they were giving away Atari gaming consoles during the opening credits. Whoops - guess I just dated myself. My bad.
Anyhow, the truth is I actually didn't see DAWN OF THE MUMMY until one of my buddies suggested it for our Halloween Line-Up last month. You see, I was about eight when I learned this flick was playing at the local theater. But, wait! Right across the street at another theater, SPHINX was playing. The spooky-smart movie buffs among you will recognize SPHINX as the Lesley-Anne Down starrer which featured her as the intrepid British Egyptologist, Dr. Erica Baron. Erica basically traveled to Egypt to investigate the mysterious legend of a lost pharaoh's tomb - only to be pulled into a maelstrom of murder, deception, and intrigue. In short, it was a Hitchcockian chase film set among the sands of Luxor. With my biggest childhood crush, Lesley-Anne Down, as its intensely feisty lead.
Now, I could have easily afforded to see both DAWN OF THE MUMMY and SPHINX back-to-back on my allowance. But as my thrifty German-Norwegian father has always said to me: "If you want something, you must give up something first" - which is apparently a Germanic tenet because I know other Krauts who espouse the same motto. In other words, even though I could easily see both of them, I had to choose between these two films, both set in Egypt, but the first a horror movie and the second a suspense-thriller with Lesley-Anne Down in a tight pantsuit running from bad guys and doing her best "Female Indiana Jones" impersonation waaaaaaaaaay before Lara Croft made it fashionable and hip. Guess which movie won? Yup, the lovely Ms. Down and her movie SPHINX won the gift of my company that afternoon. And now that I have finally seen DAWN OF THE MUMMY, I realize that I made the right choice - and dodged a major bullet that fateful day many, many, many years ago.
Because, to put it very delicately, folks, DAWN OF THE MUMMY is a colossal pile of steaming camel shit. Even the trailers that somehow wowed me as a (clearly) stupid and impressionable boy back then now look horribly dated and simply awful. There are some movies that stand the test of time and only get better with age, like fine wine and Russell Crowe. Then there are movies like DAWN OF THE MUMMY, that start out as crap - and progressively turn even more rank as time goes by.
My intro to the discussion of this film is actually going to be longer than the discussion of the film itself because, folks, it doesn't really deserve it. The plot is your basic "Slasher Movie Meets Walking Dead" set-up, with a bunch of allegedly-hot NYC models and their tech support (photographer, hair & makeup, gophers) traveling to Egypt for a location shoot in what turns out to be a cursed Pharaoh's tomb. The heat from the photo shoot's floodlights apparently re-awakens the mummy (or something) and his minions. ANd let's just say these bandaged pus-bags are a little cranky about having their three-thousand year naps interrupted. Oh, and they also have a serious case of the munchies after being asleep for so long.
Cue the next 60 minutes of our moronic imbecile models and their flunkies being chased and chowed down on by some surprisingly fast-moving mummies who are really zombies-in-disguise. I suppose if you were REALLY digging to find SOMETHING - ANYTHING - even remotely redeemable about this celluloid train-wreck, you could posit that its speedy cadavers paved the way for the Jackie Joyner-Kersey undead of WORLD WAR Z, DAWN OF THE DEAD 2004, and 28 DAYS LATER. But that wouldn't be so much reaching for something as outright popping your goddamn arms out their sockets in a futile effort to justify this movie's existence. It's bad, folks, and anyone who knows me knows I am the most forgiving person/viewer out there - but even I couldn't find anything to like in this flick.
Well, I suppose that's not entirely true: there are a couple of decent shots of the pyramids and some pretty oases. But, fuck, I can go on the Internet for that. Sorry, mummies... time go back into the tomb.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: Seriously, folks: there isn't much to say about DAWN OF THE MUMMY except that, as we discussed in past reviews, a decent idea can be condemned by lousy execution - and this flick is a prime example of that. I have always loved Egypt and been fascinated by its culture and mythology, and some of my favorite films are set there, whether they be mystery-thrillers (SPHINX), love stories (the lovely, lovely CAIRO TIME), and action-adventures (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME). DAWN OF THE MUMMY could have easily been a worthy entry (as a horror film) into this select group. However, due to very low production values and truly atrocious acting and writing, it is doomed.
Still, having a low budget is not an excuse. Many films like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, HALLOWEEN 1978, and the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films surmounted middling funding to inventively tell their stories in a professional and frightening way. DAWN OF THE MUMMY clearly had enough funding to secure an actual location shooting in Egypt, so how much more expensive would it have been to tweak the script and hire some actors who can actually, you know, act? I lost count of the times we winced at the line deliveries in this movie, especially that blonde actor who plays the crazy treasure raider. It's like he went into this determined to be as bad as possible. Well, dude, you won the prize.
Whatever the case may be, DAWN OF THE MUMMY is a staggeringly awful film that cannot be saved by its would-be atmospheric Egyptian setting. With the right handling, this could have been a passable horror entry and maybe a little more. As it stands however, it is one of the worst horror flicks (and worst films, in general) we have ever seen. Boy, am I glad I saw SPHINX instead a long time ago. If you want to see a solid suspense-thriller set in the Egyptian sands, see that movie. One shot of Lesley-Anne Down's face alone trumps DAWN OF THE DEAD in its entirety - twenty times over.
