The Mummy’s Shroud (1967)

Head-crushing time!
Head-crushing time!

Prem, the mummified manservant of Pharaoh Kah-To-Bey, is brought back to life in the Cairo Museum by the Bedouin Hasmid (Roger Delgado, who’d go on to play ‘The Master’ in many series of DOCTOR WHO), who chants a sacred oath on a shroud. The mummy then goes on a rampage, killing the members of the team of archaeologists who had discovered the lost tomb of Kah-To-Bey.

US one-sheet poster
US one-sheet poster

The third Hammer mummy-out-for-vengeance movie is passable, with regular character actor Michael Ripper given a decent supporting role as the obsequious Longbarrow. This was the last of Hammer’s mummy films to actually feature a bandaged mummy (the next movie would focus on the shapely form of Valerie Leon) – though it’s certainly the least effective mummy costume of the lot, with wicker-like wrappings around its forearms and an especially cheap-looking face mask.

Hair-pulling mummy!
Hair-pulling mummy!
Jeeeez... this close-up model of the mummy opening its eyes ain't very good!
Jeeeez… this close-up model of the mummy opening its eyes ain’t very good!

However, what this mummy lacks in looks it makes up with brutality: murdering victims via strangulation, head-crushing, tossing them from windows, bashing a head into a wall and even throwing photographic acid into a character’s face. Nasty!

André (THE GIANT BEHEMOTH) Morell delivers a decent performance, as he always does, and the finale features the axe-wielding mummy finally crumbling to dust, but this cheap production dwells too long on a lengthy prologue set in Ancient Egypt and fails to reach the stylish heights of Hammer’s original THE MUMMY (1959).

Axe-wielding mummy! I repeat: axe-wielding mummy!
Axe-wielding mummy! I repeat: axe-wielding mummy!
The film has a decent crumbling-to-dust scene
The film has a decent crumbling-to-dust sequence

John Gilling, who directed and co-wrote THE MUMMY’S SHROUD, also made the far better Hammer movies THE REPTILE and THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES.

Lobby card
Lobby card
French poster
French poster
Japanese poster
Japanese poster
Another lobby card
Another lobby card
The mummy chillin' in his sarcophagus
The mummy chillin’ in his sarcophagus
"I predict you will become a popular villain in Doctor Who..."
“I predict you will become a popular villain on Doctor Who…”
Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s