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.
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.
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).
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.
Monster Zone 