Pharaoh's Curse (1957)

Wonderful Movie

Thanks for the memories!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Set in 1902, 'Pharoah's Curse' is well acted, with a characteristically atmospheric score by Les Baxter. The location work - apparently shot in just one day in Death Valley - and Col. Cross's office in the opening scene and the Pharoah's tomb itself provide atmospheric backdrops (possibly recycled from other productions); but once the cast eventually open the tomb they spend most of the rest of the film just wandering back and forth along its passages carrying torches and talking. And talking. The monster itself behaves more like a vampire than an Egyptian mummy, but looks memorably dessicated and demonstrates how brittle he has become when his arm breaks off in the hero's hand; thus obligingly providing a sample for the doctor to examine.The exotic-looking and even more exotically accented Ziva Shapir as Ziva Rodann later played Nefertiti in the 1966 Batman story 'The Curse of Tut'/'The Pharoah's in a Rut', and Richard Peel, who played Sgt. Gromley, also featured in 'Batman' as Sandman's henchman 'Snooze'.

Moderately enjoyable and fairly well made, this archaeological thriller fails to capture the true bite of its theme as it deals with a curse on those invading the land of the pharaohs and breaking into their resting places. The basic story involves the expedition to these ancient pyramids where an estranged married couple (Diane Brewster and George N. Neise) argue constantly, a mysterious princess (Ziva Rodann) declares that there is a curse on them for invading this sacred land, and leader Mark Dana tries to keep everything in order. Suddenly, there's the deadly presence of a blood-thirsty creature who makes the ancient Vlad in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" look healthy, and the attacks on various members of the crew. The curse also include scorpion bites, weird sounds coming from the pharaoh's tombs and suspicious activities by members of the journey. Made just as Hammer was about to do their remake of "The Mummy", this suffers in comparison, even weak by the standards of the Universal series of the 1940's and no threat to Karloff's 1932 classic. There are a few thrills and shocking moments, but it's a standard B programmer, probably made for drive-in audiences who were not so much into plot as into the occasional fright which does occur here and there. On the scale of frights, this gets a 6, but on the scale of originality and story, merely a 2.

For some reason, this film wasn't on DVD until this year, but it was shown a LOT on late night television back in the day. I saw it as a little kid and thought it was frightening and effective back then. Of course I am older now, but some of the veneer of seeing it back then still holds up.The mummy is dressed a little odd (no bandages), but his face is certainly hideous enough, and there is a reason for his strange garb which is unveiled later on. A fair number of people get killed, and we see the mummy quite a bit, really.Some people complain we don't see it for the first half of the film, which I guess is true, but on the other hand, the film is only 66 minutes long for Pete's sake. We don't see the monster in the first half hour of many movies, and this is no exception.If the movie dragged on for 90-120 minutes, it would be a disaster, but for only 66 minutes, it holds up. I pine for the days when a film-maker felt free to make a shorter subject, particularly when the topic doesn't hold up for a longer time. I wish the makers of Pearl Harbor had had the guts to cut THEIR movie back.

An expedition led by hunky Captain Storm (Mark Dana) travels to the Valley of the Kings in Cairo to find out what happened to an earlier expedition. They meet beautiful mysterious Simira (Ziva Rodann) who joins them. They soon find themselves faced with a blood drinking mummy...and only Simira seems to know what's going on.A real snoozer. I caught this on late night TV when I was about 10. It put me to sleep! Seeing it again all these years later I can see why. It's slow-moving, the mummy doesn't even show up until 40 minutes in (and this is only 66 minutes long!), the acting ranges from bad (Dana) to REAL bad (George N. Neise) and there's no violence or blood to be found. This movie concentrates more on second rate dramatics (involving a silly love triangle) than horror.This rates three stars because it actually looks pretty good, everyone plays it straight, there's some good acting from Diane Brewster, it's short and the mummy attack scenes (all three of them) aren't bad. They're not scary just mildly creepy. Still, this movie is pretty bad. A sure fire cure for insomnia.