TALE OF THE MUMMY
KABLAMMO!!!

  That's the sound of this movie shooting itself in the foot.  That's too bad, too, because I was pleasantly surprised by this one for a while.

The movie opens in 1948 with a British archaeology team (led by Christopher Lee, looking quite like Frank Langella and in great shape for a man of 76 at the time of filming) unearthing the subterranean tomb of ancient Egyptian badass Talos. (did the term "self-esteem" even exist in 1948?)  What Lee sees convinces him that maybe it should stay buried, so he entombs himself and several of his workers, who soon enough die anyway of, presumably, the mummy's curse.  Move up to 1999 when a new team, led by his granddaughter (I think it was his granddaughter), follows in his footsteps and they bust into the vast burial chamber (from whose ceiling the sarcophagus hangs like some great uvula).  Within a year the remains (that is, the bandages) are carted off to London, and with the planets aligning, you'd better believe that Talos has plans of coming back.

Tale Of The Mummy had me, up to a point, and then it blew it.  The cast is all good, especially Sean Pertwee who I always like in everything he does, playing a member of that second expedition who's seen too much and pays the price with his sanity.  The story is fun, and the visual effects are excellent.  Sure, it plays out a bit like Attack Of The Killer Bandages, but a lot of this CGI work is astonishingly convincing, and probably would have looked even better on the big screen.  I was starting to wonder just why everybody was disappointed by this movie.

Yep, it all worked for me, up until a silly séance scene about two-thirds of the way through.  The scene is just plain bad, and the movie never really recovers.  The effects get increasingly spotty (especially with a particularly bad bodysuit costume), there's WAY too much Shelley Duvall, and it started bothering me (thought it hadn't before) that I wasn't in the least bit clear on just what was so dire about Talos coming back.

The box makes a big deal of how this film is from Russell Mulcahy, he who directed Highlander and Razorback, and after his long string of flops, I have to wonder why.  For that matter, the popularity and acclaim of Highlander itself has long been eclipsed by that for the TV series.  I've been writing off a lot of directors lately, I've noticed, directors who once showed potential but haven't delivered on it in ages.  I know, it's a cop-out.  I don't care, I'm all out of giveashit.  Mulcahy came close here, real close.  So I'm gonna hold off, for now.

Known in Europe as Talos The Mummy.  It's a shame to see such a good setup slide so far into mediocrity.  

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