Queen Tera sleeps...for now.
In ancient Egypt, evil queen Tera (Valerie Leon), who's a witch or a sorceress or something, is executed, perfectly preserved without the usual mummy's wrappings, and sealed in a tomb for eternity. That is, until a British expedition unearth her grave and the archaeologists abscond with sacred artifacts. Margaret (Valerie Leon in a dual role) is the daughter of the expedition's leader, and she is a dead ringer for the evil queen. When her father gifts her a ring taken from the severed right hand of Tera, the spirit of the queen begins to take over Margaret's mind with an aim to resurrect, and to fully manifest in the 20th century the queen must retrieve her pilfered artifacts and kill those who had held them. If the queen resurrects, apparently all manner of evil will be unleashed upon the world, but can anyone stop her?
By the dawn of the 1970's, Hammer, the once-groundbreaking British studio, saw its flame fade as its flavor of gothic horror spiced with bright red "Kensington gore" and voluptuous actresses began to be superseded by more explicit efforts from upstart studios that took advantage of the more permissive era. Hammer's charms now looked quaint, and though they still had a handful of solid works left in them before their looming demise, they issued more lumps of coal than gems. One such dud is this lifeless catalog of every mummy movie trope we've seen a million times since Universal's THE MUMMY back in 1932. The story is rote to the point of inducing torpor, the blood and gore is at a bare minimum, there's not rampaging gauze-wrapped mummy out murdering people, and there are no scares to be had. It's simply a product to fill time on a double-bill, and its sole saving grace is star Valerie Leon, who is ravishing and kindly allows us a brief glimpse of her ample backside.
BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB was a real slog for me to get through, as I found myself checking how much run time was left, and nearly falling asleep on it at four points during the narrative. Even if you consider yourself a Hammer loyalist/completist, I cannot in good faith recommend this one. Good mummy movies are as rare as tits on a trout, and this film can be relegated to the legion of sub-par mummy offerings that are best relegated to obscurity.
1 comment:
I hate to break it to you but that was a body double. Leon (tragically) never did any full nudity.
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