Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!
There’s a part of me that gets a little bit excited when I choose a horror movie to watch and it turns out to have been produced by Hammer. Not every Hammer film is good, of course, but a lot of them are and most of them are fun at the very least. Their vampire movies are probably their best, but I genuinely love it when they go wacky. Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is very much in that wacky area. This is not really a mummy movie, but a movie where the mummies are more mummy in theme rather than shambling and wrapped in bandages.
An Egyptian expedition locates the tomb of Tara (Valerie Leon), an evil queen. How do we know she is evil? Well, in the opening sequences, Tara is forced to undergo a ritual by a bunch of priests who lop off her hand. This doesn’t stop her hand from being animated, though, and Tara’s powerful magic appears to kill all of the priests. The man leading the expedition, Julian Fuchs (Andrew Keir) has become obsessed with Tara, and has brought all of her artifacts back to England along with her body and has recreated her tomb in his house.
This is important beyond the simple “The English are stealing from Egypt again” aspect of this. Tara was supposed to have her name erased from history, but the priests didn’t quite accomplish the job. Fuchs’s daughter Margaret (also played by Valerie Leon) was born the instant Tara’s name was spoken by the expedition. So, naturally, there’s going to be a connection between Tara and Margaret, which is going to clearly be obvious as the film goes on. It’s also worth noting that despite being entombed for a few millennia, Tara has not aged or decayed in any way. In fact, there’s still blood pumping out of her severed forearm, hence the name of our film.
Fuchs, obsessed as he is, wants some semblance of Tara to live. To start this on its way, he gives Margaret the ring Tara was wearing on her severed hand. This influence starts to take over Margaret, and suddenly those other members of the expedition start dying off. Importantly, the artifacts they had collected from the tomb go missing, only to appear in Fuchs’s re-creation of the tomb.
As it happens, there’s another member of the expedition obsessed with Tara and wanting to bring her back to life. This is Corbeck (James Villiers), who became the rival of Fuchs once the expedition ended. He appears to be the one influencing Margaret to succumb to the urges from her ring. Fuchs seems oblivious to all of this and eventually seems to want Tara returned to life, except, of course, this will mean the death of Margaret.
If you are recognizing some of these plot points, you should, since they were more or less used almost directly from the 1999 and 2001 movies The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. While those films had Imhotep needing to find his canopic jars specifically, in this film, Tara is reclaiming her funeral goods and killing those who possess them. In the 2001 sequel, several characters are possessed of the spirit of a long-dead Egyptian, much in the way Margaret starts to succumb to Tara’s influence, and succumbing completely will ultimately mean her death, just as the rise of Anck-su-namun will mean the death of Meela in The Mummy Returns. And, in both of these films, Margaret/Meela seem willing to die to bring back their ancient double.
While Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is loads of fun, it does fall short in a few places. One of those is the rating. This is a PG movie, and genuinely probably should have gone for the R. There is a staggering amount of Valerie Leon’s significant cleavage and underboob throughout the film, and this never pays off. It is arguably the biggest tease of its decade in that respect. There are also some terrible effects. When Margaret’s boyfriend, the awesomely and winkingly named Tod Browning (Mark Edwards) goes to his fate in his car, it is perhaps the worst-filmed car accident in film history, and that’s saying a lot. It is clear through the entire thing that he’s being filmed in a stationary vehicle, so evidently the tree hits him.
For all of its faults and foibles, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is fun. It’s weird in the same way that The Reptile, The Gorgon, Paranoiac, and The Curse of the Werewolf are. You’re not going to see any actual mummies (or nudity), but you are likely to be entertained.
Why to watch Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb: Its influence on the wonderfully fun Mummy franchise is palpable.
Why not to watch: The only real mummy here is in the title.
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