Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1972)

Simply A Masterpiece

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Blood from the Mummy's Tomb is out of Hammer Film Productions and is directed by Seth Holt. It's adapted for the screen by Christopher Wickling from the novel The Jewel of Seven Stars written by Bram Stoker. It stars Valerie Leon, Andrew Keir, Mark Edwards, James Villiers, Hugh Burden and Aubrey Morris. Music is by Tristram Cary and photography Arthur Grant. Plot sees Egyptologist's unearth the tomb of evil Queen Tera and quickly find themselves up to their necks in death and reincarnation nastiness.Released as the support feature to Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb became notable for its troubled production. Peter Cushing was cast as Julian Fuchs but after only one day's filming had to leave the production to be with his gravely ill wife. The part was filled by Andrew Keir. Tragedy struck the production with only one week of filming left, when director Seth Holt died on set of a heart attack, he was 48 years old. Michael Carreras (The Curse of Frankenstein/The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb) came in and took control for the last week of filming. Budgeted at just £200,000 the film was not made at the usual Hammer Studio in Bray, but at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire.In spite of its production problems and wee budget, this fourth Mummy offering from Hammer is surprisingly good fun. It doesn't boast the great sets that the others had, and no star wattage in the cast to grab the attention of the passer by, but it's nicely polished, well acted and has a good source story to work from. The horror elements are a little tame, yet this is offset by tight atmospherics and a dream like sense of dread that pervades the unfolding story. Nothing wrong with the acting either. Leon is one of Hammer Horror's most sensual actress' and she holds her end up well in the drama stakes too. True, the guys around her are literally playing second fiddle to her flighty, smouldering performance, but all the cogs fit where they should to keep the film totally professional.One of Hammer's better late efforts, where the familiarity of the "revenge from the grave" plot is given impetus by good writing and smart acting performances. 6.5/10

To quote "South Park", when the film begins it's obvious that the film will feature lots of "awesome boobage", as the film seems to VERY prominently display the very well-endowed ladies in the film--though there is no actual nudity. In a way, they are sort of the co-stars in "Blood From a Mummy's Tomb"! This AIN'T the sort of film grandpa used to watch back in the good ol' days of Boris Karloff! Archeologists discover a queen buried in an ancient Egyptian tomb. Oddly, she was neither skeletal nor mummified, but looks as if she's still alive--all regaled like an Egyptian queen. It gets weirder when they see a severed hand and the stump on the body begins to bleed! Pretty weird, but weirder still, the expedition's leader's wife has a baby at the exact moment the tomb is opened and the baby grows up to be an exact duplicate of the dead woman. Later, you realize it has the dead woman's soul as well, as it goes about do bad things...very bad things indeed.If you are looking for mummies, the film, despite the title, has none. Instead, an incredibly voluptuous lady who kills along with the help of a weirdo who LIKES the idea of her running amok! Frankly, this film is an excellent example for why Hammer Films was having financial problems by the 1970s--their horror films were becoming rather bereft of ideas. This film is a far cry from the studio's original mummy film (which was awfully good) or the Frankenstein and Dracula films. Few, if any chills here--just lots of awesome boobage and a rather silly story. I give the story a 2 and Miss Leon's boobage a 9 or 10.By the way, in the final scene, look closely at the queen's teeth. you can clearly see modern fillings in them! Not bad for an ancient Egyptian!

"Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" is a film that has its qualities - the doubtlessly most convincing one being the incredibly beautiful Valerie Leon in a double role. Yet I have to say that this film ranks among the lesser ones from my beloved Hammer Studios, as it is not very suspenseful and lacks the intense atmosphere that we all love about the films from this brilliant British production company. Based on the almighty Bram Stoker's novel "The Jewel of Seven the Stars", "Blood From the Mummy's Tomb" is one out of three Hammer films directed by Seth Holt, the others being the very good "The Nanny" (1965) and the presumably great "Taste of Fear" (1961) which I haven't yet seen. Sadly, Holt died in while he was working on this film in 1971, at only 48, and the film was completed by Michael Carreras, who must be seen as a pioneer for directing one of the earliest Eurowestern, "Tierra Brutal" in 1961. Being a huge fan of the Hammer Studios I tend to love their later films, such as "Vampire Circus", "The Vampire Lovers" or "Frankenstein and The Monster From Hell", from the early 70s especially, because they usually mix the elegant Hammer-typical Gothic atmosphere with 70s-typical sleaze and gore. This is also the case here - "Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" has some of Hammer's goriest moments - but the suspense was obviously not sufficiently focused on here. It does have some highly atmospheric scenes, but then, there are hardly any outdoor shots and typical Hammer style elements such as foggy grounds etc. appear only a few times in the film.The film tells a very classic Horror story, of a young beauty who happens to bear a stunning resemblance to a vicious she-demon - in this case a blood-thirsty Egyptian Queen... I love classic Horror material like this, but, sadly, it isn't delivered too well here. The film isn't too suspenseful, as one simply doesn't care about the characters. Valerie Leon ("Never Say Never Again") is stunningly beautiful (and shows some flesh) in her double leading role as the Egyptian Queen Tera and the archaeologist's's daughter Margaret Fuchs. Miss Leon is truly ravishing and her presence alone easily is reason enough to watch the film. The great Andrew Keir ("Quatermass and the Pit", "Dracula, Prince of Darkness") plays her father Prof. Fuchs. Funnily, Margaret's boyfriend's name is 'Tod Browning' - a tribute to the genius director of such gems as "Dracula" (1931), "Freaks" (1932) or "The Devi-Doll" (1936), the immortal Tod Browning. "Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" has its moments - as said, Valerie Leon is by far the most convincing reason to watch it, and the film has some stylish moments as well as some very well done gory ones. However, it does get boring in-between, and that is something extremely rare with a Hammer film. Overall it must be said that, while Egyptian Mummies are generally fascinating creatures, their representations in cinema are often quite weak. The only true Mummy-Masterpiece I've seen is Karl Freund's brilliant "The Mummy" of 1932 with the immortal Boris Karloff in the lead. My second-favorite is Hammer's 1959 remake "The Mummy" with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. "Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" is still 100 times better than these crappy new Mummy films which consist of CGI only, but it's definitely one of Hammer's weaker films and mostly interesting for the gorgeous Valerie Leon.

Of all the 'classic' movie monsters, the mummy is my least favourite: shambling along like a lone zombie on Prozac, the vengeful ancient Egyptian just doesn't have what it takes to give me the chills. Which is why I thought I'd give 'Blood From The Mummy's Tomb a watch.Hammer's final stab at the genre dispenses with the traditional, crumbly, bandage-clad creature of legend, replacing it with a voluptuous vixen, played by buxom beauty Valerie Leon. Surely a good old-fashioned dose of gratuitous eye-candy (plus a bit of equally gratuitous gore) would make this effort enjoyable.Well.... no, actually. Leon's spectacular body is certainly a magnificent sight, but even her sexy curves cannot detract one from the fact that this movie is one helluva muddled mess.Based on the Bram Stoker story 'The Jewel of Seven Stars', Blood From The Mummy's Tomb sees Leon as Margaret, a young woman whose (hot, hot, hot) body is destined to become the vessel for the spirit of Tera, an ancient and evil Egyptian queen. Her boyfriend Tod (Mark Edwards) and archaeologist father (Andrew Keir) do their best to save her from this dreadful fate, but with the villainous power-hungry Corbeck (James Villiers) orchestrating Tera's return, will their efforts be in vain?To be honest, who cares?Suffering from a noticeable lack of star-power (none of Hammer's more familiar faces are present), and cursed with a dreadfully constructed script, hackneyed direction, and very cheap-looking sets and props, this is one of the (if not THE) poorest Hammer movies I have seen.