7 Mummies (2006)

Sorry, this movie sucks

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

This is kind of like a cheap-o version of From Dusk Til Dawn, you get the criminals and their hostage who end up in a bar in the desert full of sexy women. The women and a bunch of other patrons turn out to be vampires, so they end up fighting for their lives to escape. What makes Seven mummies unique (and also quite confusing) is that the bar is actually the saloon in some kind of magical ghost town full of people dressed like cowboys. As our anti-heroes escape from the bar, the sheriff and his deputies come after them while non of the vampires do. Strangely enough, the sheriff and his men opt for using fire-arms rather than sucking their blood so I guess they are not vampires. Well what about the mummies of the title then? They do show up, more than an hour into the film, and it turns out they are martial art, Christian monk mummies. The criminals manage to run away from the karate monk undead, only to bump into the sheriff - who seems to also be the priest considering his monologues - and have to escape from him. It's just a big mess.Other than that, the pacing isn't the best and there is a general amateurish feel to the whole thing. I think, with a more clear story line, less vampires and ninja mummies, it could have been OK, but the confusion breaks your concentration and you end up being rather bored.

There is one and one reason alone to see this dull, uneventful horror flick: Billy Drago. Its very perplexing to me why an actor with his immense talent and underrated potential ends up in crapsack projects like this. Nevertheless, he is still captivating as a giggling, psychopathic, sleazy town sheriff and supernatural 'mummy'. But as for any parts of the movie without him: boring, boring, boring. Even the usually excellent Danny Trejo looks awkward and embarrassed playing a character whose dialogue consists of chuckling heartily to himself for ten friggin minutes strait.Avoid unless you're a die hard Billy Drago fan like me.

A shame this is so bad really, because I like bad horror movies and actually rather liked the basic premise: Back when the Spanish were being generally unpleasant to natives in America, they enslaved the local populace and got them to mine all the gold out of the mountains and basically ended up with a wet dream's worth of gold. Overseeing the operation were seven Jesuit priests that vowed to protect to gold until the Spanish forces returned for it. They never did. Over the years they died and were mummified and buried with the gold by the remnants of the native population. Fast forward a few hundred years and a bus load of convicts being transferred escape with one of the guards as hostage (the only good thing about the film, the delectable Cerina Vincent). They bimble across the desert looking for the Mexican border, finding en route a mummified body buried in a dry river bed with a gold medallion on it; when they later find a mysterious Indian (the always reliable, although poorly cast in this case Danny Trejo) who spots the medallion, he tells them the legend. Naturally, having just crawled out of the desert and barely survived, they decide to go back and try to find the gold, ignoring the Indian who is now laughing manically at their decision. They find the town, and most of them die. It's the vast majority of components that are wrong with this film.The dialogue was too quiet, even the slightest incidental music or sound effect totally washed out the dialogue, so you had no idea what was being said most of the time.The music was atrocious and very very loud, a mixture of gangsta rap and ultra heavy thrash metal, totally inappropriate and made the dialogue situation even worse.It was shot predominantly in total darkness, so most of the time you could not only not hear what was going on, you couldn't see what was going on either, I imagine it would be like watching a group of people being stalked in a windowless warehouse by Carcass or Napalm Death.Now when they got to where the gold was buried, there was a wild west style town there, complete with an evil sheriff (Billy Drago! Yaay! Who actually turned out to be the prime antagonist, not the mummies of the title), lots of random grizzled 1860's type western folk and the obligatory bar/cathouse populated with extremely buxom young lovelies. The gang of convicts do not question this one bit, they are not remotely bothered by the fact they seem to have slid back in time 150 years or so. The explanation for this is either simply not in the film, or is very briefly covered in sub-audible dialogue, but I gathered from a review that some wild west era settlers arrived there, settled, found the gold and woke the mummies, who subsequently killed the entire town and the inhabitants are now cursed.The convicts are enjoying the bar when the inhabitants turn into undead (terrible effects, ghouls look just like normal people, just with some blue eyeliner, right?) and the prostitutes turn out to be vampires (WTF??) that dispatch a couple of the convicts right there and then.The remaining convicts run around in the dark, breaking into boarded up buildings for no apparent reason, but they do eventually encounter some mummies, and they turn out to be ninja, high speed kung fu combat mummies with a propensity for crazy jumping around - to be fair, this is actually a pretty good fight scene (what you can see of it in the almost pitch black).The weird thing is that since things went belly-up in the cat house when the ghouls revealed what they were, the entire population of the town apart from the Sheriff has vanished. Eh? Why? No idea. The convicts spend the latter part of the film just being chased by the sheriff, the mummies don't even join the pursuit after their one fight scene.And the ending with two blokes and a coffin is completely random and meaningless, it's not anything to do with the rest of the movie as far as I can tell.I love crap movies, but please, this was dreadful in every conceivable way and it's not often I watch a lousy horror movie and think to myself "Wish I'd done something else, like maybe got some sleep".

All I would like to say is better job next time. This movie will probably act as a spring-board for all involved but honestly it is flawed in nearly every aspect.Not to write any spoilers, although talking over the flaws would give some of the story away. So I'll just write the 6 biggest flaws:1. Title sequence: this goes on for a very long time. Bored me to tears. 2. Sound: most if not all dialogue is inaudible. At times the music tends to totally obstruct everything. 3. Ghost Town: characters are totally unquestioning of their new setting, treating 18th century sheriffs as modern day police. 4. Romance: the two escaping heroes appear to be romantically connected but this is never pursued. 5. Ending: final ending making no sense. 6. Acting: Indian man laughing... if you watch this be prepared for irritation.The camera quality is very poor, but this is a low budget movie so that is be expected. Lot's of blurring or high frame-rates.Some of the gore is actually well done, however one scene shows blood coming from a gunshot wound to the foot, the blood is far too thin and even has a froth.In general avoid, but if you are into seeing others low budget work, certainly one for inspiration.