Antics with Paul Naschy's gruesome Spanish mummy

Leofwine_draca

Paul Naschy's take on the story of the mummy is a disappointingly plodding film which rehashes all of the old mummy clichés used to death in the 1940s and adds nothing new to the proceedings apart from extra lashings of gore. Actually, I think this was the goriest mummy movie around until DAWN OF THE MUMMY came along, but don't be fooled into thinking this is some bloody gruesome gore fest - the violence is limited to a few throat-slashings, a head-squashing, a brief impaling and a surprisingly violent interlude when Naschy's mummy mutilates the faces of a number of dead girls by bashing them apart with his powerful fist.

The expected Egyptian flashback is used to open the film, where we see Naschy sitting on this throne amid some cheap unconvincing sets while pretty girls are tortured and killed for his amusement. It isn't long before Naschy is bumped off by his scary-looking High Priest and his body mummified. After a brief (and very dark) tomb-opening sequence, the film shifts to London where the mummy is displayed in a museum. Egyptian priest Assad Bey (also played by Naschy, I guess he couldn't bear to be under wraps for a whole movie) uses the blood of three virginal girls to bring the mummy back to life and a string of gore murders commences.

The film looks to be very cheaply-made, with lots of poor editing and disconcerting camera angles which don't work. It's also badly dubbed and has really annoying tinny screams for the ladies. Director Carlos Aured displays little professionalism in his work and is a far cry from Leon Klimovsky, who directed some of Naschy's best movies in my opinion. He fails to create much interest in the proceedings and only minimum Gothic atmosphere in the scenes where the mummy prowls around the dark vaults and sewers of London.

The film's hero is played by Jack Taylor, a genre regular whose roots go back to three of the bizarre Neutron films in the early '60s, which were Mexican wrestling/superhero combinations. Taylor isn't exactly what I would term a quality actor, but he had enough experience of these sort of things to know what to do, thus making for an adequate heroic lead. However, the focus on the film is Naschy in both of his roles, so as usual he becomes a kind of anti-hero in the film. Maria Silva and Helga Line are familiar faces but fail to add much to their roles of the victimised women.

Naschy's performance as priest Assad Bey is a fairly typical suave one from the actor, no better or worse than all this others. He does, however, make for an unusual barrel-chested mummy, one of the most agile I've seen in the movies. Thankfully, the mummy make up is actually pretty good and convincing for the film, which helps it considerably and makes it work watching. The unintentionally funny ending is pretty impressive, as Bey and the mummy are trapped in a building on fire and both go up in flames; the mummy's agonised groans are hilarious to listen to because they're extremely over-the-top! The ending also throws in a hideously burnt corpse and a female corpse shrivelling (due to being kissed by the mummy!) for good gruesome measure. Despite being one of the worst Naschy films I've seen, THE MUMMY'S REVENGE does pass the time painlessly in an uninspiring way, but I was expecting a lot more from the Spanish Master of Horror.

score 5/10

Leofwine_draca 30 August 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3534781/