Bram Stoker's The Mummy (1997)

I was NOT well!!!!!!

Okay, folks, please indulge me....if I provide the right context, you might thoroughly understand why the title of this review is oh, so apropos!!

...okay, so it was a crisp, foggy, rainy, windy San Francisco Sunday morning....one of those mornings where you awoke, looked outa the window and immediately knew you would deservedly luxuriate in bed after a loooooooong week....this was the perfect time to catch up on some old movies I had been meaning to watch/may have missed....I had passed by Bram Stoker's The Mummy on guide listings, each time wondering, "why haven't I heard of this before?" all because the natural assumption was that it was somehow remotely connected to Bram Stoker's Dracula...at least in terms of production values.....nothing could be further from the truth...

....I should have paid attention to the sinking feeling in the pit of my gut when in the beginning of the film we are set in Marin, California.....MARIN?!??!!!...what on EARTH does Northern California have to do with Bram Stoker??!!?.....folks, it was all downhill from there....

....okay, so I relaxed and thought, hmmm, set in San Francisco...this oughta be fun...(well, for lack of a better word/phrase....)

The movie is absolutely horrible....so horrible in fact, that I could not even turn away from it...AND I HAD THE REMOTE RIGHT THERE IN BED WITH ME!!!....I suppose I kept thinking, well, Lou Gossett is in it...how bad can it be?.....

Lou, a dubiously celebrated archaeologist (with an ever-present flask), carried off the role with aplomb and MUCH overacting, and was probably actually drinking during the production...I dearly love Lou, but I could NOT stop laughing at his performance here...and the guy who was the sidekick on "Home Improvement" and the face of Orchard Supply there for a while, (yeah, the cute bear) was humorous enough...however, the most interesting part of his performance, HANDS DOWN, is that the very last time the audience sees him, he is having a "spasm' or "seizure" of sorts, presumably from a curse and his last words were "I gotta get some fresh air!!!" and he RUNS OFF!!....NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN....I tell ya, I lost it!!!...

The leading man and woman were absolutely horrible. The script was absolutely horrible. The acting was absolutely horrible. The plot was absolutely horrible. I googled Bram Stoker to find out if indeed there even WAS a Bram Stoker's "Mummy" and haven't found anything he's written with that title...yet...

But for some ungodly reason I watched it until the end...at least some of the shots of the city, i.e. the Chronicle truck, the obligatory cable cars, (wow, no Golden Gate Bridge shot) were somewhat accurate...

This movie was so bad, I might add it to my collection...it was hysterical in its absurdity and if I can include the Toxic Avenger (I. II AND III!!!) I can certainly have an over-the-top Lou Gossett warding off the curse of whatshisname!!!

I laughed until I cried...perhaps it was because of the glass(es) of white zinfandel I sipped while watching...(..hey, lay off..I'm a Raider fan, whaddaya want!!) February 25, 2008

Cheap Version of 'The Mummy' Legend

As if to cash in on 'The Mummy' franchise, this 'Mummy' was released with the name of Louis Gossett Jr. on top. And it claims that it was based on Bram 'Dracula' Stoker's lesser novel 'The Jewel of the Seven Stars.' Forget these things now, and see 'Blood from the Mummy's Tomb' (1971) or 'The Awakening' (1980), both of which are based on the same novel.

Amy Locane plays Margaret, the daughter of an eminent Egyptologist who was found in a coma. On his body are found seven fresh scars, and the perplexed daughter calls in a help from her ex-sweetheart Robert (Eric Lutes). Then the things get out of control, for Margaret starts to see weird things (ala Rachel Weisz in 'The Mummy Returns'), and so one guy Corbeck (Gossett Jr.) is also called in, who is last seen in some institute (not again, please).

While the snail-paced story attempts to scare us with various familiar tricks, we know exactly what will happen next, well, because the film is called 'Mummmy' after all and you will see some poor guy wrapped in dirty brown bandage will resurrect from the dead, in this case in the dismal basement room of the sun-shining West Coast residence.

By chaging the location to America, and the time to the present-day, the film lost almost all the good things about the original Stoker novel, which belonged to the time of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. Now, adding to this already criminal deed, the filmmaker seems to have been very reluctant to prepare enough budget. Consequently, the 'Mummy' here is no better than an extra in ragged cloth, which looks so cheap, yes, a cheap mummy you can buy for your kids.

Plus, acting ranges from so-so to terrible. Maybe I shouldn't name names, but you may remember the sad fact that Louis Gossett Jr. is actually an Oscar-winner who must be now living down the memories of doing this film. We want to forget this film, and that fact about Oscar, as much as he does.

Final verdict. Avoid at any cost. January 29, 2005

MUMMY NEEDS A MAKEOVER

Lou Gossett, Jr.----didn't he win an Academy award for OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN? Hmmm...think of F. Murray Abraham, Ben Kingsley, and others who after winning their awards ended up second bananas in rather trifling movies. Lou joins the lot, and overacts so badly, he should really be ashamed of himself. But, he's not the only bad thing in this movie. Based on a Bram Stoker story, this version is handsomely mounted, but at times is so confusing, one never really knows what's going on. Eric Lutes is an engaging hero, but sometimes he looks like he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing; Amy Locane is luscious, but doesn't possess the range to go from the darling daughter to the vindictive mummy; Mark Lindsay Chapman who used to claim "Dallas" as his home, is laughably agreeable as the private investigator who gets bugged to death. Lloyd Bochner is wasted in his small role, and the whole movie seems thrown together, rather than orchestrated. Not a truly bad movie, but not a truly good one, either. April 2, 2004

Third Time's (Almost) A Charm

Faithful third film adaptation of Bram Stoker's The Jewel Of Seven Stars (following Blood From the Mummy's Tomb and The Awakening) doesn't deliver all it promises, but it delivers enough to be worth watching.

Archaeologist Lloyd Bochner is attacked in his locked study, and has left very specific instructions about how he is to be guarded while unconscious - the attack plainly did not surprise him too much, and police inspector Mark Lindsey Chapman wants to know why. Chapman thinks Bochner's estranged daughter, Amy Locane, had something to do with it. His suspicions aren't helped any when other people in the household begin suffering accidents, and Locane always just happens to be the only one nearby.

Locane and her Egyptology student boyfriend seek out Bochner's old colleague Louis Gosset, Jr., presently an outpatient at the local asylum. Gosset was with Bochner when he made his most stupendous find in Egypt, the tomb of Tara, a sorceress queen so feared that her name was erased from history. He knows - as does Bochner - that the attack was somehow engineered by Tara's ancient black magic, and that there's more where that came from...

The production on this movie is really quite handsome. It's dark and rich and colorful, with a wonderfully atmospheric music score. The sets and set pieces seem more authentic than usual for this kind of film. The performances range from good to adequate. The script is actually pretty decent, and the style refreshingly low-key (though there are a couple of splashy special-effects lapses). It's rather slow, and stretches credibility a bit, but you have to expect that in a movie with dusty mummies walking around strangling people - and the mummy is pretty creepy, at that.

All three versions of this story are pretty good. This isn't the best, but it's imminently watchable and attractively packaged throughout. June 15, 2002

Terrible!

First, I would like to say to who ever said that Bram Stoker did not write The Mummy is wrong! Bram Stoker did write the Mummy, I finished reading it in January of 1997! And this, although faithful to the book, is lame, and violent, with bad acting. Whoever made this was trying to copy the brilliance of Bram Stoker's Dracula (which is indeed "brilliant"), but did a poor job. If they wanted a good movie, the director should have been Francis-Ford Coppola, the director of Bram Stoker's Dracula. July 9, 2001

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