Even lower-end Hammer films tend to be worth a watch, and this follow up to THE MUMMY is no exception. Despite the extraordinarily slow pacing (the first hour of the film does nothing except to set up the various characters and their relationships), the production values – even in a film relatively cheap by Hammer standards – are top drawer, the costumes and sets are fun (love those Egyptian backlots), and there's even a smattering of graphic gore for those who enjoy that kind of thing. Imagine the year this film was made. Now watch the film complete with multiple hand-choppings, bludgeoning, beating and – most graphic of all – an offscreen but horrific (thanks to the sound effects guy) head-crushing underfoot – and you can imagine that the film must have been considered pretty terrible when it was first released. Sure, today it seems tame, but I still get a kick out of gruesomeness that is readily achieved WITHOUT excessive bloodshed and through imagination more than anything else.
The storyline is very predictable and doesn't need re-telling here, other than it contains the usual themes of cursed siblings (one good, one evil), the mummy falling in love with a beautiful girl, immortality and the bumping off of those who first defiled the Egyptian tomb. The leading characters all seem pretty stuffy but the actors do manage to put in more than adequate performances (aside from Jeanne Roland, who's pretty but hopelessly miscast). Terence Morgan is devilishly evil as the slick bad guy; Ronald Howard more than acceptable as the decent hero; Fred Clark steals the show as a P.T. Barnum-style sideshow hustler who wants to get the mummy working for HIM. Then there's a trio of great supporting performances from George Pastell, Michael Ripper (killed all too early), and Jack Gwillim.
The mummy makeup is imposing but not necessarily all that scary, and an interesting touch has the mummy heavy breathing as he goes about his business, kind of like a prototype Darth Vader! After the slow first hour, things pick up for the climax, throwing in some genuinely nasty shocks (one death scene is one of the juiciest in the whole Hammer repertoire) and a climax that must have seemed good on paper but doesn't work all so well. Would sewers really collapse that easily? Still, despite the ambiguity of the climax, this is a fun enough ride for genre fans content to happily sit through well-done ripe dialogue and costume drama to get to the good gruesomeness.
The storyline is very predictable and doesn't need re-telling here, other than it contains the usual themes of cursed siblings (one good, one evil), the mummy falling in love with a beautiful girl, immortality and the bumping off of those who first defiled the Egyptian tomb. The leading characters all seem pretty stuffy but the actors do manage to put in more than adequate performances (aside from Jeanne Roland, who's pretty but hopelessly miscast). Terence Morgan is devilishly evil as the slick bad guy; Ronald Howard more than acceptable as the decent hero; Fred Clark steals the show as a P.T. Barnum-style sideshow hustler who wants to get the mummy working for HIM. Then there's a trio of great supporting performances from George Pastell, Michael Ripper (killed all too early), and Jack Gwillim.
The mummy makeup is imposing but not necessarily all that scary, and an interesting touch has the mummy heavy breathing as he goes about his business, kind of like a prototype Darth Vader! After the slow first hour, things pick up for the climax, throwing in some genuinely nasty shocks (one death scene is one of the juiciest in the whole Hammer repertoire) and a climax that must have seemed good on paper but doesn't work all so well. Would sewers really collapse that easily? Still, despite the ambiguity of the climax, this is a fun enough ride for genre fans content to happily sit through well-done ripe dialogue and costume drama to get to the good gruesomeness.