January 21st, 2015 - Dawn of the Mummy (1981)

Dawn of the Mummy is essentially a zombie-by-way of mummy flick, as you may be able to guess by the mash up of titles.  It doesn't offer anything especially new or exciting, and is pretty slow for the first half, but it's decent enough if you're a fan of slightly corny early 80's horror.

It starts off in 3000 BC in Egypt, with a group of marauders on horseback running rampant through a village, whipping people and kidnapping young boys. I couldn't tell you why. Cut to the interior of a tomb/pyramid, where a priestess is performing a mummification ceremony. (Complete with gross but not too gross effects, which will be par for the course for the rest of the film. Think real animal organs, just sort of set on top of someone and then lifted off.) And you get the requisite Curse. The twist here? All of the people who helped build the tomb and perform the ceremony will be killed by poisonous gas to keep the location of the tomb a secret. They seem okay with this. If the Curse ever comes to fruition (it will), the helpers will also rise from the dead to take revenge along with the Mummy, whose name I have surely misspelled as Saabernon.

Present Day (1981) - Three skeezy tomb raiders have managed to find the tomb, and chase off an old disheveled lady claiming they will be "doomed" if they enter the tomb. Doomed! The skeezy guys know they need to wait - there is poisonous gas down there! So they go to sleep by the tomb. Three of the worst sneaky guys on the planet manage to sneak by them, and their faces melt off from the poisonous gas. The next day, the skeezy guys enter the tomb and try to find the gold.

Also, there are some asshole fashion photographer/models who happen to be in Egypt for a big photo shoot. They come across our tomb raiders (or rather, are shot at by the idiot tomb raider), and decide that the tomb would be a great place for a photo shoot! The tomb raiders play along, as they figure they will be in and out, and then they can collect their treasure. Little do they know that the tomb is cursed! Cursed, I tell you! Cursed!

So as you would expect/hope, Saabernon arises, as do his undead helpers. They kill a bunch of people and it's pretty cool.

The first half of Dawn of the Mummy is pretty tough to get through. There isn't much action, and the characters aren't all that likable or interesting. The three tomb raiders are comically evil, and they jump around and hug like excited school children when they talk about gold. The American fashion folks aren't much better - I think we're supposed to like a couple of the female models, but they are just kind of bland. The rest of the group is made up of your typical rude Americans. So by the time the Mummy is (finally) released after about 40 minutes, you are firmly in his corner.

And luckily, the wait pretty much pays off. The action and effects, while not grand by any means, are fun and pretty well done. You have to have you're expectations in check when watching a movie called Dawn of the Mummy, and I would say that it more or less meets those lowered expectations. Yeah, there are some corny bits, but there is enough violence, action, and just plain weird character stuff to make it worth it.

Saabernon actually looks pretty good. They hired a really tall guy and wrapped him in some blackened old bandages, and he looks appropriately creepy and gooey. His undead army looks nice too - essentially, they have the burned-zombie look and wouldn't be out of place in the Italian zombie movies of the era. You can tell that Dawn of the Mummy isn't an expensive movie, but at least they didn't skimp on the makeup effects. They aren't great by any means, but they are serviceable.

Once the Mummy/zombies start in on their rampage, it's pretty continuous action. In the final setpiece, they attack the village (actually just one big street) during a big wedding - it's not crazy, but there seems to be a lot of people around to be attacked, which I appreciated. It's a case of quantity over quality, I guess. You end up getting some okay zombie chases (they are faster and more agile than your Romero zombies) and gut-munching, and Saabernon is almost more like a slasher at some points.

So while I have no major praise for it, Dawn of the Mummy did the job. I guess there is a common misconception that it is actually an Italian film - it's actually a US/Egyptian co-production (bonus points for actually shooting in Cairo!) But apparently a lot of Italian crew-members worked on it, so there's that. While it doesn't quite reach the glorious highs of some of the more popular crazy Italian zombie films of the 70s & 80s, it doesn't totally disappoint if you go into it with those in mind.

I would   probably recommend   this film.