Simply A Masterpiece

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

If ever there was a curse on a project, it was surely cast upon Bram Stoker's 'The Jewel of Seven Stars', for the film adaptions of this story have been ill-fated and, for the most part, disappointing in their execution.This is sadly no exception. A sprawling story anyway, this adaption seems to go to great pains to complicate events further with flashbacks, unclear narrative and characters it is impossible to care about. The production has dated more than many others; it's not obvious that the 1990's had a 'look' (unlike the garish '80's or the flares and collars of the '70's), but 'Legend of the Mummy' proves that it had and possesses that 'look' in spades. It appears the designers took their inspiration from daytime US soap operas.The mummy itself gets scant screen-time and is often filmed in extreme close-up, so we only get a glimpse of a hand or a bandaged jaw. It spends most of the film 'stirring into life' so we spend far too long with bland characters and the running time seems to last a lot longer than 96 minutes, despite the musical score's attempts to convince us exciting things are happening. By the fourth or fifth time the creature seems about to go on a rampage, my enthusiasm has been strained.There are some good set-pieces and some others that don't convince, and there are moments when thing seem at last to be building up some tension. This is always short-lived, though, and the finale, when we get there, is something of a mercy.

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!!)

This movie is bad. This movie is awful. I was lured in to watching it without doing any research first and was under the illusion that it may in some form be related to Francis Ford Coppola's classic, "Bram Stoker's Dracula." It isn't. These false pretenses lead to a great deal of disappointment. But as I was watching, it occurred to me that there is one format in which this movie could be improved. That would be if Mystery Science Theater 3000 were to take on this movie as a project and were to work their magic and at least make this over-the-top, cheesy B-grade movie into something that is laughable for reasons other than the predictable dialog and ridiculously melodramatic acting. The highlight of this film comes when the mummy that the story revolves around is being depicted . The camera pans down the arm of the cloth-wrapped creature and when it focuses on the hand, one notices that something doesn't seem quite right. Apparently the special effects and make-up flunkies got together and decided to pull a prank. For some reason, this un-believable depiction of an ancient Egyptian queen has seven fingers on one hand. Curious.

"Bram Stoker's The Mummy" is another rather traditional mediocre mummy film.**SPOILERS**Robert Wyatt, (Eric Lutes) a budding art historian, is called by Margaret Trelawny, (Amy Locane) his ex, to her father's house to help her with a mystery. Once he gets there, the staff isn't receptive to him, and treat him as an outsider. When strange events begin happening around the mansion, Robert seeks out her father's old accomplice, John Corbeck, (Louis Gossett Jr.) And brings him back to the house. He believes that Margaret's father has come under the spell of Egyptian Queen Tera, one of the most powerful queens. When they find that Tera has taken possession of Margaret, Robert and Corbeck race to stop her from enacting an ancient curse.The Good News: The film is based upon a novel by Bram Stoker, and in fact has been done before as the film "Blood from the Mummy's Tomb," too which there are certain similar characteristics. The fact that the evil being is called Queen Tera, the possessed woman called Margaret, the born-on-the-day-of-discovery angle, a ruby-bedecked ring as a means of possession, and the ailing father all pretty much the same between the films. This allows for some familiarity between the stories and that increases some entertainment if we know a little bit about what's going on in the film. The film does have some nice sequences. One of the best is an attack on a rainy night outside a phone-booth. It sets up the attack beautifully with an earlier attack, and here is the final payoff. It goes out in a pretty grand fashion that features some nice suspense to ago along with the payoff. The resurrection sequence at the end is nicely realized, and the way it plays out provides some nice moments.The Bad News: The mummy sub-genre has had relatively little success in the mainstream, mainly because the myth surrounding it is one that's always been a hard one to film properly. It's always been a hard one to get down, and here the pattern continues. The familiarity with the other film raises the concern over where or not this can be a remake or not, and the debate is a tricky one as both sides have valid arguments. The fact that this is billed as a mummy movie is also a misprint. True, there is a mummy in the film, but there is no shambling corpse wrapped in bandages after people who desecrated it's tomb. It's more of a supernatural film that features a mummy as the source of a curse. There is such a slow pace to this that it can be maddening for something to happen. The deaths are OK, but fall into a rhythm that is pretty far apart. Apart from the deaths, there is really not that much action to speak of, so it's incredibly slow and a long time occurs before anything happens.The Final Verdict: Mummy films traditionally aren't all that spectacular, and this one follows the pattern, with a slow pace, not a lot of action, underwhelming deaths, and a mummy that takes forever to get on screen. It's not a total loss, but it's not all that spectacular either. Exercise caution before giving this a shot.Rated R: Violence, Nudity, some Language and a brief sex scene