The Worst Film Ever

Sorry, this movie sucks

Please don't spend money on this.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Oddly enough, then "Tale of the Mummy" had fully evaded me and slipped past my radar. And it wasn't before 2017 that I happened to find it as I was browsing through the horror section. Being a movie that includes a mummy and being a horror movie, I naturally found it interesting and immediately decided to give it a chance, without reading the synopsis or taking notice of who starred in it.The movie does start out in an adequate pace, and does establish some characters pretty early on, which was good for the movie."Tale of the Mummy" has an adequate storyline, although parts of it seemed a bit forced. The storyline is simplistic and very easy to follow, making it feel like writers Keith Williams, John Esposito, Russell Mulcahy and writer/director Russell Mulcahy were followed a generic blueprint of 'how-to-make-a-mummy-movie'.I must admit that I was more than genuinely impressed with the ensemble of cast that had been hired for this movie, because there are some rather good names on the cast list here. It was a nice surprise to see the likes of Christopher Lee, Gerard Butler, Lysette Anthony, Sean Pertwee, Shelley Duvall, Jon Polito, Jason Scott Lee and Michael Lerner in a movie such as this.The effects in "Tale of the Mummy" were quite good and actually do, to some extend, still hold their ground even today. So thumbs up for the special effects team that worked on the movie.It was kind of funny how adept the awakened mummy was at speaking English and speaking it flawlessly.The movie does let off some of its momentum once it makes it past the halfway marker. Which is a bit of a shame. The movie in whole doesn't really stand out and is not a particularly memorable addition to the mummy movie genre.And the ending of the movie? Wow, seriously? That had to be one of the most ridiculous endings in the history of mummy movies. It was so phenomenally bad that it has to be seen to believe.

*This review definitely contains spoilers.* I had high hopes for Tale of the Mummy, and for awhile it looked like those hopes might be fulfilled. The movie gets off to a good start with a strong prologue featuring the great Christopher Lee, who of course once played one of the most impressive mummies in movie history during the heyday of Hammer Films. From there, the movie goes on to establish an interesting variation on the basic idea of the usual mummy's curse. The eponymous Mummy itself doesn't merely shamble about strangling unwary victims, but is a mini-maelstrom of bandages and wrappings which only assumes a more tangible form at the right moment.The cast is impressive, as well. Not only do we have a brief but important turn by Christopher Lee, but there's also Lysette Anthony, Shelly Duvall, Sean Pertwee, Jason Scott Lee, and even Gerard Butler (though Mr. Butler's character meets his demise just a few minutes into the proceedings).Though nothing really breaks with established mummy-movie formula at first, at least the first act of the film lays what appears to be a solid foundation for things to come. Sadly, in the second and third acts the film gets progressively worse and worse. The filmmakers try to play around with viewer expectations and then try to subvert the same with a number of unforeseen twists, but those twists are so far out of left field that they all fail, without exception. One of the problems is that for things to work out the way they do, certain characters simply cannot do and say some of the things that occur as the movie progresses. The big reveals that happen--and there are a lot of them--blatantly contradict plot points that have already been established within the dramatic progression. The ultimate revelations regarding the identify of the Mummy, his Princess, and his followers aren't merely unexpected, but thematically impossible given what has already happened. In short, the script is a cheat and in the end everything unravels like a badly embalmed corpse. Which, I suppose, is appropriate.In other respects, the production is generally hit or miss. A few of the on screen murders are creatively handled, but others are painfully ridiculous. An example of the latter occurs in a men's bathroom stall, where the Mummy wraps its prey up in its fluttering folds and...jumps into the toilet with him, resulting in a fountain of blood as the victim is pulled bodily through the works. I don't remember if the poor guy screamed in his death throes or not, as it would have been drowned out by my own laughter anyway. I mean, death by toilet? That's sure not how Christopher Lee did it back in the day. Thankfully.Special effects don't always work out, either. The Mummy eventually emerges as a rather pitiful unfinished humanoid which, for some reason, the other characters find so impressive they want to fall down on their knees and worship. The climactic action scenes are weak and unconvincing in the extreme, and the movie's only real strong point--interesting characters played by well-known performers--fails in the end because so many of the characters inexplicably become entirely different people and also because one of them happens to be an extremely annoying psychic who I dearly wish had gotten killed much earlier.Ultimately, Tale of the Mummy is a tale of futility. The story falls apart the closer it gets to the finale and in the end nothing of value is left. Even worse, Evil triumphs...the heroine sacrifices herself for nothing and the hero turns out to be an avatar for the Mummy, who attains immortality and walks out into the world to do as he will with his rejuvenated powers. Perhaps there was supposed to be a sequel. If so, somebody must have severely overestimated this particular Mummy's powers of telepathic influence because to my knowledge no such follow-up ever appeared. Either way, it's a poor finish that is totally unsatisfying on any level whatsoever.There have been a number of good films in the Mummy sub-genre, but this isn't even close to being one of them. Tale of the Mummy starts off well enough and has a good cast, but one poor storytelling decision after another, coupled with a poor FX budget, means the overall production is doomed to failure.

"Tale of the Mummy" is a better than expected though somewhat problematic entry.**SPOILERS**Discovering a long-lost Egyptian tomb, Samantha Turkel, (Louise Lombard) and her team, Bradley Cortese, (Sean Pertwee) Burke, (Gerald Butler) and Claire Mulrooney, (Lysette Anthony) bring the contents back to the British Museum. Putting it on display, a strange series of deaths around London being in Detective Riley, (Jason Scott Lee) from the US Embassy to help solve the case, as each victim was found to have a specific organ removed after death. Discovering that it is the work of Prince Talos, (Enzo) claimed to be one of the most ravenous men in Egyptian history, trying to collect the body parts required to resurrect himself, they race to stop him and put an end to his plans.The Good News: this wasn't all that bad and had some good moments to it. One of the good things here is that the mummy is pretty interesting. Rather than being the slowly lumbering type, as this one can move about fairly quickly, it has two additional powers that are fun and really sets him apart. This one can fly about, which is a clever concept and visually impressive since it's something new. The other new factor is the ability to use it's bandages as tentacles, using them to ensnare it's victims and trap them like a cocoon. Even more impressive is the ability to unravel itself and reform using the tentacles to do that. It's a fun trick that looks impressive and is a real treat to watch. Another big plus is that there's a couple of rather well-done attacks in here, as the sequence at the police station is really nice, a pretty decent chase comes out of an encounter in the motel as the mummy really shows off some nice powers and there's a couple kills as well. Even the encounters in the subway and parking garage are really good and much better than expected. The best, though, is the film's opening, with there being a couple great things about it. The atmosphere is great, the setting is perfect and creepy with the usual business about a curse and the decorations used around the chamber. Once the curse is mentioned, it's all pretty fun watching the brutality emerge. Then, segueing into the recovery scenes of the later expedition being just as creepy is a big plus. The last positive here is the rather sizable body count. While there's only a few that are worthwhile, there's a lot that actually do get knocked off, and it does deliver the gore nicely on some of them. These here are what make the film somewhat entertaining and enjoyable.The Bad News: This one didn't have a whole lot of problems going for it. The main one here is that there's a decided lack of gore to many of the kills. Despite the big body count, not a whole lot of the kills are all that graphic, mainly by design since it oddly uses the off-screen method for a lot of the kills or just dragged the victim away and leaving the sounds as the only clue that something is happening. There's a few of them which are done on-screen, which is enough to get them over but it really could've had much more in here by simply using it's kills a little better. The other area that this doesn't work is the rather odd and confusing ending. There's hardly anything about it that makes any sense, between the twist that doesn't seem logical or even makes sense, to the actions of the ceremony and the specific guidelines which are required, the whole thing is just confusing and doesn't really have anything all that logical about it. These here are what lower the film and keep it down.The Final Verdict: Some good stuff in here and a couple of somewhat troubling flaws lower this one somewhat but not all that much. Give it a shot if you're into the genre or have an interest in the film, while those who aren't that big on the genre will probably find this one to be more problematic.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity

Let's compare this movie to The Mummy, which was released a year after this one (why wouldn't we compare? everybody does). Making a mummy movie has a downside. You have to make a story in which a mummy is released or revived, and that mummy probably wants either to take over or destroy the world. This is the same in all mummy movies, so the director has something to make up, so that his movie won't be considered as 'just another mummy movie'. First: the rest of the story, which was (for me) in both The Mummy and Talos the Mummy (or 'Tale of the Mummy', as it is also often called) quite good, though The Mummy has more adventure and comedy, while Talos was more thriller. Second is the acting, which was a bit better in The Mummy (I liked Brendan Fraser and Arnold Vosloo the most in this one). Light is... different in both, because Talos is thriller-like and The Mummy adventure, but both have the light done as it should be in their genre. Music was wonderful in The Mummy, but maybe this is also because of the different genre. The, the special effects... The Mummy had good, if not great, special effects, with mummies crawling over walls and Vosloo's face in the sand (which I thought was impossible to do and make it look good). Then, in Talos, the special effects could be described best as 'pathetic'. How do they dare to do this? The worst is, I think, at the beginning, when Christopher Lee gets it (another stupidity; They list Christopher as one of the first, but he dies about five minutes after the beginning of the movie), his upper half crawls while you see him from a spot in which you can see his 'wound'... which is a computer generated effect, and when he crawls the wound dos not stay in place but just moves forward too, so at the end of the wound you can see Christopher's clothing disappear and reappear. Why has the studio let them do this, in times when dinosaurs are artificially generated, when complete armies are made by computer? Ever since movies like Star Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Studios should be ashamed of special effects like the ones in Talos The Mummy (except for, off course, things like Beetlejuice, in which special effects are made bad on purpose, but even Beetlejuice had better effects than this). Shame on thee, shame on thee.