Bram Stoker's 1903 novel, JEWEL OF THE SEVEN STARS, was a tale of ancient Egypt and a present-day horror story about a young woman finding herself possessed by the spirit of an Egyptian queen. It's a book that doesn't seem to translate well to the screen, with the previous two adaptations - Hammer's BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB and Hollywood's THE AWAKENING - coming across as fun but deeply flawed. Still, they're masterful in comparison to this atrocious B-movie version of the tale.
The source material is chopped and mutilated into madness and what we're left with is a muddled wannabe horror flick in which a sorry-looking mummy stumbles around and kills off a bunch of badly-acting characters. Looking for similarities to the source material is an impossible job, as is watching this film; the narrative is disjointed and unsatisfactory, and the last half an hour in particular makes you scratch your head and wonder what's supposed to be happening. Mostly it's a series of random scenes of people being attacked in dark rooms with really bad direction. You feel for poor old Louis Gossett Jr. and Aubrey Morris, two actors who should really know better. Incredibly, an equally poor sequel (BRAM STOKER'S LEGEND OF THE MUMMY 2) was to follow.
The source material is chopped and mutilated into madness and what we're left with is a muddled wannabe horror flick in which a sorry-looking mummy stumbles around and kills off a bunch of badly-acting characters. Looking for similarities to the source material is an impossible job, as is watching this film; the narrative is disjointed and unsatisfactory, and the last half an hour in particular makes you scratch your head and wonder what's supposed to be happening. Mostly it's a series of random scenes of people being attacked in dark rooms with really bad direction. You feel for poor old Louis Gossett Jr. and Aubrey Morris, two actors who should really know better. Incredibly, an equally poor sequel (BRAM STOKER'S LEGEND OF THE MUMMY 2) was to follow.