Duraid Al Simma (Tony Musante) and his wife Royan (Karina Lombard) are searching for the tomb of pharaoh Mamosis (Edmund Purdom). The villain Schiller (Roy Scheider) hears about it and steals their information, hoping to become the famous discoverer of the tomb himself, not to mention the great treasure supposed to be hidden there. Duraid is killed, but with the help of the adventurer Nick Harper (Jeff Fahey), his widow Royan keeps the chase for the tomb going.
This present day storyline is sharing the running time in equal parts with the events in Egypt thousands of years ago, where we learn how Mamosis wants to marry Lostris (Katrina Gibson) although she is in love with the warrior leader Tanis (Philip Rhys). A clever slave named Taita (Art Malik) helps his mistress to escape from the pharaoh while planning the tomb that our modern day heroes will search for. The link between the two storylines is the boy Hapi (Jeffrey Licon) who is the illegitimate son of Lostris, but adopted in our time by Royan due to some mystic snake god's basket travel arrangement (don't ask me how that worked).
Anyway, it a story that fills 250 minutes without too much boredom. The second of the three episodes seems to stretch the story a bit, when the heroes get captured and escape, just to be captured again and escape again. But by the third episode, when the race gets to its climax and deadly traps await the explorers, everything is fine again. This is not a masterpiece of its genre, though. There are some awful early CGI effects (the snake not really squeezing its victim's neck, the Windows 98 waterfall), some bad acting (the blonde assistant of Schiller is completely useless), some clichèd story bits and so on. But all in all, it's ok for TV entertainment and I rated it with an average 5 of 10.
This present day storyline is sharing the running time in equal parts with the events in Egypt thousands of years ago, where we learn how Mamosis wants to marry Lostris (Katrina Gibson) although she is in love with the warrior leader Tanis (Philip Rhys). A clever slave named Taita (Art Malik) helps his mistress to escape from the pharaoh while planning the tomb that our modern day heroes will search for. The link between the two storylines is the boy Hapi (Jeffrey Licon) who is the illegitimate son of Lostris, but adopted in our time by Royan due to some mystic snake god's basket travel arrangement (don't ask me how that worked).
Anyway, it a story that fills 250 minutes without too much boredom. The second of the three episodes seems to stretch the story a bit, when the heroes get captured and escape, just to be captured again and escape again. But by the third episode, when the race gets to its climax and deadly traps await the explorers, everything is fine again. This is not a masterpiece of its genre, though. There are some awful early CGI effects (the snake not really squeezing its victim's neck, the Windows 98 waterfall), some bad acting (the blonde assistant of Schiller is completely useless), some clichèd story bits and so on. But all in all, it's ok for TV entertainment and I rated it with an average 5 of 10.