Sorceress (1982)

In a rare break from tradition, the poster (also the DVD cover) for the Roger Corman-produced 1982 sword-and-sorcery flick Sorceress is actually surprisingly accurate.

All the characters pictured there - including the griffon/manticore creature, the ape-man, the snake and the fancy sword - really do appear in the story, to some degree or another.

However, it's been a long time since I've watched a movie that felt so much like its plot was being made up as it went along.

Evil sorcerer, and possible '70s sex cult leader, Traigon (Robert Ballesteros) has pledged to sacrifice his first born to the gods, in exchange for "great power". Only his wife gives birth to twin girls and refuses to reveal which was born first.

The realm's magical martial arts master Krona (Martin LaSalle) spirits the girls away, and leaves them in the care of trusted peasants, who raise them as boys!

Mira and Mara grow up to become Leigh and Lynette Harris, identical twin Playboy Playmates, who clearly weren't hired for their acting chops, but rather their willingness to disrobe when asked.

Honestly, they're young men... with breasts!

The girls - who think they are boys - are discovered skinny-dipping (of course!) by horny satyr Pando (David Milbern), the travelling companion of pseudo-Viking Baldar (Bruno Rey), who looks like he's stepped off the cover of a Dungeons & Dragons novel and spouts random Norse words as oaths.

Although Pando can only communicate through bleating and mime, he fails to tell Baldar that the girls are actually girls, so that when Baldar comes to them in the wake of their adopted parents' murder by Traigon's wandering warriors, he fails to see through their 'cunning disguise'.

Krona pops up again to dispense some words of wisdom, setting them all on a quest to defeat Traigon, before walking into the parents' pyre.

Arriving in the city, the adventurers meet an old friend of Baldar's, the pun-cracking, permed barbarian rogue, Erlick (Bob Nelson), who tags along to make up the numbers.

Casual nudity aside, there's a definite Dungeons & Dragons vibe to this yarn, as the core "party" expands, then fractures off into smaller units for side-quests, but it's also full of random fantasy names and verbiage that doesn't feel like world-building so much as obfuscation of the fragile main plot thread.

The Harris twins as Mira and Mara

Everything culminates in a grand fight in a crumbling temple - although there's a parallel, sub-surface dungeoncrawl by Baldar and one of the girls - which features explosions, duelling gods in the sky, and some pretty cool-looking zombie-mummy-ghouls that rise out of the ground to serve Traigon.

As the "two who are one", Mira and Mara share a psychic bond that is actually employed in the story, although it's most memorable use is during a 'comedy' sex scene that leads Baldar to initially think one of the women is being tortured.

Possibly because he is cosplaying as Sturm Brightblade from the Dragonlance Chronicles, Baldar, it has to be said, is the best character in the 83-minute movie, not only looking the part but also maintaining a heroic persona throughout.

For all its Corman-inspired cheapness, dodgy special effects, and musical score lifted from Battle Beyond The Stars, Sorceress does have an overall engaging look about it. As well as Baldar's 'authentic' costume, Traigon's forces all wear these (probably totally impractical) neat-looking beaked helmets, for instance.

Ultimately Sorceress (there is no 'sorceress' in this movie) isn't actually that bad, it just lacks a coherent story for its quirky characters to fully engage with, leaving much of what happens to come across as just a bit random.

SHOW ME: Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

Who's The Mummy? Katie (Natalie Grace)
Mummy's Love? n/a
Where? Egypt (Cairo/Aswan) & Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
How Long? 134 minutes

Television reporter Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor) is stationed in Cairo, Eygpt, with his pregnant wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), and their two young children, Katie (Emily Mitchell) and Sebastian (Dean Allen Williams).

Just as the family is preparing to move back to their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Charlie has a new job offer, Katie is kidnapped from their back garden by a mysterious woman known only as The Magician (Hayat Kamille).

The police investigation, led by a suspicious detective (Husam Chadat) and his English-speaking assistant Detective Dalia Zaki (May Calamawy), gets nowhere.

The story jumps ahead eight years and the Cannons are settled back in Albuquerque, sharing their house with Larissa's mother, Carmen (Veronica Falcon).

Katie's bedroom remains a shrine to her, while the other two kids, Sebastian (Shylo Molina)  and Maud (Billie Roy) still share a room.

However, in Egypt a small plane crashes outside of Aswan and in the wreckage is a 3,000-year-old black, basalt sarcophagus.

When opened by a pair of archaeologists, they are very shocked to discover it contains the mummified body of Katie (Natalie Grace) - still very much alive.

A brief aside here, because this issue crops up several times in Lee Cronin's The Mummy, but if the police had investigated the two men who had died in the plane crash, the story would have been a lot shorter. But, for some reason, this obvious angle is never pursued or even really mentioned again until the final act revelation of what's been going on this whole time.

Katie is, unsurprisingly, in a very bad way, and apparently in a locked-in state, yet her doctors in Cairo - without any real medical justification or investigation - tell her parents that the best "medicine" would be to take her home to Albuquerque!

Clearly that serves the movie, but - like ignoring the inconvenient aspects of the plane crash - makes no logical sense.

Determined not to rely on actual specialists or anything sensible like that, the Cannons bring their traumatised daughter back from Egypt and Carmen insists on caring for her daughter, pretty much on her own.

Meanwhile, journalist Charlie is determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Katie in those missing eight years.

However, as Katie begins to wake up it very quickly becomes clear that she is not the Katie her family remember.

There is something very wrong with her. And it starts to spread to other members of the family.

As Lee Cronin had written and directed one of my favourite horrors of recent years, Evil Dead Rise, I cannot express just how excited I was to learn that he would next be tackling my favourite classic monster archetype, the mummy.

Add to that the fact that during pre-release promotion for Lee Cronin's The Mummy he teased that he considered this to be - unofficially - set in the same world as the Evil Dead movies.

However, I was still expecting a "mummy" movie, not an in-your-face (albeit "unofficial", I guess) addition to the Evil Dead mythos.

Sure, mummification processes are involved - and mentioned once - but Lee Cronin's The Mummy is not a "mummy" movie as such, but way more a mix of Evil Dead with a side order of The Exorcist thrown in for good measure.

This is a film with demonic possession, levitation, telekinesis, corpse defilement, bodily transformation and decay, ceiling scuttling, and creepy voices, with quite a bit echoing Cronin's brilliant Evil Dead Rise.

For a pulpy horror the 134-minute runtime is too long and The Mummy starts very slowly and juddery, despite an intriguing pre-credit sequence.

However, it does gains momentum as the horrors escalate within the Cannon home.

The narrative then gets slightly confusing as it jumps all around the place, between America and Egypt, with different avenues of investigation being pursued, while the demon within Katie gradually spreads its evil to her young siblings.

I also found the prevalence of video cassettes and - more tellingly if this was all taking place in (as it appears) a contemporary, 21st Century setting - VHS players rather jarring.

Perhaps Charlie needed one for his job, but I do think - if that's the case - a passing comment might have it made it stand out less as a plot convenience.

Not as convenient, though, as Chekov's morse code: when we first meet Katie and Charlie he is testing her on morse code, apparently for a badge with the Egyptian eagle scouts or something. It's really obvious that this is IMPORTANT. Again, it's never explained, it's just some heavy-handed foreshadowing.

While the film is disappointing in general, with plot holes that if addressed could have shortened the movie, at least when it gets to the horror parts Cronin doesn't let us down, delivering twisted gore and putrescent body horror of the finest kind.

Not that I mind having my expectations subverted - this the horror genre after all - but when the subversion changes the subject into something else completely, it becomes rather bemusing.

I just wish, rather than saying he's making a "mummy" movie, Cronin had been allowed to make another Evil Dead movie, introducing the indestructible, family-hating,  Nasmaranian demon into that canon if he so wanted.

Because I really can't help feeling that's where it belongs. Kinda like Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday.

When I come to file my Blu-Rays, Lee Cronin's The Mummy will be sat next to my Evil Dead collection, rather than my Mummy movies.

Horror Movies and The Mandela Effect

Figuring Out My Mummy Issues

It's a definite truism - and a meme - that as you grow older people are less inclined to ask you your favourite dinosaur (it's a diplodocus, by the way) but I've realised the same is true for your favourite monster. Specifically the original Universal Monsters.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Not sure exactly why. 

I'm pretty certain my friend, the author Charles R Rutledge would say Dracula, but I really had to put my thinking head on before it struck me which monster I'm most fascinated by.

The Mummy.

Although my favourite old Universal monster movie is, of course, the marvellous Bride of Frankenstein, the actual Bride is only really on-screen for around five minutes.

However, The Mummy is ubiquitous in films, comics, games etc. 

I even did a whole series of Show Me The Mummy movie reviews... and am planning a second such collection of write-ups in due course.

The Mummy was also a key antagonist in both issues of my DIY comic, Monster Mag, that I created as a youngling. For instance, in the first issue it easily defeated the Hulk! You can find issue one here and issue two here. 

From the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Monster Manual, pg 72

And I've always been a fan of mummies as monsters in the old school Dungeons & Dragons games of my youth (really must bring them back at some point!).

There were some grand pyramid-themed dungeons in old issues of the Judges Guild magazines around at the time.

But all this has culminated in Rachel buying me a most incredible present the other day: the Ultimate Mummy action figure of Boris Karloff's portrayal in the the original 1932 film.

After thanking her profusely, I excitedly told her I now had an excuse to pick up the Ardath Bey figure and the sarcophagus accessory pack!

There is a rule (well, more of a guideline) in this house that my action figures are "tolerated" as long as they are not kept in their boxes, but put out on display.

However, at the moment, I'm so in awe of my Mummy figure that I can't bring myself to open it quite yet.

I also think I might have a new idea for a theme for my protracted castle tower project as well (inspired by the Egyptian Collection at Lord Carnarvon's Highclere Castle [aka Downtown Abbey])! 

Still Looking More Evil Dead Than Mummy, But...

While the trailers are still making Lee Cronin's The Mummy look more Evil Dead than Mummy, that doesn't mean I'm not rather excited for the possibilities of what this film has to offer.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy is poised to unwrap itself in British cinemas from April 17.

Are You My Mummy?

The young daughter of a journalist disappears into the desert without a trace -  eight years later, the broken family is shocked when she is returned to them, as what should be a joyful reunion turns into a living nightmare.

I wasn't sure about this iteration of The Mummy until I saw that trailer and got major Evil Dead vibes from it.

Lee Cronin, of course, directed the marvellous Evil Dead Rise, so that's not really surprising.

SUPERB OWL LX MOVIE TRAILERS

SUPERGIRL

THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU

DISCLOSURE DAY

SCREAM 7

MINIONS & MONSTERS

Are You My Mummy?

Writer/director Lee Cronin promises us a mummy film unlike anything we've seen before. Is that a good thing? Let's wait and see...

Darkman (1990)

Gruff action star and hardman Liam Neeson stars in Sam Raimi's Darkman as Peyton Westlake, an up-and-coming scientist on the verge of creating 3D printable replacement skin.

Unfortunately, Peyton's lab - with him in it - gets trashed and torched by a gang of mobsters looking for an incriminating memorandum that his attorney girlfriend, Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand), has acquired.

Presumed dead, Peyton's body is fished out the river and given an experimental treatment, administered by - of all people - a surprise, and uncredited, cameo appearance by the lovely Jenny Agutter.

This grants the disfigured scientist increased strength and makes him immune to pain, but also means he's prone to fits of berserk anger.

Waking up, Peyton breaks free and returns to the ruins of his lab, where he somehow salvages enough equipment to resume his experiments in replacement skin growth.

With his new abilities, he begins to exact his revenge on the mobsters, who are led by the iconic figure of the late Larry Drake as Robert G Durant.

Durant happens to work for Julie's boss, Louis Strack Jr. (Colin Friels), a corrupt property developer looking to transform the city into his own vision of the 'city of tomorrow'.

Peyton's lab-made skin can only last 99 minutes in sunlight, but he realises that as well as helping to rebuild his own face, he can now impersonate anyone he chooses... as long as he has enough photographs of them to build up a 3D image in his computer.

Before he plunged headfirst into the world of superhero movies with his classic Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s, Sam Raimi tested the waters in 1990 with Darkman, his inspired horror spin on the pulp antihero, The Shadow.

However, Darkman also blends in elements of classic, tragic creations from the black-and-white era of creature features, such as The Invisible Man, The Phantom of The Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Frankenstein's monster.

There's even sprinklings of The Incredible Hulk in the mix, with the stylised sequences of the scientist's raging anger and then his sad farewell to Julie at the end when he finally adopts the moniker of Darkman, merging into the crowd wearing the face of Bruce Campbell (another great cameo in a film loaded with them).

Based on Raimi's own story, with a script he helped co-write with Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi (Sam's brother), Daniel Goldin, and Joshua Goldin, director Sam Raimi created a visually-striking 'superhero' in Darkman, who operates intelligently from the shadows, resorting only to violence in the action-packed grand finale of the 96-minute movie.

While not quite as inventive - or gonzo - as his game-changing Evil Dead movies, Darkman still manages to capture Raimi's delightfully twisted sense of humour.

The "experimental treatment" Peyton receives as a near-dead John Doe is a bit random and never really explained (or revisited), but then again once you accept the weird science of Peyton's DIY replacement skin you know you're in for a wild, pulpy ride where things don't have to make 100 per cent sense to be fun and entertaining.

Two direct-to-video sequels came out in the mid-90s - Darkman II: The Return of Durant and Darkman III: Die Darkman Die - although it will surprise no one that Neeson didn't return as the titular hero, being replaced by The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo, and Sam Raimi took a producing role, leaving the directing to TV director Bradford May.

I will, of course, now be tracking them down (there's a Blu-Ray box set on Amazon with the full trilogy).

SHOW ME: The Mummy (2017)

Who's The Mummy? Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet
Mummy's Love? Tom Cruise as Nick Morton
Where? Iraq, England, Egypt (in flashbacks)
How Long? 110 minutes

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I can't tell you how much I wanted to like this, to stand resolute in the face of the complete critical condemnation the latest iteration of The Mummy disappeared under upon its cinematic release.

But it really is that bad. It's a mess of unnecessarily repetitive exposition; over-the-top special effects sequences that are there only for inclusion in the trailers, serving no plot purpose whatsoever; a surfeit of bland characters; and a story of jumbled random encounters that made me think the writing team had simply transcribed a 13-year-old's Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Tom Cruise is the nominal protagonist, Nick Morton, an amoral and opportunistic treasure hunter who uses his military career as a smoke-screen to loot valuable artefacts from war zones. Yeah, a real stand-up guy we can all instantly emphasise with!

I think we're supposed to like him purely based on the fact he's played by Tom Cruise. Sadly, that isn't enough.

Using a map stolen from British archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), a character so one-dimensional she almost doesn't exist, Nick and his buddy Sergeant Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) stumble upon an unusual ancient Egyptian burial site in Iraq.

The sarcophagus of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) is retrieved and loaded onto a cargo plane. En route to London, Chris is possessed by evil spirits and killed, returning as a ghost that only Nick can see in a Griffin Dunne in American Werewolf In London sort of deal.

The plane suffers the mother of all bird strikes and crashes in the English countryside.

Nick miraculously survives the experience without a scratch. It seems he has been "cursed" by Ahmanet to be her "Chosen One".

There's a chase sequence involving Nick and Jenny in an ambulance, escaping Ahmanet and her newly-raised zombie followers.

This ends with Ahmanet being captured and our "heroes" being whisked off to London to meet Jenny's boss, Dr Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) of the Prodigium, a super-secret monster-hunting organisation located under the Natural History Museum.

The Prodigium want to dissect and study Ahmanet, but before they can she escapes and wreaks havoc on London, trying to recover a crucial gem hidden in a knight's tomb, recently unearthed by the Crossrail excavations.

Ahmanet needs the gem to complete a ritual that involves sacrificing her Chosen One (ie Nick) with a magical dagger that will then summon the Ancient Egyptian god Set.

Nick, however, comes up with a cunning plan to thwart Ahmanet's schemes... by doing exactly what she wants!

The Mummy is all over the place. There are traces of a good idea in there, but somewhere along the development process it clearly got away from the film-makers and took on a monstrous life of its own.

There's a definite whiff of the pulp genre's freewheeling disregard for logic in service of a rollickin' story here, but that style's bravura exuberance is replaced with generic corporate clichés.

A sterling example of film-making by committee, the fingerprints of the suits and money-men are all over The Mummy, leaving the unavoidable sensation that an eye-catching trailer was made first - to sell the concept to the general public - and then a film was assembled around that.

Outside of the unengaging leads, you have an antagonist with seemingly god-like powers, able to do pretty much whatever she wants - when it suits the plot - while conversely seeming impotent when it serves the plot.

For instance, one minute she's having to create zombie followers one at a time, by killing people and giving them a "kiss of life", and the next she can raise a horde out of thin air with just a wave of her hand.

There's so much material crammed in this 110 minute movie, clearly with the aim of laying the groundwork for Universal's proposed Dark Universe 'shared world' of monster movies, that even though the time flys by surprisingly quickly you can't help seeing large chunks that could easily have been left on the cutting room floor.

Russell Crowe is wasted as Dr Jekyll, whose outburst as Mr Hyde is - like so much here - pointless and Tom Cruise just phones it in, playing Tom Cruise at his least engaging. His performance is about as far away from his charming best as imaginable.

More an action-adventure funfair ride than a horror movie, the true horror of The Mummy is that anyone involved in releasing this into the wild ever thought it was a competent, coherent, movie in the first place.

SHOW ME: Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Who's The Mummy? Eddie Parker as Klaris
Mummy's Love? n/a - no romantic sub-plot
Where? Egypt
How Long? 79 minutes

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are a pair of American chancers stuck in Egypt looking to earn a quick buck and passage back to the States. They learn of Dr Gustav Zoomer's (Kurt Katch) discovery of the mummy of Klaris and his desire to hire a couple of men to escort his precious cargo back to the United States.

Marie Windsor as Madame Rontru

However, before they can talk to him about the job opportunity, the archaeologist is murdered and Abbott & Costello find themselves caught between the machinations of a group of criminals, fronted by the exotic Madame Rontru (Marie Windsor), and Klaris-worshipping cultists, led by led by Semu (Richard Deacon).

Our hapless heroes come into possession of a cursed amulet, which Costello finds among the dead doctor's possessions. This amulet is the key to the location of the treasure-packed tomb of Princess Ara, which the living mummy Klaris is supposed to guard.

Sadly, Abbott & Costello's 1950's slapstick shtick hasn't aged well - growing tiresome quite quickly - and the comedy of misdirection, misunderstanding, and mistaken identity has frayed round the edges worse than the mummy's bandages.

There's a restaurant routine where Bud and Lou are trying to pass off the cursed amulet to each other that comes across as really forced and a later serving of rapid-fire wordplay around "pick" and "shovel" only reminds us how brilliant Who's On First? was.

And pity poor Eddie Parker as Klaris, stumbling around like a man in a baggy onesie, a victim of the "too slow to be scary" editorial decision that blighted several earlier mummy movies.

While it's only 79 minutes long, but the limply-scripted Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy seems much longer, almost interminable at times.

Bizarrely, although their characters are supposedly called Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, respectively, Abbott and Costello refer to each other as Abbott and Costello throughout the film.

This was the last movie they made with Universal, and I can't help feeling that their heart wasn't in it.

I'll admit I know next-to-nothing about Abbott & Costello, so that's pure baseless speculation on my part but as a comedy-horror Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy is neither terrifying or particularly amusing.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Curse (1944)

Who's The Mummy? Lon Chaney as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Virginia Christine as Princess Ananka
Where? Louisiana, Egypt (in flashbacks)
How Long? 60 minutes

Bizarrely, while following on from the events of The Mummy's Ghost, the New England swamp that Kharis carried his beloved into at the end of the earlier movie has now moved to Louisiana... without any explanation.

Which is odd because The Mummy's Curse not only features the usual flashback retelling of the mummy's origin but also features archaeologists from the Scripps Museum (as last time) and references to the previous efforts to return Kharis and Princess Ananka to Egypt.

Work to drain the swamp is being held up by superstitious workmen, fearful of the curse of the mummy after he disappeared there 25 years earlier (yes, another massive time jump as well).

Never fear though as Dr James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe), from the Scripps Museum, arrive to retrieve the bodies of Kharis and Ananka.

Hiding in plain sight, Zandaab is actually the latest High Priest of Arkam with his own designs on the mummy, assisted by the slimy Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), one of the work crew who is also a disciple of Arkam.

Virginia Christine

The story takes an interesting twist when a bulldozer disturbs the resting place of the mummy of Ananka (Virginia Christine), which rises from the swamp and eventually, after bathing, reveals itself to be a very attractive woman.

Ananka's memory is a bit hazy, but she is taken by Cajun Joe (Kurt Katch) to the nearby café run by Tante Berthe (Ann Codee). Unfortunately, Kharis lumbers in and kills Berthe as Ananka runs away.

The lovely Ananka is later found by the side of the road by Dr Halsey and Betty Walsh (Kay Harding), the secretary of the work crew and niece of Pat Walsh (Addison Richards), head of the swamp clearance project.

There's a hysterically funny sequence as Kharis lumbers slowly towards Betty, then Dr Halsey's car, but they manage to get away with Ananka, totally oblivious to the presence of the mummy.

In their care, Ananka starts to come to her senses, and is later able to help Dr Halsey with his research, seemingly possessing an in-depth knowledge of Ancient Egypt.

Kharis, again, comes for Ananka, whisking her away to a nearby ruined monastery, where Zandaab has set up his base of operations.

Betty, looking for the missing woman, is lured to the monastery by Ragheb, who tries to force himself on her, but is interrupted by Zandaab, who ends up dead in the ensuing melee.

Halsey then turns up and tackles Ragheb, until Kharis intervenes, driven by Ragheb's betrayal of his oath. The two former allies fight until Kharis brings down the walls and ceiling of the monastery on them!

Meanwhile, too late to save the missing woman they had been looking for, Halsey, Betty, and the rest of the mob (there's always a mob) from the work site find the mummified remains of Ananka in an adjoining room.

The Mummy's Curse was the last outing for Lon Chaney Jnr in the monster role and the last 'proper' mummy movie from Universal for quite some time.

Strange plot decisions aside, the film's a mix of interesting ideas (bringing Ananka to life, presumably in the rejuvenated body of Amina Mansori from The Mummy's Ghost, for instance) and over-the-top, melodramatic, hammy, acting (sadly the beautiful Virginia Christine is rather prone to this).

It's also retreading very familiar ground - even with the unexplained location switch - of evil cult priests trying to return Kharis and Ananka to Egypt, so it's easy to see why Universal didn't bother to keep the franchise alive any longer.

The trouble with Kharis, once you accept the the horror of his having been buried alive and then kept alive by tana leaves, is that he is painfully slow, and has only one functioning hand (his right arm has remained largely immobile through all the movies to date, except when he's needed to carry someone).

As clearly demonstrated in the scene with Dr Halsey's car, unless Kharis can back his prey into a corner or paralyse them with fear, as presented, he isn't really much of a threat anymore.

The Mummy wouldn't return for 11 years and then it was in the comedy Abbot & Costello Meet The Mummy.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Who's The Mummy? Lon Chaney as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Ramsay Ames as Amina Mansori/Ananka
Where? Egypt, America (Mapleton)
How Long? 60 minutes

In Egypt, the ageing High Priest of Arkam (Karnak in the previous films), tasks Yousef Bey (John Carradine) with retrieving the living mummy Kharis (who has somehow survived the conflagration at the end of the last movie) and the body of Princess Ananka.

However, back in the States, at a university in Mapleton, Massachusetts, the mummy's rampage is being taught as fact by Professor Matthew Norman (Frank Reicher), who later recreates the tana leaves recipe and accidentally summons Kharis... who breaks his neck!

Yousef Bey arrives in town just as the authorities are whipping up the mob for another mummy hunt, so he contacts Kharis and they head to the Scripps Museum where Ananka's mummified corpse is on display.

Unexpectedly, when Kharis goes to remove Ananka's body from its sarcophagus, it disintegrates because her soul has left it and transferred itself to the nearest young Egyptian woman, Amina Mansori (Ramsay Ames), girlfriend of the odious and condescending student Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery).

As a witness to Professor Norman's murder, she's already been told not to leave town, but Tom knows better and has plans to take her to his family in New York for some rest and recuperation.

Following up on the break-in (and murder of a guard) at the museum, as well as the professor's death, big city police inspector Walgreen (Barton MacLane) hits on the idea of - with the assistance of the museum's Dr Ayad (Lester Sharp) - of luring the mummy back to Professor Norman's house, with the tana leaves concoction, and trapping it in a ten foot pit!

But Kharis and Bey have other ideas, and kidnap Amina Mansori.

Unfortunately, once again, as we've seen with frightening regularity in these films, the priest ends up falling for Amina and decides, instead of returning her to Egypt as he was supposed to, that he's going to use the magical leaves to grant both her and him eternal life so they can run away together (not that she ever consents to any of this nonsense).

Kharis isn't best pleased with this turn of events and kills Bey, before making off towards nearby swampland with Amina's unconscious - and rapidly ageing - body, pursued by a mob of locals led by Tom Hervey and the police.

Events then take an unexpectedly dark turn as the film dives headlong into a messed up, nihilistic ending with the mob standing impotently by as Kharis (still with Amina's body, now a grey-haired husk) walks into the swamp.

Although stricken with some am-dram-level acting (Robert Lowery, I'm looking at you in particular) as well as a penchant for recycling plenty of plot points from previous Mummy movies, The Mummy's Ghost stands out for its unremittingly bleak ending.

How did Kharis survive the fire at the end of The Mummy's Tomb? Who knows? Magic reasons, probably.

It's also the slimmest of justifications for calling this film The Mummy's "Ghost", but then all the adventures after the original seem to have been gifted with totally random - and meaningless - names.

It's best not to overthink it.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

Who's The Mummy? Lon Chaney as Kharis (Tom Tyler in flashbacks)
Mummy's Love? Elyse Knox as Isobel Evans
Where? North America (Egypt in flashbacks)
How Long? 60 minutes

Three decades have passed since the events of The Mummy's Hand (possibly making this a futuristic sci-fi yarn, although fashions etc remain in a 1940s bubble!) and in his Mapleton, Massachusetts, home an aged Steve Banning (Dick Foran) recounts the events of the previous movie to a captive audience, including his son, Dr John Banning (John Hubbard) and John's girlfriend, Isobel Evans (Elyse Knox).

Given that The Mummy's Tomb is only an hour long, a good ten minutes is taken up at the start reliving The Mummy's Hand, with plenty of footage from that film used for the flashbacks.

We then learn that both Andoheb (George Zucco) and the mummy, Kharis (Lon Chaney Jnr), survived their encounter with the American archaeologists, but, for reasons unknown, have waited 30 years to get their revenge.

Like the high priest of Karnak before him, Andoheb passes on his secrets, and mission, to his apprentice: Mehemet (Turhan Bey). Mehemet takes the mummy by sea to America to exact revenge on the members of the expedition that defiled the tomb of Princess Ananka.

Banning goes first, and his death draws his old friend 'Babe' Hanson (Wallace Ford) to come and pay his respects to his old friend. No, I don't know why Babe's surname has changed between films, but in my headcanon it's probably got something to do with a dodgy deal he got tangled up with and trying to avoid creditors. That said, a seemingly random journalist recognises him by sight and knows his name.

Thankfully, the years have mellowed Babe and he's not the annoying character he was in the last movie. He quickly guesses who killed Banning, but no-one believes him... until he, too, is killed.

By this time, Doctor John has received a military commission, but before he goes to take up his new position he plans to marry Isobel.

However, the first time Mehemet sees her (while spying on John, the last of the Banning bloodline) he falls in lust and commands Kharis to kidnap the maiden, so he can threaten her with the usual deal: to be given an immortal life and live out her years as the slave-bride of the high priest.

The Mummy's Tomb is so bad it's actually rather funny, from the drawn-out opening, through some hilariously bad detective work (check out the scientist burying the lede on his examination of a piece of cloth found in the grounds of the Banning household... after going on and on about mold and chemical traces, he just happens to mention the 'hieroglyph' on the cloth that matches one found in the tomb of Princess Ananka!) right up to the overzealous mob that end up burning down the house Dr John has just inherited from his father.

And let's not overlook the unquestioned racism that stirs up the mob in the first place: simply because the new caretaker of the nearby cemetery is Egyptian he MUST be connected to the mummy murders, and so it's okay for 30 or 40 men armed with burning torches and guns to head over there to confront him.

Of course, he is responsible. It's Mehemet after all. But that's rather beside the point.

Although, in all honesty, it made no difference to my eyes, cinematic legend Lon Chaney Jnr took over the monster role of Kharis with this movie, and would continue portraying the character through the following two sequels to The Mummy's Tomb.

The mummy is still only using one hand and sporting a full head of hair, although greased back. While it's impressive - and indicative of the creature's strength - that the mummy does all his killing with a single hand, the hair really bugs me as it simply looks wrong.

I guess this is another magical side-effect of the sacred tana leaves.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Who's The Mummy? Tom Tyler as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Peggy Moran as Marta Solvani
Where? Egypt
How Long? 67 minutes

Rather than a sequel to the original Mummy movie, The Mummy's Hand was a re-imagining and it was this film that spawned several B-movie sequels.

In late 1930's Egypt, washed-up archaeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his incredibly irritating (and casually racist) 'comedy' sidekick Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) come upon clues to the location of the undiscovered tomb of Princess Ananka.

Unable to raise the funds for a proper expedition from academic sources, they go into partnership with travelling stage magician The Great Solvani aka Tim Sullivan (Cecil Kellaway), and head out with Sullivan's daughter, Marta (Peggy Moran) in tow.

Little do they realise that the tomb of Ananka, in the Hill Of The Seven Jackals, is guarded by a sleazy priest (George Zucco), who has been masquerading as antiquities professor Andoheb and - through the use of sacred tana leaves - has control of the living mummy of Ancient Egyptian Kharis (Tom Tyler) to protect Ananka's final resting place.

Devoid of the subtle menace of the original, The Mummy's Hand has a grating slapstick quality to it thanks almost entirely to the presence of the Babe character, although the surfeit of magical tricks from The Great Solvani outstay their welcome as well.

Coming in at just over an hour, there's hardly time to develop a story, but The Mummy's Hand does alright in that department by sacrificing depth and sub-plots on the altar of pulp adventure.

What this film does bring to the franchise though is the iconic imagery of lumbering, bandage-draped, mummy - especially when he is carrying Marta's unconscious body into the temple.

Before the Brendan Fraser action romps of the early 2000s, this was how the general public perceived cinematic mummies - in much the same way they believe all zombies crave brains, even though that's not part of that creature's formative mythology as set out in George Romero's movies, but rather an element from the comedy horror of 1980's Return Of The Living Dead series.

Unlike The Mummy, there's no great time-crossed love story in The Mummy's Hand, even though belatedly skeevy Andoheb reveals a plan to kill and resurrect both himself and Marta so they can be lovers for all eternity (a plan she is most definitely not okay with, as she only has eyes for square-jawed Steve).

The Mummy's Hand also uses more exteriors than The Mummy, although our first view of the temple on the Hill of the Seven Jackals, when Andoheb is summoned by the dying High Priest of Karnak (Eduardo Ciannelli), is laughably un-Egyptian.

And, although unconnected with the earlier movie, it does feature footage from it: most notably when recounting the backstory of Kharis where it uses much of the silent 'film-within-a-film' from The Mummy (that explained Imhotep's story), but re-edited with Tom Tyler instead of Boris Karloff and tana leaves instead of The Scroll of Thoth.

SHOW ME: The Mummy (1932)

Who's The Mummy? Boris Karloff as Ardath Bey and Imhotep
Mummy's Love? Zita Johann as Helen Grosvenor and Ankh-es-en-amon
Where? Egypt
How Long? 73 minutes

In the 1920s a British Museum expedition to Egypt unearths an unusual mummy, that of Imhotep seemingly mummified with his organs intact and buried alive, next to a 'cursed' casket containing a magical Scroll of Thoth.

An impetuous young member of the expedition tries to transcribe the scroll, awakening the mummy. The sight of the lumbering creature drives him insane and then the mummy disappears into the desert with the scroll.

A decade later, another British museum expedition is led to the burial site of priestess Ankh-es-en-amon, by mysterious - and slightly sinister - local businesman Ardath Bey (Boris Karloff).

Once Ankh-es-en-Amon is secure in the Cairo Museum, Ardath Bey (who is really Imhotep, the resurrected mummy, as if you couldn't guess) uses the Scroll of Thoth to try and bring his love back to life.

It is later revealed that pharaoh's son Imhotep was madly in love with the priestess back in the day and when she died of natural causes at a young age, he stole the magical scroll to try and resurrect her, but was discovered and sentenced - by Amenophis, his father - to be buried alive, along with the scroll, so that no one else could ever use that again.

However, it turns out that Ankh-es-en-Amon's soul has been through a constant cycle of rebirth and is currently residing in the body of Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), who is staying in Cairo with the elderly Doctor Muller (Edward Van Sloan), and has caught the eye of walking plank Frank Whemple (David Manners), the son of the original archaeological expedition leader.

Using his Ancient Egyptian magic, Imhotep plans to ensnare Helen Grosvenor, kill her, and then bring her back to life using the scroll, so they can be together forever.

One of the more subtle of Universal's classic monster movies, the original Mummy film is moody and pacy; as with most genre movies of that era it doesn't hang around and gets on with its story quick sharp.

It's more psychological than out-and-out horror, playing on Lovecraftian themes of fear of the unknown, dark magics, loss of self-control etc

Karloff is, of course, magnificently memorable as Ardath Bey/Imhotep and Zita Johann impresses as the flighty socialite that shows she has backbone, while the lusty and overbearing Frank is held at bay by magical forces.

Despite our common perceptions of "the mummy" as a shambling bandaged member of the undead, that version of the creature is barely seen - just briefly after his initial, accidental, resurrection - but then for the bulk of the film, he is the towering, but well-spoken, figure of Ardath Bey.

Bey even has his own 'secret headquarters' in the backstreets of Cairo, decked out in Ancient Egyptian style, complete with a scrying pool, through which he is able to cast spells at unsuspecting targets.

Never Sleep Again - The Elm Street Legacy (2010)

If you are at all 'into' the Nightmare On Elm Street series of horror films - as I am - then you owe it to yourself to seek out the incredible documentary Never Sleep Again - The Elm Street Legacy.

Although clearly a labour of love, this FOUR HOUR documentary isn't a straight lovefest for the franchise, but a proverbial 'warts-and-all' behind-the-scenes insight into the making of the series, chronicling the highs and lows, the conflicts, the cut corners etc offering an unrivalled insight into the world of low-budget movie making.

Running parallel to the main arc of the documentary is the story of how A Nightmare On Elm Street effectively 'made' New Line Cinema, the company that would eventually bring us Peter Jackson's magnificent Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Each movie - from the original through to Freddy Vs Jason, and embracing the short-lived TV spin-off, Freddy's Nightmares - gets its own chapter, with a wonderful stop-motion animation bumper, and is packed to bursting point with talking heads of the majority of the main actors and movie crew, unseen footage and photographs etc

Unsurprisingly, Johnny Depp and Patricia Arquette (whose careers began in the franchise) are conspicuous by their absence, as is Peter Jackson (who wrote a draft of one of the later movies), but there are so many other - more than 100 - interesting interviewees with great things to say that you don't really mind (and didn't really expect them anyway).

For instance, I'm far more interested in Wes Craven's opinions of the sequels to his classic original or his insights into the post-modern brilliance of Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and Robert Englund (the one and only Freddy Krueger) is always good value for money.

Of particular interest are the revelations that several of the films were effectively 'made-up-as-they-went-along' as directors and crew raced to hit pre-determined release dates with unfinished scripts - which, I guess, explains the "dream-like" quality of some of the stories!

Narrated by Heather Langenkamp (aka Freddy's nemesis Nancy from the movies), the film also examines Freddy's transformation from child-murdering supervillain into cartoon cultural icon, and various attempts to reclaim the character as a genuine figure of fear.

The two-DVD set includes a disc of extras as fascinating as the main feature covering topics such as the Freddy Krueger comics and novels, hardcore fans (Fred Heads) and a tour of the movie locations used in the original Nightmare On Elm Street.

Insightful and entertaining, Never Sleep Again is the ultimate, definitive insight in to one of the truly iconic figures of horror cinema, who now ranks alongside Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy and The Wolfman in the psyche of horror-loving film fans.

The Invisible Man (2020)

Two weeks after escaping the high-security home of her abusive, controlling, husband, Cecilla (Elisabeth Moss) learns he has killed himself.

However, as strange things start to happen in her life, she begins to suspect that the genius optics entrepreneur has actually faked his own death and really found a way to turn himself invisible!

This is something he had taunted her with in the past, saying then he could always keep an eye on her.

Has he done this? Or has he just got it into her head that he could do this? One final mind-game from beyond the grave...

Of course,  we, the audience, know that - given the title of the movie - Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) has somehow achieved his devious ambition, although Cecilla's friends and family refuse to accept her wild claims and we see her grasp on sanity slowly slipping away.

Written and directed by horror veteran Leigh Whannell, Universal's new spin on The Invisible Man is the terrifying sci-fi horror that could relaunch its aborted "Dark Universe", where Tom Cruise's The Mummy failed so spectacularly.

Sure, there are a couple of moments that stretch credibility, like Cecilla's cop friend, James Lanier (Leverage's Aldis Hodge), being allowed to sit in on her interrogation when she is framed for murder, and Cecilla finding Adrian's mobile phone, complete with incriminating pictures, and not sharing it with anyone.

But overall, this is a near-perfect masterpiece of escalating tension, psychological horror, and the terrifying possibilities of weird science.

The film was off to a good start with its leads. Elisabeth Moss and Aldis Hodge are excellent in everything I've seen them do, but Whannell brings an attention to detail (barring minor hiccups mentioned above) that escalate the creep factor to near-breaking point.

He wisely avoids a lot of 'floating objects held by invisible person' gimmicks, and instead, generally goes, at least initially, for subtler, more disturbing, effects that you might not even catch first time round.

I'm sure I missed some things.

The other clever aspect of this iteration of the well-known HG Wells story is that it is told entirely from Cecilla's perspective; Griffin - the demented supervillain of the piece - is barely seen or heard until the final act.

As well as a straight forward horror movie, The Invisible Man also works as frightening portrait of an abusive relationship, highlighting the incredulity and disbelief that Cecilla's allegations about her "dead husband" are met with.

This carries right through to the final act, after a surprise twist that could be seen to put Cecilla in the clear actually makes her situation worse.

Engrossing and psychologically disturbing, The Invisible Man is an impressive, contemporary, take on a classic sci-fi story, and well worth two hours of your time.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Monster Mag #2

Don't say I'm not a man of my word. Although it seems like only hours from when I 'promised' I'd scan the second issue of my childhood DIY comic from 1976, there was actually a three year gap between the two tasks!

Anyway, here it is... in all its badly drawn and misspelt glory.

Unfortunately, since I scanned the first issue back in 2020, the Sellotape that held the fragile pages of issue two together had lost its "stick" and as I picked it up and moved it to the scanner the pages came away in my hands.

Now, I hope I've scanned them all in the right order. The child-logic of my writing made the narrative a bit hard to follow, but I think I've got it.

Again, it's all about the chaotic adventures of my character, The Ray-Kid, teaming up with random Marvel characters such as Nick Fury, Dr Strange and Iron Man, while fighting The Hulk, a villain called Magno The Great (I suspect I was unsure about how to spell Magneto), and an assortment of horror film monsters, such as The Blob, Frankenstein's Monster, and The Mummy.

For some reason, the Marvel heroes, and I think Ray-Kid, are a team called The Inflans!

No, no clue, sorry...

For a more in-depth background on my self-published comic you need to jump back to the original post here.

I was certainly no budding Jack Kirby (although I was, unknowingly, influenced by his work in the British reprint titles of the time).

It's easy to see why, later on, one of my art teachers at Skinners' would describe me as "the most artistically inept pupil he'd ever taught", but I like to think the two issues of Monster Mag have an innocent charm about them.

Sadly (or maybe not) this was the last issue of this comic ever produced, even though it ends with the proclamation that the next would feature a "great comp", by which I guess I meant "competition", although I have no idea what the prize could possibly have been!

And everything ends with the most gripping of cliffhangers: "Will The Hulk Drop The Tank? Find Out Next Week..."

Now here are (finally, and hopefully in the right order) the two stories contained within Monster Mag #2 (cover date, sometime in early 1976) - When The Blob Hits, He Hits Hard and The Beginning of The End.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Monster Mag #1

I've finally got round to scanning in the first of my treasured self-made Monster Mag comics, written and drawn by yours truly when I was only nine.

Self-published, with a print run of one, I thought I had lost these treasures from 1976, so when I found them last year after we had moved I couldn't believe my good fortune.

Fragile homemade artefacts, held together with sellotape older than Rachel (honestly, she wasn't even born when I drew these comics), I carefully scanned issue one this week and cast a critical eye over my work.

I was clearly influenced by the oddly-shaped, art-distorting, black-and-white British reprint titles, such as The Titans, which explains the horizontal page orientation of Monster Mag, and quite possibly the prevalence of Marvel characters within its pages (Thor, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury to name but a few).

These big hitters were mixed in with characters of my own creation, such as the delightfully cheesy Ray-Kid, who, without his protective helmet, found his entire head transformed into ball of energy.

The presence of several Universal monsters (the Wolf-man, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, and the Invisible Man) also seems quite random, as I have no idea how I glommed on to them.

Perhaps I was watching those movies far earlier than I remember.

Given that I believe it was my gran who took me to see The Amazing Mr Blunden at the cinema around this time, and scarred me for life with a hypersenstive fear of dying in a house fire, it's quite possible that she was letting me watch Universal horror movies on her black-and-white TV as well (along with the Saturday afternoon wrestling that preceded Doctor Who).

I think it was also my gran who wrote the date (February 26, 1976) on a couple of the pages, because that's clearly not my handwriting, and I have a vague recollection that I drew these comics during a couple of my regular Saturday sleepovers at her house.

Please enjoy the dreadful drawing and appalling spelling of Monster Mag #1:

I, now, just have to scan in issue two...