Dawn of the Mummy
Anchor Bay Region2 DVD
Oh man, mummy movies usually have a lot of stuff I like: walking dead guys, curses, chicks, tana leaves and sand. All that stuff. Which brings us to Frank Agrama's (QUEEN KONG) mummy flick DAWN OF THE MUMMY. As with many of the Egyptian style mummy pictures, we start in ancient Egypt as the leader Serifaman is mummified. Flash forward to the present where a treasure hunter named Rick has discovered the location of the tomb of one Sarifiman. Rick tells his flunkies to guard the entrance and wait for his return but they try to go behind his back to get all the treasure, even after the crazy local lady was yelling "no, Serifaman will rise. Don't Open the tomb". After entering the tomb, their faces get all melty and they run off dripping flesh all the way.
Next up, a group of fashion models and their photographer arrive at the site, hoping to use it for a photo layout. Rick and his partner try to play it cool and not let on about the treasure, hoping the models and crew will leave. Myself, I hope they stay and get naked or something, preferably killed by a mummy. One girl does manage to spill what looks like an urnful of entrails on her hand causing some gross blisters. And just like real life, the models are annoying. We keep seeing little glimpses that the mummy is getting ready to get up and start doing shit but it's about forty minutes in before he does. I guess Serifman gets tired of waiting too, because he shows up to strangle the old crazy lady. The mummy himself looks pretty cool. He's wrapped up but sort of oily looking and pretty thin and decayed. When a victim of the mummy is found walking around with no face, they blame it on an animal attack so they can pad the picture out some more with talking. Many chances for gratuitous nudity come and go like a skinny dipping scene with no skinny. Maybe since it was shot in Egypt they couldn't include nudity, hell I don't know. Seems like a big price to pay when you could've just gone to Arizona, used Mexicans for Egyptians and saved on airfare. If you're gonna wait for an hour to get going,you really gotta have something to take the viewer's mind off the lack of mummy action, something like tits. By the way, I'm not really sure what the hell the mummy's name is but several people yell something that sounds like "Safiraman", so that's what I'm going with. So Rick finally finds the big treasure room and immediately starts with the "it's mine, all mine" and laughing maniacally which as you can imagine does not go well for him. In the interest of more padding, the photographer keeps saying "I just need two more shots" and continues to idle the plot. Meanwhile a big wedding party is under way nearby. Some of Serifaman's undead ghoul friends have clawed out of the sand, and are real fucking tired of everyone and everything. So about seventy five minutes in and we get a zombie type mummy chowdown. It's all very much sub Fulchi, maybe like BURIAL GROUND I suppose. It's fun and pretty high energy with a big body count which is fortunate since we had to wait awhile. The ghoul sidekick guys are pretty fast and mean, on top of hungry. Obviously the title DAWN OF THE MUMMY suggests the Romero DAWN OF THE DEAD and it does basically belong with the countless Italian knockoffs that followed that film. The last fifteen minutes are nice and grisly, so maybe you should flip through a skin mag or something during the buildup and just pay half attention til the mummy attack happens.