The flashback moves to the quarry and it’s rather obvious that all the desert scenes in this film were filmed in a small area of what is basically a sand pit, with no shots without any hilly surroundings. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cushing was unavailable and Hammer chose Turner to do it because of how similar his voice sounded. Now I’ve always thought that it was Peter Cushing whose voice we hear, as it really does sound like him, but actually it’s a guy called Tim Turner. The usual flashback here opens the film, as a narrator tells a story over some reasonably convincing Ancient Egyptian paintings which become some not-so-convincing sets. Reviews were pretty withering, but the double bill with Frankenstein Created Woman did good business. Stills exist of Andre Morell having gruesome makeup being applied to his head for a scene where his character’s bonce is crushed to a pulp by Prem, but the shot was removed from the finished print and seemingly without the BBCF requesting it. His appearance, different to the way most other movie mummies look with smaller bandages and shrouds, was based by makeup man Geroge Partleton on a genuine mummy in the British Museum, as was Kah-To-Bey – and I actually visited the place a year or so ago and thought I recognised them from a particular Mummy film or films but couldn’t place them! Filmed mostly in Bray with just one day spent shooting in a nearby quarry at Wapsey’s Wood, Gerrards Cross, The Mummy’s Shroud turned out to be the studio’s last picture to be shot there aside from special effects footage for Moon Zero Two and When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. While Dickie Owen, who had played the bandaged fiend in Hammer’s previous mummy picture, reappeared in this one as Prem in the opening flashback, it was stuntman and Christopher Lee’s double Eddie Powell who played Prem’s reanimated self. John Richardson was originally cast as Stanley’s son Paul, but for some reason was replaced by David Buck just a couple of days before shooting. Producer Anthony Hinds wrote an outline which was turned into a script by Gilling in just five days for what was another film in the eleven picture deal Hammer struck with 2oth Century Fox in connection with their long-time partners Seven Arts. It fails to rise above ‘B’ status, but certainly has its pleasures. It’s partly compensated for by some interesting human characters including possibly Michael Ripper’s greatest ever part for Hammer, more visual invention than director John Gilling usually went for, and some of Hammer’s best Mummy set pieces. It’s not really about anything else than the Mummy killing just a few people, and that’s not really enough for a film which is around an hour and a half and rather longer than the Universals which tended to move pretty fast. Existing somewhere between The Mummy and The Curse Of The Mummy’s Tomb in quality, The Mummy’s Shroud, even if it seems to derive a few ideas from the Tutankhuman affair, seems very constrained by its almost threadbare scenario which lacks the romantic aspects of the 1959 film and the crowded – if confused – plotting of the 1964 one. One thing I really like about these Hammer Mummy films as opposed to the Universal ones is that the victims tend to be killed off in a variety of ways as opposed to just strangulation – they really are proto-slasher movies. It’s a little surprising considering there are some vicious killings in it. I had to chuckle when I looked at my copy of The Mummy’s Shroud and noticed it was a ‘PG’, but then come to think of it so is Hammer’s The Mummy. Meanwhile, after being placed in the Cairo Museum, the mummy of Prem is revived when Hasmid chants the sacred oath on the shroud…. ![]() When Sir Basil is wounded by a snake just after finding the tomb, Preston commits him to an insane asylum to take credit for finding the tomb and the mummy himself. 1920: an expedition led by scientist Sir Basil Walden and businessman Stanley Preston has already unearthed the mummy of Prem and, ignoring a warning issued to them by local Bedouin Hasmid about the consequences for those that violate the tombs of Ancient Egypt and remove the bodies and the sacred shroud, soon finds Kah-To-Bey too. REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera, Official HCF CriticĪncient Egypt: Prem, a manservant of the boy prince Kah-To-Bey, spirits away the boy into the desert when his father the Pharoah Men-Ta is killed in a coup, but Kah-To-Bey dies and is buried. ![]() Starring: André Morell, David Buck, Elizabeth Sellars, John Phillips
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