Blood From the Mummy's Tomb

Product Description

A British expedition team in Egypt discovers the ancient sealed tomb of the evil Queen Tera. But when one of the archaeologists steals a mysterious ring from the corpse's severed hand, he unleashes a relentless curse upon his beautiful daughter. Is the voluptuous young woman now a reincarnation of the diabolical sorceress or has the curse of the mummy returned to reveal its horrific revenge? One of Hammer's most notorious productions, BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB was plagued by the sudden deaths of director Seth Holt and the wife of original star Peter Cushing, leading to rumors of a real-life curse. Andrew Keir (QUATERMASS AND THE PIT) and the luscious Valerie Leon star in this supernatural shocker based on Bram Stoker's classic novel JEWEL OF THE SEVEN STARS. Includes a 4-Page Collector's Booklet. The first 10,000 copies will contain a free bonus DVD of THE HAMMER TRAILER COLLECTION.

System Requirements:
Starring: Andrew Keir, Valerie Leon, James Villiers
Director: Seth Holt
Producer: Howard Brandy
Running Time: 93 Min.

Format: DVD MOVIE

Customer Reviews:

I Wish You Were My Mummy.......2006-01-20

One of the last in a long line of Hammer horror films, 'Blood From the Mummy's Tomb' is not among the best. It doesn't possess the same depth and dimension of light and atmosphere that many of the early features are famous for. The footage is dull and drab throughout appearing as though it was filmed in an old abandoned warehouse. The set is also quite spartan, there certainly didn't seem to be much of a budget available for this feature.

However the one thing Hammer didn't jeopardize in this film was there reputation for having at least one beautiful, bosomy woman among their cast of characters. That woman is British actress Valerie Leon in the dual role of the soon to resurrected Queen Tera and Margaret, daughter of the archeologist/Egyptologist responsible for the discovery of Queen Tera's tomb and remains.

Neither scary or insightful, making it quite easy to pass on this one altogether if not for the presence of Valerie Leon on-screen.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb: The Mummy Film Based On A Stoker Book.......2006-01-09

TO: Hammer Film Fans

WARNING! SPIOLERS!

The Good:
This is a great film based on a Bram Stoker book (Jewel Of the Seven Stars). It dosen't actually have a waling mummy, wrapped up in cloth. Tera is a dark queen of egypt. When a man opens her grave, his wife dies, birthing his daughter. She also dies, but Tera lives inside her. Years later when she gets a ring, tera is relesed inside her, and a ritual to reunite tera with her body begins.

The Bad:
There is one pothedic scene where a cat statue kills a woman.

FROM: The Hammer Film Reveiwer

Who - - Or What - - Must Not Be Named.......2005-10-06

The bosomy young woman Margaret wakes up screaming from a nightmare. Her father Julian comes into her bedroom to comfort her. A scar across Margaret's right wrist makes it look like she has tried to slash it in the past. What could have driven this young woman, who lives alone with her father, to try to kill herself?

Julian gives Margaret a ring with seven stars in the shape of the Big Dipper reflected in it and makes her wear it "for protection." (This movie is based on Bram Stoker's novel Jewel of the Seven Stars and is better than the book.) Margaret and her father hold each other for just a little too long, and Julian looks just a little too longingly into Margaret's eyes.

Wearing the ring, Margaret belongs to her father in a way she hasn't until now. But this relationship must be doomed.

I've read that victims of incest sometimes feel like it's happening to someone else. Margaret really is someone else - - Tera, the uncorrupted beauty Julian stole from Egypt and now keeps hidden in his basement, the woman he sneaks away to look at every night, the woman he wishes his daughter was. (Of course Tera and Margaret are identical).

Decades ago Julian and a group of archeologists found Tera in her crypt, where she had been placed by ancient Egyptian priests who chopped off her right hand (to represent the unnamed "sin" she had committed) and left her to rot. But first they obliterated all reference to Tera, and left a message over her tomb that within lay "She Who Must Not Be Named."

But Tera is "above law and taboo" and it is the priests who die, while Tera waits in her tomb for Margaret to begin to dream of her once Margaret "comes of age." In other words, once Margaret is old enough for her father.

The scientists found Tera's preserved body with its perpetually bleeding right arm (Hammer films did this kind of thing very well) at the exact moment Margaret was being born in England. Both Margaret and her mother died, but once Tera was uncovered by Julian, the baby Margaret started breathing again.

Why did Julian leave his wife in England when she was about to give birth? Egyptian sarcophagi had waited thousands of years; they'd wait another few weeks. Why did he abandon his wife to search for the beautiful Tera, or whatever Tera represented to him? Was Julian tired of his wife already? Did he already want something more? Something strange? Something forbidden?

As Tera's personality gradually replaces Margaret's, she dreams of a "land far away" with "no scheming priesthood, no repressive or archaic laws, and love is the divine possession of the soul." A place where any love is permissible.

Now we may guess what at least one of Tera's sins was. At the moment Margaret's mother died, Margaret became her relplacement.

As Julian looks down at Tera's body, wanting her, you see his knowledge of the wrongness of it in his face. I think Andrew Keir (star of Quatermass and the Pit) - - fleshy, with a sensuous Scottish accent - - was better suited to this role than the thin and flinty Englishman Peter Cushing, who started work on Blood from the Mummy's Tomb but left after his wife died. (If Cushing had played the role, I wonder if I would have even thought about the idea of incest. Which leads to more questions - - did the filmmakers intend it or did that "taboo" come from the actors' performances?)

Margaret has a boyfriend who hits her at one point. Most of the men in her life now that she's a grown, sexually available woman brutalize her in one way or another. Her father is using her, as is one of Julian's old colleagues who wants to control Tera's evil power. (Margaret's boyfriend is named Tod Browning, for the director of Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Freaks. Sometimes in-jokes just take you out of the story and are unnecessary. In a film that doesn't pretend to be anything but a comedy, like Shaun of the Dead, it doesn't matter, but in a movie that takes its story seriously it's better to resist the urge. But to be fair, when this movie came out in 1972 fewer people may have even gotten the reference.)

Julian and Margaret are shown to be matched as a couple in another way. Tera has had her right hand cut off. Julian has a stroke that paralyzes the right side of his body, leaving him unable to use (especially to raise, if I'm not getting too Freudian) his right arm.

In the conflagration at the end, Margaret and her father almost kiss. They slowly come together and almost do it. But they resist and hold hands. In the end they have to accept that they're "as meaningless as all of the dead." (One thing I like about Hammer horror movies over some Universal pictures is that Hammer makes them tragedies. There's no redemption at the end.)

The last scene is chilling and finally makes Blood from the Mummy's Tomb a "mummy movie."

Great piece of late Hammer hokum.......2005-02-01

Plenty of blood and guts, by Hammer standards anyway, in this 1971 offering from the famous "House of Horror". The story concerns an Egyptian princess being reincarnated in modern-day London, thus giving plenty of scope for both contemporary and ancient elements.

A very stylish production is directed with plenty of atmosphere by stalwart Seth Holt (Taste of Fear, The Nanny), who sadly died before filming finished. James Villiers stands out for his sliminess as the central villain, where Valerie Leon stands out mainly for her ample bosom. A great cast also includes Andrew Keir and George Coulouris. The score by Tristram Cary (The Ladykillers, Quatermass and the Pit) is pivotal to the tension.

In-joke alert: Hammer afficianados should look out for the names on the sign outside Villier's house early on in the movie.

Jewel is Right.......2004-01-21

Bram Stoker's little known novella Jewel of the Seven Stars is filled with suspense, Egyptian lore, and just the right amount of sex appeal to lure you. The film takes advantage of that by giving you the visually stunning Leon as a focal point. Backdropped by richly colored Egyptian artifacts, and tinted with that just so shade of horror, this is one of those Hammer Films that you wish they had taken the storyline a little bit further just to see what happens next. Kind of makes you wonder if H.R.R. Ryder and Bram were friends, because Ryder's story which Hammer Films also did, with Ursula Andress as "She", are similiar in nature.

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