scripsi

When I was about twelve, Swedish television aired a number of old horror movies during a summer. I was allowed to watch Dracula, Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Bride, The Werewolf, The Mummy and The Monster From the Black Lagoon with my parent’s, but they vetoed The Portrait of Dorian Grey. Very wise of them, because I snuck out of bed and watched it on the sly and was deeply traumatized by the ending. And I couldn’t tell them, because they had told me to go to bed. But the lasting expression was an obsession with vampires and a deep love for old horror movies. I don’t care about modern horrors at all, what I want is those hammy movies that was made in the 1930’s-60’s.

The Mummy’s Shroud, a Hammer Horror movie from 1967 fits the bill perfectly, but I hadn’t actually seen it before, I hunted it out when because Roger Delgado is in it. It’s set in 1920 (lucky they tell us as everyone ins dressed in 60’s clothing) when an expedition find the tomb of a child pharaoh, buried in the desert by his faithful servant. They bring him back to Cairo, displaying him alongside the mummy of that very servant. The tomb also has a very living guardian who, with the help of the shroud in the title, resurrects the servant who then kills off all the members of the expedition apart from the hero and heroine.

It’s a typical Hammer Horror and not one of the best. And with modern views on how it is not comme il faut to rob a country by its artefacts I couldn’t muster up much sympathy for the expedition. I could actually feel rather for the mummy. He had gone to great length to make protect his pharaoh and then they are both put on display at a museum. Protective mummy is protective and should have kudos for that.

Roger Delgado plays the guardian, Hasmid, and first show up, in lots of brown makeup, at the tomb looking mad, waving a knife and shouting in terrible, terrible Arabic. I don’t know if it is fake Arabic or not, but clearly no one bothered to actually listen to how Arabic sound like. What he is saying is, of course, a warning for disturbing the tomb, which leads the expedition leader to ask were it is. The guardian clearly thinks this is a very stupid question (I did) and answers in more mock Arabic, “Why on Earth should I tell you that?” Yes, why indeed? He doesn’t say “idiots”, but that is clearly what he is thinking.

He later show up in Cairo with a personality change to hold a calm and rather dignified speech in perfect English about the upcoming revenge of the mummy. Why not speak English from the get go? It’s all for the better, though and very Master-like, complete with a raised eyebrow. And the man had very expressive eyes, which are just about the only thing you can really see when he resurrects the mummy and he manages to convey both fanaticism and fear just with his eyes. Hasmid is evidently meant to be the villain, and setting a mummy on people isn’t very nice, but his reasons is at least sprung from devotion and tradition. The real crook of the movie is the funder of the expedition who is driven by greed, a man so loathsome that not even his son can stand him.

Delgado’s bits are easily the best parts of the movie. Perfectly OK 90 minutes of entertainment, but not anything stellar.