Review: The Tomb (1986)

The son (Richard Alan Hench) of an Egyptologist and the niece (Susan Stokey) of a collector of ancient artefacts try to solve the murders of their respective family members. At the heart of all of this is an expedition conducted by adventurer/ancient artefact thief John Banning (David Pearson) disrupting the resting place of an ancient Egyptian vampire priestess named Nefratis (Michelle Bauer). The latter unsurprisingly rises to regain what was stolen and the usual world domination deal. Cameron Mitchell plays Stokey’s doomed uncle, whilst John Carradine appears briefly as an academic on Egyptian history. Sybil Danning appears at the very beginning as a woman involved in an ill-fated sale of ancient artefacts.

Somewhat of a loose retelling of “Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb” (or Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars, if you prefer), this ultra-cheap, dead-shit boring piece of schlock comes from cult director Fred Olen Ray. I’ve not seen too much of Mr. Ray’s work over the years (I think I watched “Star Slammer” on VHS once but remember nothing of it), but from what I understand, even his fans hate this one from 1986. Scripted by Kenneth J. Hall (who wrote the initial story for the fun B-movie “Puppet Master”) and T.L. Lankford (“Bulletproof” with Gary Busey), the dialogue is abysmal and the storytelling not much better. There’s certainly way too much talking in the first 40 minutes alone for a film populated by incompetent newbies and tired has-beens. The editing is sloppy as hell and the narrative has no flow at all.

The only thing I didn’t detest about this film was the unsubtle, extremely campy performance by Michelle Bauer. She’s not good, and won’t make you forget Valerie Leon in “Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb”, but she’s the only mild enjoyment you’ll likely get out of this stinker. Veterans Cameron Mitchell and John Carradine ought to be above appearing in something like this, but sadly Carradine seemed to be a Fred Olen Ray regular. Mitchell is at least competent, I’ll give him that. I’ve seen him give worse performances, but poor Carradine is quite clearly reading his lines from a script situated right in front of him. Lead actor Richard Alan Hench is a boring dork, whilst co-star David Pearson is so bad as the fortune hunter that he’s almost worse than Chuck Norris in “Firewalker”. As for the one and only Sybil Danning, hers is sadly a mere walk-on, in which she shows herself to have more charisma than anyone else in the film. What a useless role for her. Dawn Wildsmith, a regular of the director’s (they were married at the time) has a cameo as – I shit you not – Anna Conda. Yeah. Anna Conda. The film’s lone worthy scene is a particularly nasty bit with a scarab beetle digging its way into Pearson’s stomach.

Fred Olen Ray, cult status or not, is a hack and this is one of his hackiest hack works ever. Michelle Bauer is a bit of campy fun, the film is not. At all. It’s dreadfully lacking in energy, let alone competence in direction or screenwriting. The majority of the budget clearly went on location shooting for all those shots of pyramids and Sphinx in the first few minutes.  

Rating: D-