Review: "THE MUMMY'S SHROUD" is a True Scary Movie

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 46 of 2023 (No. 1935) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Mummy's Shroud (1967)

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom

Running time: 90 minutes (1 hour, 30 minutes)

DIRECTOR:  John Gilling

WRITERS:  John Gilling; from a story by Anthony Hinds

PRODUCER:  Anthony Nelson Keys

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Arthur Grant (D.o.P.)

EDITOR:  Chris Barnes

COMPOSER: Don Banks

HORROR

Starring:  André Morell, John Phillips, David Buck, Elizabeth Sellars, Maggie Kimberly, Michael Ripper, Tim Barrett, Richard Warner, Roger Delgado, Catherine Lacey, and Dickie Owen

The Mummy's Shroud is a 1967 British horror film that was directed by John Gilling and was released by famed British film production company, Hammer Film Productions.  The film focuses on the members of an archaeological expedition who become victims of a curse after they discover and enter the tomb of ancient Egyptian child prince.

The Mummy's Shroud opens in 1920.  A team of archaeologists led by scientist, Sir Basil Walden (André Morell), discovers the lost tomb of a boy who was to be pharaoh, Kah-To-Bey, in Ancient Egypt.  His father, the Pharaoh, was betrayed and murdered in a palace coup, but Kah-To-Bey was saved when his father's manservant, Prem (Dickie Owen), spirited him away deep into the desert.

Stanley Preston (John Phillips), the wealthy businessman who is funding the expedition, arrives to join Walden and his team.  The expedition enters the tomb of Kah-To-Bey, although they are warned against doing that by Hasmid (Roger Delgado), who claims to be the tomb's guardian.  After the expedition returns to Cairo with the contents of the tomb, strange things begin to happen, and people begin to die.  Now, Preston's son, Paul Preston (David Buck), and Claire (Maggie Kimberly), another member of the expedition, may be the only people who can discover who or what is behind a series of brutal slayings.  And it will require them to find and decipher the sacred burial shroud of Kah-To-Bey.

I have been a fan of movies about the curse of Egyptian tombs since I first saw Hammer Film Productions' The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), so I dove into my first viewing of The Mummy's Shroud, which the cable network, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), aired Monday morning, October 9, 2023.  Of course, I am a huge fan of actor Brendan Fraser's “The Mummy” trilogy.  The second film of that trilogy, 2001's The Mummy Returns, seems to borrow a few elements from The Mummy's Shroud.  Tom Cruise's 2017 film, The Mummy, also has a few elements similar to The Mummy's Shroud.

I really got a kick out of watching The Mummy's Shroud.  For one thing, it has a very handsome cast, and Maggie Kimberly as Claire and Elizabeth Sellars as Stanley Preston's wife, Barbara Preston, are gorgeous blondes.  They fascinated me, and I became more attracted to them with each screen appearance.  Both actresses also give good performances, as do the male actors.  The film's script gives the cast character types to play, but they are up to the task of injecting those types with personality.  No actor is really over-the-top, so much as they are engaged in their performance.

As for the film's horror elements, the mummy and the curse, well, they are quite gruesome.  I would describe The Mummy's Shroud as a genuine scary movie, and the murders don't feel like a body count so much as they seem like true revenge – the cost that the members of the expedition must pay for violating the curse of an Egyptian tomb.  I love Hammer Film Productions' horror movies, and I look forward to seeing them again.  I have seen The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb a few times, and I plan on shaking the dust off The Mummy's Shroud again.

7 of 10

B+

★★★½ out of 4 stars

Thursday, October 12, 2023

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Review: Disney's "The Jungle Book" is Animation That Sounds Cool

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 22 (of 2017) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Jungle Book (1967)
Running time:  78 minutes
MPAA – G
DIRECTOR:  Wolfgang Reitherman
WRITERS:  Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, and Vance Gerry (inspired the “Mowgli” stories written by Rudyard Kipling)
PRODUCER: Walt Disney
EDITORS:  Tom Acosta and Norman Carlisle
COMPOSER:  George Bruns
SONGS:  Terry Gilkyson; Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman
Academy Award nominee

ANIMATION/FANTASY/FAMILY

Starring:  Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Bruce Reitherman, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway, Louis Prima, J. Pat O'Malley, Verna Felton, Clint Howard, and Ben Wright

The Jungle Book is a 1967 animated, musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Wolfgang Reitherman.  It is inspired by Rudyard Kipling's “Mowgli” stories found in his 1894 collection of stories, The Jungle Book, from which this movie also takes its name.  The Jungle Book is the 19th Disney animated feature film and is also the last film to be produced by Walt Disney, who died during its production (1966).  Disney's The Jungle Book focuses on a talking panther and bear who try to convince a human boy that he must leave the jungle before an evil tiger kills him.

The Jungle Book opens in the deep jungles of India.  Bagheera the black panther (Sebastian Cabot) finds a human male baby in a basket in the deep and gives him to a mother wolf who just had cubs.  She raises the boy along with her own cubs.  Ten years later, the human boy is Mowgli (Bruce Reitherman, the director's son), a feral child who lives among the wolves as if he were one of them.

However, the wolf tribes learn that Shere Khan (George Sanders), a man-eating Bengal tiger, has returned to the jungle, and that the human-hating tiger wants to kill Mowgli.  Baheera volunteers to take Mowgli to the “Man-Village,” a nearby human settlement, but Mowgli is determined to stay in the jungle.  Mowgli finds a sympathetic animal in Baloo the sloth bear (Phil Harris).  The laid-back, fun-loving bear decides to raise Mowgli himself, but will Baloo and Mowgli do the right thing before Shere Khan strikes?

I love the beautiful background art for The Jungle Book, even the foliage in the foreground that is animated is nice.  The characters that most entertain me are Baloo and Shere Khan; I think I am becoming a bigger fan of the late George Sanders, who gives voice to Shere Khan, every time I see him in a movie, even if I have seen that movie previously.

Beyond that, I am not particularly impressed, amused, or entertained by The Jungle Book the way I am by Disney films I consider exceptional (Bambi, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio to name a few).  I have to admit that having seen it for the first time (as far as I can remember) I can understand why some consider it a “beloved Disney classic.”  It is simply a Disney classic that I like, but don't love.

6 of 10
B

Friday, November 10, 2017

1968 Academy Awards, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Music, Original Song” (Terry Gilkyson for the song "The Bare Necessities")


The text is copyright © 2017 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: "Belle de jour" is Trippy and Dream-Like (Remembering Luis Buñuel)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 29 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Belle de Jour (1967)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  France/Italy; Language:  French
Running time:  101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  Luis Bunuel
WRITERS:  Jean-Claude Carriere and Luis Bunuel (from the novel by Joseph Kessel)
PRODUCERS:  Henri Baum, Raymond Hakim, and Robert Hakim
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Sacha Vierny
EDITOR:  Louisette Hautecoeur
BAFTA Awards nominee

DRAMA

Starring:  Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Geneviève Page, Pierre Clémenti, and Francoise Fabian

The subject of this movie review is Belle de jour, a 1967 film from director Luis Buñuel.  A co-production of France and Italy, this film is based on the 1928 novel, Belle de jour, written by French journalist and novelist, Joseph Kessel.  The film focuses on a sexually frigid young housewife who decides (or is compelled) to spend her midweek afternoons working as a prostitute.

Severine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) really loves her husband Pierre (Jean Sorel).  However, he doesn’t arouse her, so she can’t be intimate with him.  She entertains numerous, vivid erotic fantasies to satisfy herself.  One day she happens upon the intriguing notion of prostitution.  Before long, she is working as prostitute, named “Belle de Jour,” at a brothel in the afternoons entertaining all manner of weird and unusual clientele.  She remains chaste in her marriage, but one of her clients, who falls madly in lust with her, becomes a danger to her tranquil domesticity.

Some may find Belle de jour’s eroticism dry.  Director Luis Bunuel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) shows Severine’s fantasies to us as surrealistic plays, and Bunuel is considered the father of cinematic surrealism.  It’s an interesting method in that it forces us to pay close attention to the film, mostly in the hopes that we might catch a flashing image of Ms. Deneuve’s beautiful flesh, anything to satisfy our desires to possess Severine.  Certainly, Belle de jour doesn’t blind us with the blunt images of raw sexuality early 21st audiences have not only come to expect in their movies, but often demand.  Bunuel and his screenwriting partner Jean-Claude Carriere fashioned the story so that we can truly understand Severine’s sexual frustrations.  She’s obsessed with being satisfied, and she driven to find ways to satisfy herself, and in a cathartic fashion we become anxious that she find satisfaction.

In the hands of a lesser talent, this movie would bore us to tears, but Ms. Deneuve encompasses her character’s unrequited lusts.  While her character can’t be physically intimate with her husband, Ms. Deneuve’s performance is spiritually intimate with her audience.  She takes us in and makes us part of her; we feel everything she feels, desires what she seeks, and feel all the danger, confusion, and strangeness her job as a prostitute create in her.  Ms. Deneuve makes Severine more than just a character; Severine is our adventure into the border world between real, physical sex and surrealistic and fantastic longing.

Bunuel creates a film that has a rich and vivid dream world, one that is both undeniably real and suddenly ethereal.  He makes Severine’s escapades through the myriad worlds of lust and longing an adventure as interesting as Alice’s through Wonderland.  It’s a strange film; sometimes, I couldn’t help but wonder what was happening.  I was confused when some of Severine’s fantasies went from episodes of titillation to scenes of harsh punishment.  Belle de jour both frustrated and intrigued me.  I won’t call the film perfect, but it’s certainly an enjoyable example of how powerful and confusing film images can be.  Like a dream, a movie sometimes has a way of not giving you what you saw and thought you were getting.  Both a movie and a dream can stay with you even when you’re unsatisfied them.  You wonder about them and dry to decipher them.  Any movie that can be so like a dream deserves to be seen.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1969 BAFTA Awards:  1 nomination: “Best Actress” (Catherine Deneuve)

Updated:  Monday, July 29, 2013

Review: "In the Heat of the Night" Retains its Heat (Happy B'day, Sidney Poitier)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 142 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Running time: 109 minutes (1 hour, 49 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Norman Jewison
WRITER: Stirling Silliphant (based on the novel by John Ball)
PRODUCER: Walter Mirisch
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Haskell Wexler (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Hal Ashby
COMPOSER: Quincy Jones
Academy Award winner

DRAMA/CRIME//MYSTERY

Starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, William Schallert, Beah Richards, Matt Clark, and Quentin Dean

The winner of five Academy Awards (out of seven nominations) including an Oscar® for “Best Picture” and another for Rod Steiger as “Best Actor,” director Norman Jewison’s film, In the Heat of the Night, remains a potent examination of racism, prejudice, and bigotry nearly four decades after its release. Although Oscar® ignored his performance, Sidney Poitier created one of his signature roles in this film. His Virgil Tibbs is one of the most important and influential Black characters in film history and set a standard for the Black leading man portraying strong, resolute characters.

Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is in the small and sleepy town of Sparta, Mississippi waiting at a train station for a connecting train. After getting harassed and detained by Sam Woods (Warren Oates), a racist cop, Tibbs reveals to Sparta Police Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) that he is a homicide detective from Philadelphia. Tibbs presence coincides with a grisly murder, and via a set of convenient circumstances, Tibbs stays in town to assist in finding the murderer. During the course of the investigation, Tibbs and Gillespie rub each other the wrong way. Tibbs, however, is determined to solve the case, remaining in the investigation in spite of Gillespie numerous demands that Tibbs leave Sparta, and Gillespie doggedly follows Tibbs every step protecting him from Sparta’s more violent and bigoted citizens determined to kill Tibbs the uppity nigger.

The performances of course are all good, some of them great. Poitier, an actor with a highly mannered style, is perfect in his portrayal of Virgil Tibbs, giving him a proud air necessary for a highly skilled black man who must work with and prove himself to lesser talented white men, who nurse assorted insecurities and skin color hatreds. Poitier’s performance is a delicate high wire act that is occasionally overstated, but is never more so direct and appropriate than when Tibbs returns a slap to the face of a white character. Steiger is also very good. He strains at the seams to unleash the fury in him, kept behind a low key façade, but Stirling Silliphant’s Oscar®-winning script doesn’t give him enough room to really play.

In addition to the film’s social implications, it is flat out a great film. Norman Jewison does a fine job balancing social commentary and displays of ethnic tensions with the necessities of genre conventions, in this case, the characteristics of crime fiction. In the Heat of the Night is also an intriguing mystery story that keeps you guessing to the end right along with Tibbs – whodunit?

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1968 Academy Awards: 5 wins: “Best Picture” (Walter Mirisch), “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Rod Steiger), “Best Film Editing” (Hal Ashby), “Best Sound” (Samuel Goldwyn SSD), “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium” (Stirling Silliphant ); 2 nominations: “Best Director” (Norman Jewison) and “Best Effects, Sound Effects” (James Richard)

1968 BAFTA Awards: 2 wins: “Best Foreign Actor” (Rod Steiger) and “UN Award” (Norman Jewison); 2 nominations: “Best Film from any Source” (Norman Jewison) and “Best Foreign Actor” (Sidney Poitier)

1968 Golden Globes: 3 wins: “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” “Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama” (Rod Steiger), and “Best Screenplay” (Stirling Silliphant); 4 nominations: “Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama” (Sidney Poitier), “Best Motion Picture Director” (Norman Jewison), “Best Supporting Actress” (Lee Grant), and “Best Supporting Actress” (Quentin Dean)

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