The Mummy's Shroud

The Mummy's Shroud
Directed by	John Gilling
Produced by	Michael Carreras
Written by	John Gilling Anthony Hinds
Starring	André Morell John Phillips David Buck Maggie Kimberly
Music by	Don Banks
Cinematography	Arthur Grant
Editing by	Chris Barnes
Distributed by	Seven Arts
Release date(s)	1967 (UK release)
Running time	90 min
Language	English

The Mummy's Shroud is a 1967 horror film made in the UK by Hammer Film Productions. It was directed by Hammer veteran John Gilling.

It stars André Morell and David Buck as explorers who uncover the tomb of an ancient Egyptian mummy. It also starred John Phillips, Maggie Kimberly and Michael Ripper as Longbarrow, in one of his most celebrated roles for the studio. Stuntman Eddie Powell (Christopher Lee's regular stunt double) played the Mummy, brought back to life to wreak revenge on his enemies.

The uncredited narrator in the prologue is sometimes assumed to be Peter Cushing, although no record exists.

It was the third of Hammer's four Mummy films, a cycle which began in 1959 with The Mummy, continued with The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), and ended with Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971). It was the last to feature a bandaged mummy - the final film contained no such character.

It was the final Hammer production to be made at Bray Studios, the company's home until 1967, when its productions moved to Elstree Studios and occasionally Pinewood.

Plot

The Mummy's Shroud is set in 1920 and tells the story of a team of archaeologists who come across the lost tomb of the boy Pharaoh Kah-To-Bey. The story begins with a flash back sequence to Ancient Egypt and we see the story of how Prem, a manservant of Kah-To-Bey, spirited away the boy when his father was killed in a palace coup and took him into the desert for protection. Unfortunately, the boy dies and is buried. The movie then moves forward to 1920 and shows the expedition led by scientist Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell, a Hammer regular) and business man Stanley Preston (John Phillips) finding the tomb. They ignore the dire warning issued to them by Hasmid, a local Bedouin about the consequences for those that violate the tombs of Ancient Egypt and remove the bodies and the sacred shroud. Sir Basil is bitten by a snake just after finding the tomb and dies a few days later. After being placed in the Cairo Museum, the mummy of Prem is revived when Hasmid chants the sacred oath on the shroud. The mummy then proceeds to go on a murderous rampage to kill off the remaining members of the expedition. One by one, those who assisted in removing the contents of the tomb to Cairo are eliminated by such grisly means as strangulation, being thrown out of windows, and having photographic acid thrown in their face. Greedy Stanley Preston, the real villain of the piece, after repeated attempts to evade the murder investigations and flee for his own safely, is murdered in a Cairo sidestreet by the avenging mummy. All ends happily thanks to the intervention of remaining members of the party, Stanley's son Paul Preston and Maggie Claire de Sangre, who succeed in destroying the Mummy in a very dramatic and beautifully staged finale.

External links

• The Mummy's Shroud at the Internet Movie Database