The Mummy's Shroud

The last Hammer film to be shot at Bray studios, The Mummy's Shroud holds a special place in my affections.  It used to be a late night favourite for the BBC in the 1990s, often showing up on a Friday, after the news and chat shows.  Consequently, it was a film I seemed to frequently find myself watching with little recollection of how I had ended up on my sofa in front of the TV at that hour of the night.  The film definitely represents Hammer firmly in B movie mode - the second string cast and presence of director John Gilling ,(who came somewhere after Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis and Don Sharpe in the Hammer directorial pecking order for their Gothic horrors) - are evidence of this.  As are the less than stellar production values, (you can clearly see shadows being cast on the 'sky' in one supposedly outdoor scene, for instance).  Nevertheless, it's a fun film to watch, with some enjoyable performances and, in places, is surprisingly atmospheric: the mummy's initial appearance, for instance, are shown in reflection - reflected in myopic Michael Ripper's glasses, or the photographer's developing fluid, for example.

Gilling had previously shot The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies back-to-back for Hammer (utilising the same sets, slightly redressed, which had already seen service in Dracula, Prince of Darkness and Rasputin, the Mad Monk), but the script, setting and subject matter of The Mummy's Shroud  ultimately conspired to prevent him from producing a similarly demented minor classic in the mould of the two earlier films.  The studio-bound Cairo setting of much of the action is too well lit and dry to allow for the creation of the dank, claustrophobic atmosphere of the Cornish-village set Reptile and Plague.  But, as I said, it's still highly entertaining,  Besides, who could resist a film whose  trailer includes the phrase: 'Beware the beat of those cloth wrapped feet'?  Speaking of which - the cloth wrapped feet, that is - when I first saw the film I thought the mummy itself looked a bit naff, certainly not as convincing as Christopher Lee's bandages and make-up in Hammer's original The Mummy back in 1959.  Some time later I was visiting the British Museum and was startled to come across a real Egyptian mummy in a display case that looked exactly like the one in The Mummy's Shroud! I subsequently learned that the film's costume designers had modelled their mummy on one they had seen in the British Museum.  Funnily enough though, I've never seen that mummy in the museum since...