'Haha haha, the Mummy walks'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World
'Mummy...'
You know those shots that look good in your head and then you try to film them
This is Time Waster
sorry, Walker, a dreary name for a film that ought to be called Alien Mummy on Campus!
'What have I got that can compete with that?'
In a sequence that was apparently too expensive to actually film
'What is that?'
'Earthquake'
a wall falls down in King Tutankamen's tomb....
'Unbelievable.'
revealing a previously undiscovered chamber containing a sarcophagus and some dead folk
Naturally the Egyptians have no right to their own archaeology
and it ends up where a discovery of this magnitude belongs
some pissy little college where students can destroy it.
'You've been x-raying the raying the mummy with 10x the normal dose'
Hopefully their lecturer at least knows what he's talking about
'Which means the fella inside hasn't seen the light of day in approximately 2000 years'
other than thinking Tutankamen died 2000 years ago
'this may make him seem rather unattractive, but please remember he's been in there for 3000 years'
Still over 300 years out, but he's getting nearer.
But there's something mysterious about this sarcophagus
How did no one notice this earlier
'Probably a hidden compartment'
Hidden?! There's a drawer in the side!
'What's that green stuff? Mould?'
I don't know. Why not poke it and find out?
But this is small news compared to what happens next
The Mummy has gone, leaving the sarcophagus
'Empty?'
'As a tomb'
Tombs aren't empty, they're pretty much defined by their contents.
'I'd have to agree with that'
Now the Mummy goes on the rampage
to get his jewellery back.
Hmm. Jedi Mummy this is.
'i swear you are such a dork sometimes.'
This is where the whole Mummy on campus thing ought to come good; we've got frat parties
that end in death
'Hey!'
make out sessions...
that end in death.
We've got a crusty dean
'I am going to close every frat house and search every room on campus'
The mummy even recreates a scene from Animal House!
while floating!
I wish I could say this represents the tone of the movie, but mostly it's dead serious,
'I'm sorry professor but with all due respect, we've got to have some basis in fact'
No, you don't - you've got a flying killer alien Mummy with jedi powers and a torch in his chest
have some fun with it!
'It's an unbelievable concept!'
It really is. I said earlier this should have been called Alien Mummy on Campus,
I was wrong, it should have been Alien Mummy on campus
'Meaning?'
I don't say this often, but this film isn't trashy enough. The opportunity for trash was there,
but they decided that a story about a Alien mummy stalking coeds deserved to be taken seriously
'No I don't think that scenario's going to hold water, Bruce'
The tone of the film is all over the shop
On the one hand it wants to be serious
'What a dismal thought'
on the other
'My brother used to build radios and I think he had diagrams lying around looked like that.'
Yes I'm sure a 3000 year old alien's circuit diagrams look just like your brother's crystal set
'I mean he couldn't have been building radios in ancient egypt'
You can have a film with peeping Mummies who open a branch of radio shack in the valley of the Kings,
but you can't then go all serious
'Maybe there's some way of turning this whole thing around'
Particularly at the end
When someone tries to hurt the alien, we get this dramatic bullet blocking dive.
'Shoot it!'
'Noooooooo!'
Did I say dramatic?
All very Close Encounters of the 3rd Dynasty,
but when ET went home he didn't leave behind two corpses and a man with an amputated hand.
'We look ridiculous'
Still, it does at least finish on a joke.
No.
'Absolutely not!'
But a remake is definitely overdue!
Thanks for watching, if you want to see how a mummy based comedy should be done...
Then check out my book The Mummy's Quest - available to download or as a Paperback on Amazon
Links in the description below
So long Parker