Hammer’s third in their series of unconnected mummy films is the one with one of the company’s most famous poster straplines – “Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet!” John Gilling was back at Hammer for seventh film for the company (after The Shadow of the Cat (1961), The Pirates of Blood River (1962), The Scarlet Blade (1963), The Brigand of Kandahar (1965), The Plague of the Zombies (1966) and The Reptile (1966)) and gets things off to a very shaky start with a torturous prologue which is as notorious as its strapline. The “ancient Egypt” seen in these opening scenes consist largely of a concrete set with what looks like some shower curtains strewn about here and there, some painted panels, an unconvincing fight scene, some trudging about in the same corner of some sandpit just outside London and Tim Turner’s uncredited narration. There are eight interminable minutes of this nonsense, testing even the most ardent of Hammer lover.
Once the actual plot gets going it has plenty to offer. This time we’re in 1920 and for the only time in a Hammer mummy film, we remain entirely in Egypt throughout. The now de rigeur team of archaeologists, discover the tomb of the boy Pharaoh Kah-To-Bey (Toolsie Persaud) whose fate is so drearily related in the prologue. Prem (Dickie Owen), manservant to Kah-To-Bey, rescued the boy when his father (Bruno Barnabe) was betrayed and murdered in a coup, leading him into the desert in a doomed attempt to save his life. Sir Basil Walden (André Morell) and his obnoxious financier Stanley Preston (John Phillips) lead the expedition that find Kah-To-Bey’s final resting place and are warned by Hasmid (Roger Delgado) not to desecrate the boy’s remains. Inevitably, they don’t listen (it would be a very short film if any of these British interlopers ever did the right thing and actually listened to the locals who know about these things) and Prem (stuntman Eddie Powell) is revived and… by now you probably know how these work out. The mummy commits several murders before finally being turned to dust by two younger members of the expedition using Prem’s shroud in a ritual to halt his rampages.
Things perk up no end when the mummy goes on its inevitable rampage even though the plot remains stubbornly of the revenge-for-desecrating-the-tomb variety. Gilling finds plenty of ways to give the killings a bit more pizazz than usual, the mummy appearing in reflections or distorted by characters’ poor vision before striking. His is a very cruel and vicious mummy, happily splashing acid around to burn the flesh of one victim, crushing skulls, throwing another out of a window and occasionally falling on that old mummy standby, mere strangulation. Sadly the mummy make-up is uninspired and poor Eddie Powell just looks like a large chap in a grubby boiler suit, belt and visible zipper combo.
The Mummy’s Shroud is a visibly very cheap film, but the cast (mostly) enter into the spirit of the thing and it’s certainly a livelier film than its predecessor, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964). Roger Delgado chews the scenery magnificently as the stereotypically untrustworthy Egyptian, Morell is rather under-used but as wonderful as you’d expect and Elizabeth Sellars is thoroughly charming throughout as the long suffering wife of the appalling Preston. And indeed John Phillips gives a nicely hissable turn as the amazingly arrogant and unthinking Preston, immediately earning the ire of long-term Hammer fans by being perfectly beastly to not only the lovely Sellars but Michael Ripper in another of his more substantial roles. Catherine Lacey spices things up perfectly with her cackling appearances as an Egyptian fortune teller strangely named Haiti and she more than makes up for the lifeless performances of David Buck and Maggie Kimberley as the younger leads.
For all its faults, The Mummy’s Shroud is a lot more fun than The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, with plenty of grisly death scenes, some fine performances and a decent crumbling away to dust effect to see off the mummy at the climax. Certainly it’s a far cry from Gilling’s best work for the company, The Reptile and particularly the magnificent The Plague of the Zombies, but once we get past that extraordinarily painful opening sequence there’s a lot to enjoy here. But the writing was on the pyramid wall for the Hammer mummy, the company having already run out of meaningful things for their bandaged villain to do. For the next film, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971), they did away with the bandages – and the male antagonist – altogether and took off on a much more interesting tangent.
The Mummy’s Shroud was also notable for being the last film that Hammer made at their familiar stamping grounds of Bray Studios in Berkshire before they decamped to Elstree Studios. Hammer had owned the large house formerly known as Down Place on the banks of the Thames since 1950 and most of their classic period Gothics were shot there. The buildings continued to play host to film and television productions for many years until it fell into the hands of property developers in 2014 and for a while the venerable old studio was in danger of being torn down and the building converted into flats. But pleasingly, the BBC Dracula (2020) was filmed at Bray and its new owners were subsequently granted planning to expand the facilities and, like so many of the monsters that it played host too, Bray was resurrected and given a new lease of life.
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