This is a perfect example of the kind of low-level, low budget, crummy movie that really should not have been made in the first place. It has the feel of a "direct-to-cable/3rd feature at the Drive-in" snooze fest that never really generates any interest or momentum. The best you can say about it is that it helped a bunch of B-to-Z level actors make their condo payments, that Sherry Belafonte-Harper was fairly cute, and that both the director of photography and the soundtrack composer worked really hard to pump up the watch-ability of this movie with a lot of extra jiving and filling.
Poor Ben Murphy slogs along as best he can here, trying to make the audience (all 4 or us) believe that he is an archaeologist. I'll give him this; even in a snooze like this movie, where all the close-ups are held too long and every scene has the drama and pacing of a drivers' ed training film, he remains amiable and likable. God only knows how hard "Time Walker" would have been to watch if he hadn't at least given the movie his agreeable screen presence. People make fun of him, and he is a light-weight, but I've always liked the guy; I hope he made a million dollars and retired happily somewhere.
The rest of the cast comes off as somewhere between "unlikeable" and "despicable", (I have no idea what they are like in real life, so please don't take this as character assassination), so you actually sort of enjoy it (instead of being horrified) when the mummy kills them. Of course, that may have been the intention of the movie, but in that case, the director could at least have made the deaths a little more memorable. I saw better staged monster attacks in the infamous "Pod People" - the victim's death-scenes here are like watching hamsters getting squished with a giant clown hammer. And Belafonte-Harper actually has some on camera charisma, but the movie doesn't seem to know what to do with her - she seems to be in, but not of, the film. It's as if she wanted the exposure, but she couldn't bear to actually be involved in the plot.
The movie ends with Murphy's character teleporting off with the mummy to an unknown fate (good riddance) and the dean's assistant screaming into the camera as left-over space slime eats his hand. I think this was meant to leave us with a feeling of mystery and wonder and horror, but it left me with a profound feeling of relief that this bag of creaky dramatic devices was finally done. Not the worst or most incompetent movie I've ever seen, but definitely pretty useless.
Poor Ben Murphy slogs along as best he can here, trying to make the audience (all 4 or us) believe that he is an archaeologist. I'll give him this; even in a snooze like this movie, where all the close-ups are held too long and every scene has the drama and pacing of a drivers' ed training film, he remains amiable and likable. God only knows how hard "Time Walker" would have been to watch if he hadn't at least given the movie his agreeable screen presence. People make fun of him, and he is a light-weight, but I've always liked the guy; I hope he made a million dollars and retired happily somewhere.
The rest of the cast comes off as somewhere between "unlikeable" and "despicable", (I have no idea what they are like in real life, so please don't take this as character assassination), so you actually sort of enjoy it (instead of being horrified) when the mummy kills them. Of course, that may have been the intention of the movie, but in that case, the director could at least have made the deaths a little more memorable. I saw better staged monster attacks in the infamous "Pod People" - the victim's death-scenes here are like watching hamsters getting squished with a giant clown hammer. And Belafonte-Harper actually has some on camera charisma, but the movie doesn't seem to know what to do with her - she seems to be in, but not of, the film. It's as if she wanted the exposure, but she couldn't bear to actually be involved in the plot.
The movie ends with Murphy's character teleporting off with the mummy to an unknown fate (good riddance) and the dean's assistant screaming into the camera as left-over space slime eats his hand. I think this was meant to leave us with a feeling of mystery and wonder and horror, but it left me with a profound feeling of relief that this bag of creaky dramatic devices was finally done. Not the worst or most incompetent movie I've ever seen, but definitely pretty useless.