This film had something almost going for it as at times the movie held my interest even with the gang from Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffing it. It held my interest enough that I may actually want to see this film in an uncut state as this one not only got the MST3K edits, but also looks like another casualty of that video company that would get older movies and repackage them with either a new generic title screen (this one and Marooned in Space) or they would play an entirely different film during the opening credits (Pod People and Cave Dwellers). In the end, it is still probably pretty bad though as there were aspects of the film that were interesting and it had some good effects, but it had a horrible setting and completely idiotic plot points. This film stars Ben Murphy and the only other film that I have seen him in is another MST3K film, Riding With Death. He is actually somewhat decent in this one, I don't fault him for the horrid aspects of the film, that falls back squarely on the screenwriter who seemed to have absolutely no idea how to end the film so he ended it quickly and vaguely, kind of reminiscent of Monster-A-Go-Go. Or, perhaps, the blame for that ending falls on the company that repackaged the film and they cut it short? Who knows?
The story has people discovering a mummy and bringing it back to a college where the head of the university is strongly in favor of using it to get more money or something. The man who discovered it, wishes to take a slower approach and considering the guy who discovered it is Ben Murphy and the hero, you know he is right. Well, a strange fungus is found with the mummy and an idiot who finds a secret compartment of things that look like diamonds and steals them. He X-rays the mummy a couple of times and this awakens the fungus which is very deadly to the touch and the most interesting aspect of said film. It really does a wicked number on anyone who touches it! The mummy wants those gems and the head of the school's sidekick wants to frame Ben Murphy who thinks the mummy is an alien and his girl gets one of those diamonds as a gift and soon gets targeted by the mummy who doesn't mean her any harm, but he sure meant to harm that dude he threw into the wall!
This made for a pretty good episode of MST3K. I found it a bit absurd when Tom Servo suggested that this film was worse than many of the films they had viewed up to said point. This was not worse by a long shot, in fact, it had some things working for it. I thought the way the fungus got people was cool, but they ditched that aspect, probably because it was too costly an effect. There is also a lot of point of view monster going on here with green light. It is not a good film I guess, but to say it is worse than some of the crap they had riffed is absurd.
So not a good film, but it had some points in it that were interesting. I would like to see an unedited version of the film just to see if they showed more of the fungus as it may have been something they cut out because it was too graphic. I do think the college setting and some of the plot points kind of doomed this one. We did not need to have a kid trying to sell the stones nor did we really need to see the head of the college and his sidekick trying to frame Ben Murphy as both of these things were just filler. You had an entire campus to kill, and you go really light on the kills. I guess because they wanted that really cheesy ending that just kind of halts the film and brings it to a complete stop.
The story has people discovering a mummy and bringing it back to a college where the head of the university is strongly in favor of using it to get more money or something. The man who discovered it, wishes to take a slower approach and considering the guy who discovered it is Ben Murphy and the hero, you know he is right. Well, a strange fungus is found with the mummy and an idiot who finds a secret compartment of things that look like diamonds and steals them. He X-rays the mummy a couple of times and this awakens the fungus which is very deadly to the touch and the most interesting aspect of said film. It really does a wicked number on anyone who touches it! The mummy wants those gems and the head of the school's sidekick wants to frame Ben Murphy who thinks the mummy is an alien and his girl gets one of those diamonds as a gift and soon gets targeted by the mummy who doesn't mean her any harm, but he sure meant to harm that dude he threw into the wall!
This made for a pretty good episode of MST3K. I found it a bit absurd when Tom Servo suggested that this film was worse than many of the films they had viewed up to said point. This was not worse by a long shot, in fact, it had some things working for it. I thought the way the fungus got people was cool, but they ditched that aspect, probably because it was too costly an effect. There is also a lot of point of view monster going on here with green light. It is not a good film I guess, but to say it is worse than some of the crap they had riffed is absurd.
So not a good film, but it had some points in it that were interesting. I would like to see an unedited version of the film just to see if they showed more of the fungus as it may have been something they cut out because it was too graphic. I do think the college setting and some of the plot points kind of doomed this one. We did not need to have a kid trying to sell the stones nor did we really need to see the head of the college and his sidekick trying to frame Ben Murphy as both of these things were just filler. You had an entire campus to kill, and you go really light on the kills. I guess because they wanted that really cheesy ending that just kind of halts the film and brings it to a complete stop.