The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is a cheap and cheerful monster bash in the Al Adamson/Ray Dennis Steckler mode. Like Adamson’s films, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals gives a late 1960s make-over to the tail end of the Universal Horror film cycle. Its director, Oliver Drake, had a slight connection to the Universal Horror films, having co-produced ‘The Mummy’s Curse’ in 1944, but was mostly known as a master of low-budget Westerns.
After a period of inactivity in the 1960s, Drake made a return to film directing at the decade’s end, which is where The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals comes along. This being one half of a two picture contract Drake had with Vega International Films, the other film that came out of that deal being ‘Ride a Wild Stud’ a softcore Western that Drake directed under the name Revilo Ekard, which is just Drake’s name spelt backwards. The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals’ writer and producer William C. Edwards, clearly had a jones for the old Universal Horror films while recognising the more lucrative appeal of making softcore films, and attempted to combine these two worlds with another Vega production ‘Dracula, the Dirty Old Man’.
Like Al Adamson, the makers of The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals could be accused of being in something of a time warp. This was after all 1969, a year after the release of Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead, and only a couple of years away from The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre changing the face of the American horror film forever. On the other hand maybe the thinking behind the film wasn’t as wrongheaded as it first sounds. By the late 1960s the Universal horror films were enjoying a second lease of life on American TV and Famous Monsters of Filmland was flying off the newsstands. So why not make a new, full colour Universal Horror movie throwback?
Unfortunately the perceived market for such a film appeared not to exist, and while Dracula, the Dirty Old Man and Ride a Wild Stud enjoyed some success on the adult movie circuit, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals was reportedly never even finished. Despite being briefly screened to potential investors in 1969, funds to finish the film were not forthcoming and The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals sat unloved, uncompleted and on the shelf for many years. What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas though and more than a decade after The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals was made along came something called video. As the 1980s rolled on, such was the demand for horror product on tape that films considered unreleasable to theatres or TV suddenly found a home in the horror hungry VHS market. Thus it was in late 1985 that The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals finally saw the light of day...by which time its attempts to put a new, hip 1960s spin on the horror genre must have seemed hopelessly out of date in an era of Freddy and Jason.
The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals stars Anthony Eisley, an actor who’d first come to prominence in the TV series ‘Hawaiian Eye’, but by the 1960s and early 1970s was really hitting the B-Movie treadmill, appearing in The Mighty Gorga, The Navy Vs The Night Monsters, The Doll Squad and Dracula Vs Frankenstein....boy, he must have done something really bad in a past life. Here Eisley plays the film’s Larry Talbot character, Dave, an archaeologist who is in Vegas to attend a conference on Egyptian culture, and has become obsessed with the Egyptian Princess Akanna.
Right from the get-go you can tell this film has run into production problems. There is assumed familiarity with characters we’ve never actually been properly introduced to, and they frequently reference incidents that we’ve not actually seen. It is an experience akin to walking into a film half an hour in, and having to pay close attention to the dialogue in an attempt to piece together the parts of the film we’ve already missed. So, don’t go expecting any upfront explanation over how Dave has managed to acquire a pair of sarcophaguses containing the bodies of the Princess Akanna and her faithful Mummy servant Sirakh. A pair of sarcophaguses that Dave has proudly on display in his Las Vegas living room, which understandably makes for an interesting after dinner conversation piece with his friends Bob and Donna.
While you’re busy playing detective and trying to work out how all that came about, we’re simultaneously being told about ‘the curse of the jackals’ which dictates that any man who spends the night alone in a room with the body of the Princess Akanna will transform into....not a werewolf....but a ‘Were-Jackal’. A goofy looking mash-up of a teddy bear and the traditional Universal era look werewolf. The Were-Jackal obviously impressed Vega International enough to use the same costume in ‘Dracula, the Dirty Old Man’, where the Were-Jackal, called in that film ‘Irving Jackalman’ goes on to rape and murder several unfortunate young ladies. In one depraved instance having sex with the corpse of one of his victims. If nothing else, Dracula the Dirty Old Man provides a far nastier- if painfully unfunny- flipside to The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals.
'Irving Jackalman' up to no good in Dracula, the Dirty Old Man
Unable to be parted with the Princess Akanna, Dave rather foolishly spends a moon lit night alone with her body, and does indeed transform into a Were-Jackal. The fact that they never got around to shooting the opening act of the film does mean that The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is free to cut right to the chase, we get around to the first Were-Jackal transformation within the first ten minutes. While this Were-Jackal is a more wholesome, family friendly Were-Jackal than the wisecracking, serial rapist Were-Jackal we meet in Dracula, the Dirty Old Man, he still manages to kill a few cops, scare a tramp, and generally run amok in Vegas.
The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is certainly an evenly proportioned monster movie. From the Were-Jackal dominated opening half hour, we then delve straight into the Princess Akanna’s back-story which anticipates her returning to life in modern day Vegas. The narrative baton is then handed over to the Mummy Sirakh, he also returns from the grave and goes in search of his long lost love Akanna, who is busy hitting the night-spots of Vegas with Dave. Where she passes herself off as ‘Connie’, a friend of Dave’s from “way back East” to his friends Bob and Donna.
Vega International’s intensions seem to have been to encourage film production in Las Vegas and get local talent into film. This would explain the presence of Marliza Pons, who plays the Princess Akanna, in the cast. Pons’ real calling in life was as a belly-dancer and later dance teacher, for which she enjoyed a four decade long career in Vegas with. This was her only serious brush with the acting world, and with her exotic looks and extravagant costumes, probably the same outfits that she wore as part of her day job, Pons certainly looks the part. Still, you do have to wonder why the film didn’t think to include Pons’ famous belly-dancing talents into the plot. A situation that is doubly confusing when you take into account that there are actual belly-dancing sequences in this film, occurring when Sirakh kills several belly-dancers during his quest to find Princess Akanna.
As if having a Were-Jackal and a Mummy as love-rivals wasn’t enough, Akanna’s life is further complicated by the fact that Dave’s friend Bob also falls under her spell. In a bizarre curveball of a plot twist, Bob develops the ability to transform into the Egyptian goddess Isis, who shows up to offer guidance to Akanna. The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals could form the basis for the strangest ever episode of Blind Date (or ‘The Dating Game’ if you are in the US). Will the Princess Akanna choose Dave, a serious archaeologist by day who is a beast by night? Or will her heart be won by Bob, the gender fluid chemical engineer who leads a double-life as an Egyptian goddess? Or will Princess Akanna go for the mature man and pick Sirakh, who despite only having one functional arm and eye, and no tongue at all, still possess a heart of gold? Who will she choose...stay tuned to find out.
Just when The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals threatens to become borderline incomprehensible, John Carradine shows up to try and explain just what the hell is going on. A thankless piece of heavy lifting for sure, with Carradine also asked to bring dignity to lines like “we can’t just stand by and let a 4000 year old Mummy and a Jackalman take over the city”. Against all odds, Carradine does partly succeed in filling in some gaping plot holes from earlier on in the film. We learn from him that a plane carrying the sarcophaguses of Akanna and Sirakh crashed over Lake Mead, and presumably Dave must have rescued these sarcophaguses from the lake and brought them back to his house. Which is roughly the part of the film that we came in at. So, about an hour in we do finally start getting answers to all those nagging questions brought about by the unfilmed sections of the film.
Of course everything is building up to a battle between the Were-Jackal and the Mummy, part of which takes place right there on the Las Vegas strip. It is unquestionably the highlight of the film, if only for the utterly nonplussed attitude of the Las Vegas public. Instead of shrieking with horror and running away, which they would have surely been directed to do had they been paid extras, here Joe Public just tends to casually stroll alongside the Mummy and the Were-Jackal, while a couple of them choose to point and laugh at the pair. I can’t imagine how crushing it must have been for the filmmakers to watch the rushes and notice that people are laughing at their monsters.
Given what we now know about 1960s Las Vegas and the mob, you can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers had to grease the Mafia’s palms in order to shoot this sequence, which takes a detour right into the heart of one of the casinos. There, the sight of the Mummy carrying Akanna in his arms, with the Were-Jackal in hot pursuit, meets with the same indifference from the public as it did on the Strip. Did they get the Mafia’s okay to shoot that, or did they have the balls to just go in there, cause a commotion and get out before anyone realised what was going on. Sadly as pretty much everyone connected with this film is now deceased, we may never know how big their balls really were. Rumours of Mafia involvement have however dogged this film for years.
What is certain is that no one connected with The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals seemed too happy that it was eventually released. This was in fact one of two films that came back to haunt Anthony Eisley during the video era. Eisley had also played the lead in The Tormentors (1971) a biker film in which Eisley infiltrates a Nazi Biker gang who are involved in a plan to assassinate a Christ like hippie leader. The Tormentors was another movie that sat on the shelf for years before creeping out on video in the mid-1980s. Eisley later claimed that Oliver Drake was “a little bit senile”. A claim that has subsequently been refuted by Drake’s son, who cites the fact that Drake continued to write books and give talks about his Western career, as evidence of his father’s lucidity. In its uncompleted and patchy release state though, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals itself hasn’t exactly helped in dispelling the urban myth that its director was senile.
At the time Vega International proudly hyped The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals as “a good old fashioned horror picture” and “a breakaway from the .... pseudo-intellectual spook picture”. On those terms, it is hard to argue that The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals wasn’t successful. 50 years on, its makers can sleep sound in the knowledge that no one has ever mistaken their film for one of those pesky pseudo-intellectual spook pictures. As time capsule oddities go though, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is a colourful one, opening with a terrific surf rock theme tune that is guaranteed to get people up and dancing at any Halloween party, and offering up what kids love about horror movies, namely monsters slugging it out till the filmmakers either ran out of film or money. The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is a very Las Vegas type of a movie, showbiz razzmatazz practically runs through its veins, with monsters, showgirls, belly-dancers and B-Movie veterans being rounded up and putting on a show for the masses. To end where I began, I ask again just where else can you see a Mummy fight a Were-Jackal on the streets of Vegas. The randy ghost of ‘Irving Jackalman’ no doubt still haunts the Strip.
No comments:
Post a Comment