Customer Reviews
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb 
2008-07-28
I am usually a Hammer lover but I was very disappointed in this movie. I had watched the end of the movie late one night on cable and thought it looked interesting. WRONG! The movie is very slow and not much substance.
Surprisingly good old fashioned Hammer Horror fun 
2008-07-06
A film version of Bram Stokers " Jewel of Seven Stars which overall is well made and good fun. A nice sting in the tail (and some really great mens sixties fashions). This film is surprisingly good and a nice adaptation of the book unlike the more recent remake.
truly eerie Hammer entry 2008-03-06
BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB is one of the bright spots from Hammer Studios' productions of the 1970s. This truly creepy tale, directed by Seth Holt, was based on one of the lesser-known stories by 'Dracula' scribe Bram Stoker, entitled "Jewel of the Seven Stars".
A group of British historians led by Professor Fuchs (Andrew Keir) discover the tomb of Egyptian Queen Tera, whose very name was erased from the history books. Two decades later, the evil influence of Tera takes a firm hold of Fuchs' daughter Margaret (played by lovely Valerie Leon) and the surviving members of the explorer party are systematically murdered by forces unholy.
BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB is one of the most chilling and unsettling of the Hammer horror movies; thanks to the fascinating story premise of the vengeful mummified Queen Tera and her strong hold over those who disturbed her taboo resting place.
Valerie Leon is sheer perfection playing Queen Tera (and her earthly incarnation, Margaret Fuchs). Andrew Keir gives a solid performance as her father; other choice roles are taken by Hugh Burden, James Villiers, Rosalie Crutchley and Mark Edwards.
The shooting of BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB was in itself a frightening and unsettling experience for cast and crew alike. Peter Cushing (one of Hammer's mainstay actors) lost his wife during early days of filming and was replaced by Andrew Keir; and director Seth Holt later unexpectedly passed away (five days of filming was subsequently covered by Michael Carreras).
For fans of mummy mayhem, BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB will have you riveted from the get-go with it's fascinating characters and story. This is truly the crowning "Jewel" of the Seven Stars!
No moldy old mummy in this atmospheric thriller! 
2008-01-17
In this 1971 Hammer Films entry, we get the "reincarnation of the Egyptian Princess theme," but with a certain caveat -- there's no "bandaged-wrapped mummy" to avenge her or to drag her off at the end of the movie!
Directed by Seth Holt, this is a fine horror flick with all the great set and location ambiance that we've come to expect from the British-based Hammer Film Company. It's shot in letterbox and the color saturation is most pleasing, as it punctuates the impressiveness of all the Egyptian sets and icons.
The story, conveyed somewhat in retrospect, is that of a British expedition that unearths a tomb in which is found a perfectly-preserved princess (or "mummy" for this one), except that her hand has been lobbed off and the disembodied hand has a nice ring on one finger. The expedition falls under a bit of a curse (always bad to open these sacred tombs) and these paranoid tomb-raiders ultimately disband and scatter like dried leaves in the Autumn. But when the expedition leader gives his daughter the ring, which he conveniently cobbed from the tomb, the trouble really begins.
The large ring's stone has imbedded within it a star alignment (which looks amazingly like The Big Dipper!) and that star alignment is, of course, when the reincarnation of the Princess is to begin. And did I mention that this gal who got the ring looks EXACTLY like the Egyptian Princess? It's so and the original expedition members begin to fall like flies when she subsequently visits them.
There aren't any heavyweight actors in this film but I was pleased to see Aubrey Morris (as Dr. Putnam) who also played the birdwatcher ("Quince") in a great old B&W Avengers Episode, "Silent Dust". Morris was a fine actor and, albeit his role is a small one here, his toothy performance adds to the film's overall appeal.
In the larger picture, the sets and locations are terrific in this film and the casting is spot-on. The film doesn't drag anywhere and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. It's one that fans of older horror films will enjoy watching over and over.
Time's up! 2007-12-15
Since no one's mentioned it on here yet I thought it might be helpful to know that evidently those first "10,000" copies that included the disk of trailers have been sold out, or at least Amazon's batch of them has. I just received the movie directly from Amazon--no bonus disk.
I'm not complaining, mind you; I realized it was a risk I was taking at the outset and I'm certainly not sorry to have the movie. Still, it was a bit disappointing since I was looking forward to seeing the trailers.
At any rate, I thought I'd let everyone on here know and perhaps save someone else the same disappointment!
I Wish You Were My Mummy 
2006-01-19
One of the last in a long line of Hammer horror movies, 'Blood From the Mummy's Tomb' is not among the best. It doesn't possess the same depth and dimension of light and atmosphere that many of the early features are famous for and the film footage is rather dull and drab throughout appearing as though it was filmed in an old abandoned warehouse. The set is also quite spartan, clearly indicating that there certainly wasn't much of a budget available for this feature.
However the one thing Hammer didn't jeopardize in this film was there reputation for having at least one beautiful, bosomy woman among their cast of characters. That woman is British actress Valerie Leon in the dual role of the soon to resurrected Queen Tera and Margaret, daughter of the archeologist/Egyptologist responsible for the discovery of Queen Tera's tomb and remains.
Neither scary or insightful, making it quite easy to pass on this one altogether if not for the presence of the stunning Valerie Leon on-screen.
Blood From The Mummy's Tomb: The Mummy Film Based On A Stoker Book 2006-01-09
TO: Hammer Film Fans
WARNING! SPIOLERS!
The Good:
This is a great film based on a Bram Stoker book (Jewel Of the Seven Stars). It dosen't actually have a waling mummy, wrapped up in cloth. Tera is a dark queen of egypt. When a man opens her grave, his wife dies, birthing his daughter. She also dies, but Tera lives inside her. Years later when she gets a ring, tera is relesed inside her, and a ritual to reunite tera with her body begins.
The Bad:
There is one pothedic scene where a cat statue kills a woman.
FROM: The Hammer Film Reveiwer
Who - - Or What - - Must Not Be Named 2005-10-05
The bosomy young woman Margaret wakes up screaming from a nightmare. Her father Julian comes into her bedroom to comfort her. A scar across Margaret's right wrist makes it look like she has tried to slash it in the past. What could have driven this young woman, who lives alone with her father, to try to kill herself?
Julian gives Margaret a ring with seven stars in the shape of the Big Dipper reflected in it and makes her wear it "for protection." (This movie is based on Bram Stoker's novel Jewel of the Seven Stars and is better than the book.) Margaret and her father hold each other for just a little too long, and Julian looks just a little too longingly into Margaret's eyes.
Wearing the ring, Margaret belongs to her father in a way she hasn't until now. But this relationship must be doomed.
I've read that victims of incest sometimes feel like it's happening to someone else. Margaret really is someone else - - Tera, the uncorrupted beauty Julian stole from Egypt and now keeps hidden in his basement, the woman he sneaks away to look at every night, the woman he wishes his daughter was. (Of course Tera and Margaret are identical).
Decades ago Julian and a group of archeologists found Tera in her crypt, where she had been placed by ancient Egyptian priests who chopped off her right hand (to represent the unnamed "sin" she had committed) and left her to rot. But first they obliterated all reference to Tera, and left a message over her tomb that within lay "She Who Must Not Be Named."
But Tera is "above law and taboo" and it is the priests who die, while Tera waits in her tomb for Margaret to begin to dream of her once Margaret "comes of age." In other words, once Margaret is old enough for her father.
The scientists found Tera's preserved body with its perpetually bleeding right arm (Hammer films did this kind of thing very well) at the exact moment Margaret was being born in England. Both Margaret and her mother died, but once Tera was uncovered by Julian, the baby Margaret started breathing again.
Why did Julian leave his wife in England when she was about to give birth? Egyptian sarcophagi had waited thousands of years; they'd wait another few weeks. Why did he abandon his wife to search for the beautiful Tera, or whatever Tera represented to him? Was Julian tired of his wife already? Did he already want something more? Something strange? Something forbidden?
As Tera's personality gradually replaces Margaret's, she dreams of a "land far away" with "no scheming priesthood, no repressive or archaic laws, and love is the divine possession of the soul." A place where any love is permissible.
Now we may guess what at least one of Tera's sins was. At the moment Margaret's mother died, Margaret became her relplacement.
As Julian looks down at Tera's body, wanting her, you see his knowledge of the wrongness of it in his face. I think Andrew Keir (star of Quatermass and the Pit) - - fleshy, with a sensuous Scottish accent - - was better suited to this role than the thin and flinty Englishman Peter Cushing, who started work on Blood from the Mummy's Tomb but left after his wife died. (If Cushing had played the role, I wonder if I would have even thought about the idea of incest. Which leads to more questions - - did the filmmakers intend it or did that "taboo" come from the actors' performances?)
Margaret has a boyfriend who hits her at one point. Most of the men in her life now that she's a grown, sexually available woman brutalize her in one way or another. Her father is using her, as is one of Julian's old colleagues who wants to control Tera's evil power. (Margaret's boyfriend is named Tod Browning, for the director of Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Freaks. Sometimes in-jokes just take you out of the story and are unnecessary. In a film that doesn't pretend to be anything but a comedy, like Shaun of the Dead, it doesn't matter, but in a movie that takes its story seriously it's better to resist the urge. But to be fair, when this movie came out in 1972 fewer people may have even gotten the reference.)
Julian and Margaret are shown to be matched as a couple in another way. Tera has had her right hand cut off. Julian has a stroke that paralyzes the right side of his body, leaving him unable to use (especially to raise, if I'm not getting too Freudian) his right arm.
In the conflagration at the end, Margaret and her father almost kiss. They slowly come together and almost do it. But they resist and hold hands. In the end they have to accept that they're "as meaningless as all of the dead." (One thing I like about Hammer horror movies over some Universal pictures is that Hammer makes them tragedies. There's no redemption at the end.)
The last scene is chilling and finally makes Blood from the Mummy's Tomb a "mummy movie."
Great piece of late Hammer hokum 2005-02-01
Plenty of blood and guts, by Hammer standards anyway, in this 1971 offering from the famous "House of Horror". The story concerns an Egyptian princess being reincarnated in modern-day London, thus giving plenty of scope for both contemporary and ancient elements.
A very stylish production is directed with plenty of atmosphere by stalwart Seth Holt (Taste of Fear, The Nanny), who sadly died before filming finished. James Villiers stands out for his sliminess as the central villain, where Valerie Leon stands out mainly for her ample bosom. A great cast also includes Andrew Keir and George Coulouris. The score by Tristram Cary (The Ladykillers, Quatermass and the Pit) is pivotal to the tension.
In-joke alert: Hammer afficianados should look out for the names on the sign outside Villier's house early on in the movie.
Jewel is Right 2004-01-20
Bram Stoker's little known novella Jewel of the Seven Stars is filled with suspense, Egyptian lore, and just the right amount of sex appeal to lure you. The film takes advantage of that by giving you the visually stunning Leon as a focal point. Backdropped by richly colored Egyptian artifacts, and tinted with that just so shade of horror, this is one of those Hammer Films that you wish they had taken the storyline a little bit further just to see what happens next. Kind of makes you wonder if H.R.R. Ryder and Bram were friends, because Ryder's story which Hammer Films also did, with Ursula Andress as "She", are similiar in nature.
