A horror film featuring a character called Tod Browning and a cat called Bronzed Danny Boy has to be worth a look, and this film certainly is. After a dynamic and enigmatic opening, the film develops an effective moody atmosphere, albeit after some rather schematic narrative development. It's one of Hammer's most cinematic films, with Seth Holt creating several scenes of real foreboding tension with a well-trained eye - notably the demise of an asylum inmate. It's these scenes of death which arguably create the most interest in this film, but for a fair-to-average horror effort that's hardly surprising. With inanimate objects assuming a life and power of their own, 'Blood from the Mummy's Tomb' uses a well-worn generic cliché, but with considerable effect, with obsessive close-ups of fearful faces and a fair dose of wind and fog creating, at times, a quite powerful sense of horror. Very much a product of the early 70s, the film features two asylum inmates whose violent treatment of their patients is 'explained' by the fact that they're gay, but in the film being a 70s effort, it also possesses a certain quality of 70's (especially horror) cinema - a relentless tone of foreboding. In this sense, the ending of the film brings to mind the ending of 'The Omen'.
Not a masterpiece then, not even a very good horror film, but one that's certainly worth watching, particularly if you're fond of Hammer horror films.
Not a masterpiece then, not even a very good horror film, but one that's certainly worth watching, particularly if you're fond of Hammer horror films.