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 hen
a movie runs just 76 minutes long plus opening and
closing credits (call it a generous 70 minutes of
actual movie), it's a major tip-off that the movie
has been sliced and diced so much that its primary
goal is no longer art, but rather to make as much
money back as possible for the producers. Such is
the case with the Nick Quested horror film "Seven
Mummies", about a group of escaped cons who
stumble across an old Wild West town in the middle
of the desert while trying to make it to the
Mexican border. As it turns out, the town is
cursed, and our new arrivals, though tough cons
they may be, are about to get a taste of
supernatural toughness. And Billy Drago. Let's not
forget Billy Drago.
As per horror movie rules,
the cons must first stumble across the Old Man Who
Knows Stuff, who in true Old Man Who Knows Stuff
fashion, lets the cons and their kidnapped
correctional officer Lacy (Cerina Vincent) in on
the town that rains gold. Or gold that rains town.
Or some such. Let's just say there's a lot of gold
a-waitin' some poor souls, and our cons, being the
lowest common denominator filth that they are,
wants a piece of those shiny gold. But wait, not
all the cons are bad guys. Handsome Travis (Billy
Wirth) seems to be a swell enough fellow, and even
claims to not be guilty of the crime he was
convicted of. And of course there's lovely Lacy,
who was taken at gunpoint by con alpha male Rock
(Matt Schulze, "Torque").
It goes without saying that
"Seven Mummies" is blissfully devoid of
logic. In fact, if you didn't know better, you'd
think Lacy was one of the gang considering how
little effort she makes (as in, none) to extricate
herself from her captors. For that matter, for a
group of convicts that are, presumably,
sex-starved, it's amazing how little interest they
have in the pretty Lacy, who spends the first day
of captivity in a tight top drenched in sweat as
the party wanders about a desolate, sizzling
landscape. In real life, of course, men who have
already murdered another correctional officer
would have little qualms about spending half an
hour ravaging the lovely little darling. Then
again, when our escaped cons run across a Western
town that appears to quite obviously be stuck in
time, their reaction is to go to the saloon and
enjoy themselves rather than, you know, wonder
what the heck is going on.
As it turns out, the
townspeople are all zombies when the sun goes
down. Or maybe they're vampires. Wait, maybe
they're werewolves because they growl like wild
animals when they're about to attack. Actually,
I'm a little confused what the townspeople are
supposed to be. Some of them just stand around and
shuffle about like zombies as they're shot
repeatedly, while others leap on you and bite like
vampires. And others look just fine to me.
Whatever they are, it's a good thing our
anti-heroes are armed with guns that never have to
be reloaded. Thank God for small miracles, I
always say.
You really don't find a movie
as silly and awful as "Seven Mummies"
very often, even from the bin of direct-to-video
cheapie horror. The script by Thadd Turner is
atrocious, and the actors are worst. Even the
usually charming Ms. Cerina Vincent ("Cabin
Fever") seems to be phoning it in. And
while Vincent and Wirth are playing it low key,
everyone else keeps mistaking screaming
vulgarities for acting. Part of the fault is
Turner's script, which spends more time explaining
its own muddling plot, which takes a lot of
'splaining considering that the movie has been
chopped to pieces, making it all but incoherent.
Director Nick Quested
actually seems to have a handle on things early
on, but once things move to the town, it's all
downhill from there. Or, to be more exact, it's
all downhill once the cons run into Danny Trejo,
playing the Old Man Who Knows Stuff. Trejo is in
his usual not-acting-as-acting form, which is to
say Trejo would be considered embarrassing if I
ever considered him much of an actor to begin
with. Though to be fair, Trejo is probably the
movie's best character, if for no other reason
except that his Old Man Who Knows Stuff is mildly
entertaining. Mildly.
Make no mistake; I am not
judging "Seven Mummies" by criteria
beyond its ability to meet. As a purely
independent, low-budget horror (which seems to
be shot on digital video, if I'm not mistaken),
"Seven Mummies" could still have been much,
much better. The film's highlight is a
free-for-all between the living and the dead in
the saloon about halfway into the film. I use the
word "highlight" because, frankly,
that's the only semi-intelligible sequence in the
whole film, and even so it's poorly shot, edited,
and wildly embarrassing. It doesn't get any better
from there, unfortunately.
Without belaboring the point
too much, one should avoid "Seven
Mummies" at all cost. It's a bad movie, even
by the lowly standards of its own genre. Which is
a shame, because the movie has a cast that could
be considered A-list in the world of B-movies.
Cerina Vincent, Matt Schulze, Danny Trejo, and the
always creepy Billy Drago, are known names. Of
course, the film being just 76 minutes soaking wet
might have something to do with its poor quality.
Then again, maybe I'm being much too generous. |
