Amateur archeologist David Barrie lives in Las Vegas and keeps two coffins in his somewhat dilapidated house. They were being transported from Egypt when the plane they were on crashed and they wound up in Lake Mead from where David retrieved them. One, a glass coffin, contains the perfectly preserved body of a 4,000 year old princess named Akana; the other stores the mummified body of a fellow named Sirakh. Any classic-era Mummy movie fans will figure out quickly that there is a curse involved with these two, and that Sirakh is the guardian of Akana. Akana is set to wake up soon, and thoughtfully, her father gave her the gift of being able to know the language of whatever land she's in when she wakes up. At the full moon, anyone who is in the presence of the princess is cursed with turning into a were-jackal. David knows all this and, in the spirit of blasphemous fun, decides to spend the next full moon night in the coffin room. Surprise! He turns into a human jackal, then goes nuts, assaulting and killing some cops and winos on the streets of Vegas. The next day, Akana has come to life and we learn her mission is to spread the worship of the rightful Egyptian gods to the whole world. David, her new acolyte, teaches her how to put on a bra (!) and dresses her up to go out on the town with his friends. She also wears a snake ring with mildly hypnotic effects. But soon Sirakh, with one bulging eye, a pot belly, and oven mitts on his hands, awakens and goes on a bit of a rampage, winding up in a strip club and killing a dancer in an Egyptian headdress. In the end, a bit ramshackle because of the circumstances of filming (see below), Akana disintegrates as the mummy and the jackal fight in a lake.
This was apparently filmed in 1969, but funding dried up and the movie was never really finished. A feature length version of the footage was pieced together and released on home video in 1986 and has garnered a bit of a cult reputation since then. (There are unsubstantiated rumors that it played at a theater in LA in 1969, though I did find a newspaper press release that mentions the movie been finished.) The director, Oliver Drake, was mostly known as a writer, having worked on over a hundred screenplays and teleplays. It will not come as a surprise that he did uncredited work on Universal's
THE MUMMY'S CURSE, which the plot of this film resembles a bit (not to mention that its Egyptian temptress is named Ananka). I'll try to ignore comparisons to the work of Ed Wood; instead, I’ll say this felt like chunks of a home movie that some enthusiastic amateurs who lived in Las Vegas were putting together. There are two professionals in the cast. Anthony Eisley, of whom I have fond memories from the 1960s TV show Hawaiian Eye, is David, and though he seems uncomfortable at times, he gives it his all. Old reliable John Carradine showed up for probably a day's worth of work and delivered a bunch of (mostly non-essential) backstory. Robert Alan Browne, as David's buddy Bob, had a decent career in small roles through the 1990s. Most of the rest of the cast didn't go on to other film roles. Marliza Pons (Akana) was a belly dancer in Vegas, and perhaps coached the dancing girl who gets attacked by the mummy. The production has the cheap and sleazy look of a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie like
2000 MANIACS. The mummy costume looks like it was slapped together in a hurry–when he shambles about the Vegas strip, onlookers are more amused than scared—and the were-jackal makeup is not terrible, even if it looks like a cross between a bear and a dog. Honestly, the best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, a mish-mash of jazz, lounge music, sci-fi sounds, organ funk, and rock. Bad movie fans will have fun with this as will fans of Eisley (there must be a few more out there like me!). Pictured at top is Pons; at right, Browne and Eisley. [Streaming]
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