I’m not student of filmmaking. I’ve worked in Hollywood and I’ve seen a lot of movies, many of them bad, but I’ve never taken a course or read a book about the technical aspects of making motion pictures. So when the opening title card on a movie makes me immediately think, “Oh, this is going to be a stinker,” you know it’s bad.
The Tomb (aka La Tomba, if you want to use the original Italian title. Yes folks, this is an Italian cheapie) takes The Mummy and From Dusk Till Dawn and mashes them up with a $1.95 budget. The film concerns a group of American (mostly) archeology students and their professor who head south of the border to embark on a field trip cataloging Mayan sites. When their tour guide goes missing, they’re forced to rely on the local healer to guide them into the jungle. She leads them to a previously undiscovered temple where she secretly hopes to finish a ritual of immortality interrupted centuries ago.
Friends, as I say, I’m not student of move making, but even I know not to use footage from better movies in your stink bomb. Luckily for The Tomb, Italian IP laws being somewhat lax, the films gleefully steals footage from Army of Darkness, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Tomb, plus several more I couldn’t immediately identify but, judging from the competency of how they were shot, were pilfered from superior productions.
The script is no better. We have an honest-to-goodness “Help, I’ve fallen into quicksand!” moment, a “I’ve fallen and dropped my glasses, and I hope nobody steps on them as I flail around looking for them” scene that would make Velma from Scooby Do ashamed, and a trap where if you break the light a sharp implement impales you (minus Alfred Molina).
31 Days of Horror is always about quantity, not quality, but this one was BAD. I’m hoping I’ve hit the nadir early and everything else this month is Citizen Kane in comparison.
Rating: I’m torn. This one really deserves half-a-skull at best, but since I got my laundry done while I watched this one and didn’t entirely waste 97 minutes, I’ll give it a 1 skull out of 5.
