aka Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy 2
USA. 1999.
Crew
Director – David DeCoteau, Screenplay – Matthew Jason Walsh, Story – David DeCoteau & Matthew Jason Walsh, Producers – David DeCoteau, Sam Irvin & David Silberg, Photography – Howard Wexler, Music – Jared DePasquale, Makeup Effects – Christopher Bergschneider & Jeffrey S. Farley, Production Design – Mark A. Thompson. Production Company – Rapid Heart Pictures.
Cast
Ariauna Albright (Stacey), Trent Latta (Norman), Michael Lutz (Morris Felton), Jeff Peterson (Don), Michelle Erickson (Janine), Russell Richardson (Orlando), Brenda Blondell (Professor Cyphers), Anton Falk (The Mummy)
Plot
Professor Cyphers has unearthed a rare Aztec mummy. One of her students, Morris, steals the amulet from the mummy’s wrist as a present for a girl he is interested in. Another student, Norman, is the descendant of Aztec high priests and wants to conduct the sacrifice that is needed to revive the god Tlaloc but needs the amulet to do so. He raises the mummy and sends it to kill the other students.
Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy comes from David DeCoteau, a low-budget director best known for cheaply awful films like Creepozoids (1987), Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (1987) and Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000 (1994). (See bottom of page for David DeCoteau’s other films).
Ancient Evil is at least better than most of David DeCoteau’s films in that it is free of minimally talented Scream Queens, features no gratuitous T&A (nor some of the bizarre homo-erotic overtones that creep into many of DeCoteau’s later films), nor does it cynically set out to be a faux bad movie. The production values are also slightly better. Unfortunately, even all of this considered, Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy is still not a very good film. Indeed, without the aforementioned hallmarks of a David DeCoteau film there is little there.
DeCoteau has gone to Mexico to shoot. You might think that Mexico with its higher return on the US dollar would allow DeCoteau to do grander things than usual or offer some interesting locations – but neither is the case, the film only consists of a mummy stalking various students around a campus, almost nothing else at all.
The plot eventually turns out to be an uneasy attempt to mix the revived mummy genre and the underdog revenge plot, a theme that Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) did much better. Ancient Evil also features the rather laughable oddity of an entirely Caucasian Aztec priest and a fat mummy.
In the UK, Ancient Evil was retitled Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy 2, although is otherwise unrelated to Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy (1997). In fact, it seems to have escaped the producers that in attempting to bill Ancient Evil as a sequel that the mummy in Legend of the Mummy was Egyptian, while the one here is Aztec.
There was a sequel with Ancient Evil 2: Guardian of the Underworld (2005), although with an equal degree of cultural/archaeological confusion this switched back to featuring an Egyptian mummy.
David DeCoteau’s other films of genre interest are:– Dreamaniac (1986), Nightmare Sisters (1987), Creepozoids (1987), Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1987), Dr Alien/I Was a Teenage Sex Maniac (1988), Murder Weapon (1990), Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991), Beach Babes from Beyond (1993), Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000 (1994), Blonde Heaven (1995), Prehysteria! 3 (1995), Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island (1996), Bikini Goddesses (1996), Lurid Tales: The Castle Queen (1996), Petticoat Planet (1996), Prey of the Jaguar (1996), The Journey: Absolution (1997), Shrieker (1997), Skeletons (1997), Beach Babes from Beyond 2 (1998), Curse of the Puppet Master (1998), Frankenstein Reborn (1998), The Killer Eye (1998), Talisman (1998), Alien Arsenal (1999), Witchhouse (1999), The Brotherhood (2000), Frankenstein and the Wolfman Reborn (2000), Prison of the Dead (2000), Voodoo Academy (2000), Final Stab/Final Scream/Scream 4 (2001), The Frightening (2001), The Brotherhood 2: Young Warlocks (2001), The Brotherhood 3: Young Demons (2002), The Wolves of Wall Street (2002), Leeches (2003), Speed Demon (2003), Ring of Darkness (2004), The Sisterhood (2004), Brotherhood IV: The Complex (2005), Killer Bash (2005), Witches of the Caribbean (2005), Beastly Boyz (2006), Grizzly Rage (2007), The Raven (2007), House of Usher (2008), Alien Presence (2009), The Brotherhood V: Alumni (2009), The Brotherhood VI: Initiation (2009), Nightfall (2009), The Pit & the Pendulum (2009), Son of a Witch (2009), Stem Cell (2009), 1313: Giant Killer Bees (2010), Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010), A Dream Within a Dream (2011), 1313: Haunted Frat (2011), 1313: Actor Slash Model (2011), 1313: Boy Crazies (2011), 1313: Wicked Stepbrother (2011), 1313: Bermuda Triangle (2012), 1313: Bigfoot Island (2012), 1313: Cougar Cult (2012), 1313: Frankenqueen (2012), 1313: Hercules Unbound (2012), 1313: Night of the Widow (2012), 1313: UFO Invasion (2012), A Halloween Puppy (2012), Immortal Kiss: Queen of the Night (2012), Santa’s Summer House (2012), Snow White: A Deadly Summer (2012), 2: Voodoo Academy (2012), Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft (2013), My Stepbrother is a Vampire (2013), A Talking Cat (2013), A Talking Pony (2013), 3 Scream Queens (2014), 3 Wicked Witches (2014), 666: Devilish Charm (2014), 666: Kreepy Kerry (2014), 90210 Shark Attack (2014), Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper (2014), Knock ‘Em Dead (2014), Asian Ghost Story (2016), Bloody Blacksmith (2016), Evil Exhumed (2016), Sorority Slaughterhouse (2016), 666: Teen Warlock (2016), The Wrong Child (2016), The Wrong Roommate (2016), Swamp Freak (2017), The Wrong Crush (2017), The Wrong Man (2017), The Wrong Student (2017), The Wrong Cruise (2018), The Wrong Friend (2018) and The Wrong Teacher (2018). DeCoteau has made films under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ellen Cabot, Richard Chasen, Julian Breen and Victoria Sloan.
Trailer here