Bovie Movie

This big-budget sequel from writer/director Stephen Sommers navigates much of the same cliffhanger territory as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones franchise. It is 1933, eight years after the events of The Mummy (1999). Legionnaire Rick O’Connell Brendan Fraser has married his Egyptologist girlfriend Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) and the couple has settled in London, where they’re raising their young son Alex (Freddie Boath). The family’s domestic tranquility is shattered when the 3,000-year-old mummified corpse of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), which has been shipped to the British Museum, is resurrected once again to resume his evil quest for immortality. In the meantime, another ancient threat emerges in the form of the Scorpion King (professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson, aka. the Rock), a mighty warrior frozen in time with his supernatural army. In order to save his family, Rick is forced to seek a mythical pyramid of gold, facing marauding bands of pygmy skeletons, among other hazards. The Mummy Returns co-stars John Hannah, Oded Fehr, and Patricia Velasquez.

Loosely adapted from the classic 1932 horror film starring Boris Karloff, The Mummy is set in Egypt, where over 3,000 years ago the high priest Imhotep (played by Arnold Vosloo) was given the all-important assignment of preparing the recently dead for their journey into the afterlife. However, Imhotep made one terrible mistake - he became smitten with Anck-Su-Namun, the mistress of the Pharaoh himself. Driven mad by jealousy and love, Imhotep murdered the Pharaoh, and his punishment was to be buried alive and suffer the torment of an eternal life in his wretched tomb. In 1925, a band of adventurers seeking fame and fortune - led by Rick O’Connel (Brendan Fraser), an American expatriate who has joined the foreign legion, and Evelyn Carnarvon (Rachel Weisz), an amateur archeologist - find a previously unknown burial site in Egypt. The team starts to dig, hoping to find lost riches, but instead they disturb the tomb of Imhotep, and soon the cursed priest rises from his grave to wreck vengeance on humanity. The Mummy was written and directed by Stephen Sommers, whose previous cinematic journeys into the past include The Jungle Book and The Adventures Of Huck Finn.

The second of the George Lucas/Steven Spielberg Indiana Jones epics is set a year or so before the events in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1984). After a brief brouhaha involving a precious vial and a wild ride down a raging Himalyan river, Indy (Harrison Ford) gets down to the problem at hand: retrieving a precious gem and several kidnapped young boys on behalf of a remote East Indian village. His companions this time around include a dimbulbed, easily frightened nightclub chanteuse (Kate Capshaw), and a feisty 12-year-old kid named Short Round (Quan Ke Huy). Throughout, the plot takes second place to the thrills, which include a harrowing rollercoaster ride in an abandoned mineshaft and Indy’s rescue of the heroine from a ritual sacrifice. There are also a couple of cute references to Raiders of the Lost Ark, notably a funny variation of Indy’s shooting of the Sherpa warrior.