Dawn of the Mummy (1981)

Dir: Frank Agrama

An Italian zombie movie by any other name, this one hides behind the guise of setting itself in Egypt and pretending the flesh-hungry ghouls are 'mummies'. Other than that gimmick, this is below par fare for the genre. A bunch of aging swingers (supposedly models) fly to Egypt for a fashion shoot. It turns out to involve Victorian-style dressing gowns, unusual face-paint and lots of poncing around in an undiscovered pharoah's tomb. Such obnoxious disturbance unleashes the mummy's curse and before you can shout, "ferchrissakes, someone dismember these meatheaded losers!", everyone and their horse is being chased around the desert by wormy-eyed undead creeps. This film has a couple of things going for it. It's shot on location in Cairo, there is one truly beautiful moonlit shot of a zombie emerging from the sand and there are some (unintentional) campy laughs to be had. Unfortunately, everything else is terrible. The dialogue is garbled, the plot is so episodic as to verge on incoherent, the cast are all abysmal, the whole film is poorly lit, NOTHING HAPPENS FOR THE FIRST HOUR and, when it does, the zombies are boring and even the copious (but curiously uninspired) splatter in the final reel, as they invade a posh wedding, fails to liven things up. The only thing that's really of note here is that it is possibly the only onscreen instance I've ever seen of a zombie hug! *