Seven Mummies

Seven Mummies (2006) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Six escaped convicts and their female hostage are trying to reach the Mexican border through the desert. They take a detour from their flight when they run into an Apache shaman who is filled with knowledge that is possessed only by those still close enough to the land to act with the strength of the panther, the courage of the eagle, and the cunning of the ... um .. salamander. Whatever. This is the function provided by all old Indian holy men here in the Southwest. Whenever we white folks need any important mystical information, we round up an ancient Native American, and they point us in the right direction. Just last week I stopped an old man outside an Indian casino and he told me in words both wondrous and wise of the true secret to happiness - that being to double down on eleven when the dealer has a five showing.

In the case of this movie, the holy man spins a tale of lost Spanish wealth, of a city so rich that the people consider gold to be suitable only for toilet paper, because the streets are paved with rubies, the children play with platinum marbles, the wagon-hitching posts are made out of stars (I always park at Hugh Grant, just like at Disney World), and the rabbits shit out malted milk balls. It seems that the Spanish Conquistadors enslaved 10,000 indigenous people and used 2,500 burros to strip the Guachapa Mountains of all its precious metals, hiding all the booty in the desert until they could arrange to transport it back to Spain. Seven Jesuit priests vowed to protect the treasure until the Spanish returned, but nobody ever came back for the loot and as the priests aged and died, they were mummified and buried with the treasure to protect it for all eternity. There is no explanation for how the last priest to die managed to mummify himself, or how we could possibly have this info. Perhaps the Jesuit mummies had some secretaries who recorded it all, and also worked the mummification process on the last priest.

At any rate, nobody came to the burial place for hundreds of years until some Western settlers and prospectors built a town atop the buried treasure in the 19th century. When the townspeople discovered the riches, they awoke the seven mummified Jesuit priests from their sleep, and the mummies attacked the humans, turning them all into zombies or vampires (it says vampires in the credits, so let's go with that) by using some mysterious power now lost to time but apparently once known by a legendary elite cadre of vampire-creating Jesuit mummy kung-fu priests. Throughout the subsequent years, the town has continued to exist at night, albeit frozen in time, but it and all of its bloodsucking denizens disappear during the day, kind of like Brigadoon, and the area appears to be open desert.

Of course, the convicts can't pass up the fabled Ciudad de Bolas Malteadas de la Leche, so they decide to postpone their run for the border in order to take on all the vampires and kung-fu Jesuit mummies for the chance at all the candy. And all the marbles.

The film goes for a vibe similar to From Dusk Till Dawn, except that it is the "straight to bargain bin" version. You can draw your own conclusions about the merit of the plot. It is supported by dreadful execution:

The film is consistently underlit. I wasn't even sure whether there was any nudity until I captured and photoshopped the images.
The action scenes are mishandled. People fall out of frame, and punches obviously miss.
The background score is not properly balanced with the dialogue. Of course, considering the dialogue, that wouldn't be so bad except that the music is usually some irritatingly inappropriate hip-hop. Or maybe hip-hop is the right music to accompany kung-fu Jesuit mummies in Old West towns. I'm not really sure there is a better choice, to tell you the truth.
Now that I think about it, the acting and special effects aren't so hot either.

The only good news: the film is only about 70 minutes long, excluding the opening and closing credits.

Seven Mummies is currently rated 1.7 at IMDb. The worst film of all time is rated 1.8, so this baby could be a contender when it amasses enough votes.

DVD INFO

The widescreen transfer is anamorphically enhanced
Featurette: "The Making of Seven Mummies"

NUDITY REPORT

Ananda St. James shows her breasts in a too-dark sex scene.

The Critics Vote ...

Straight to vid, no major reviews online

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 1.7/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is an F. It's derivative and dumb and way too dark. Some scenes are almost impossible to see. But one thing is sure. This is the Citizen Kane of Jesuit kung-fu mummy movies.