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O Segredo da Múmia
The Secret of the Mummy
Brazil 1983
produced by Zelito Viana for Embrafilme, Mapa Filmes, Super 8 Producoes Cinematográficas
directed by Ivan Cardoso
starring Anselmo Vasconcelos, Clarice Piovesan, Wilson Grey, Regina Casé, Evando Mesquita, Júlio Medaglia, Carlos Wilson, Nina de Pádua, Dora Pellegrino, Maria Zilda, Cláudio Marzo, Jane Silk, Tania Boscoli, Felipe Falcao, José Mojica Marins, Paulo César Peréio, Joel Barcellos, Jardel Filho
story by Ivan Cardoso, Eduardo Viveiros, screenplay by Rubens Francisco Luchetti, music by Júlio Medaglia, Gilberto Santeiro, special effects by Sergio Frajalla
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Eminent scientist professor Vitus (Wilson Grey) and his team have found
the mummy of Runamb (Anselmo Vasconcelos), and in an excellent condition
too - which could be the find of the century bar none ... thing is,
professor Vitus refuses to have his finding examined or put on public
display - because, you know, for years, he has been trying to find the
fountain of youth, but was only ridiculed by his colleagues, so now the
scientific society means little to him ... Of course, the professor has
had his own reasons to have the mummy brought to him, because he knows the
mummy was embalmed in the elixir of youth, and he thinks this secret is
buried somewhere within the mummy - and he has a point there, the mummy
was actually embalmed in the elexir, and he somehow manages to bring the
mummy back to life - to basically bring him half naked and beautiful young
girls he needs for his experiments. Later he also uses the mummy to kill
his wife (Clarice Piovesan) and her lover (Júlio Medaglia), because even
a scientific mind like his isn't free of jealousy. Professor Vitus soon
gets a little mad with power though ... Enter a couple of journalists.
One of them manages to intrude the professor's inner sanctum but is caugth
and thrown into the dungeon with the half-naked test subjects. His female
colleague is luckier because the mummy believes her to be the long-lost
love from the days when he was, well, alive, and all of a sudden he
ignores all of the professor's orders with only one goal - to make her his
wife. Of course, eventually the police intervenes, and the mummy finds
his usual ends in the swamps ... I freely admit, my synopsis
makes this movie sound like a formulaic piece of horror trash based on
ill-conceived historical facts paired with misunderstood science and of
course gratuitous nudity - your typical piece of mummy cinema then ... and
that's exactly what the film intends to feel like, with the little
difference that it's a loving hommage to yesteryear's pulp cinema, an
ironic take on pulp mainstays ... from a country that has no big
cinematic horror tradition actually, and from a period before self-aware
genre parodies have become the norm. But The Secret of the Mummy
pulls it off much better than many later mummy hommages/parodies because
it shows general understanding of and respect for the genre, remains
elegant even in its vilest and raunchiest scenes, and doesn't insult the
audience with the level of its humour. It's not a perfect movie ming you,
the script could have done with a bit of ironing and restructuring, and
wome genre references are a bit too blunt to still be funny to the fan or
make too much of a difference for the occasional viewer, but overall the
movie's good fun to say the very least ...
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