Frankenstein vs. The Mummy

Can you imagine any university nowadays appointing anyone called “Dr. Victor Frankenstein”? Well one in New York thought he’d be ideal and yes, Max Rhyser is soon up to his ancestral old tricks in cahoots with the caretaker “Carter” (John Pickett). Meantime, at this very same seat of learning, Egyptologist “Khalil” (Ashton Leigh) has just returned from an expedition with the mummy of the legendary pharaoh “Userkare” who wasn’t exactly known for his kindness and consideration. Now not wishing to introduce any more scientists into this review, but you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out what is going to happen next after some blood drinking, heart eating, electric shock therapy and spell casting - all set to a low budget suite of CGI effects and some dialogue straight from Roger Corman’s shredder (and not necessarily reassembled in the correct order!). At almost two hours long this is quite literally an horror story, and auteur Damien Leone deserves some credit for raising the funds to pay what must have been a fairly substantial electricity bill - the only source of any spark from amongst a positively dreadful cast. What makes matters worse is that the title is largely misleading. There are really two separate adventures going on here and it’s not until fairly late in the day that these two recently resuscitated relics set eyes up on each other, let along engage in any combat. To be fair, those few minutes are actually quite creatively strung together, and the mummified “Userkare” actually looks vaguely convincing, but it’s all sadly too little far too late. It’s not the worst idea anyone ever had, and with some monochrome photography, a far better pair of leading humans and more contact between the monster and the mummy this might well have been a decent watch. It hadn’t though, and it wasn’t. Sorry.