Blood from the mummy's tomb is a ravishing addition to the mummy genre…the most stylish and elegant sub genre of horror. Based on writings by Bram Stoker and produced by the British expert company Hammer ( near the end of their reign in the field ),this film is not to be missed by fans of breath-taking stories, stunning legends and historical settings. Margaret ( the astonishing beauty and hottie, Valerie Léon ) often suffers from nightmares in which she dreams about an ancient Queen of Darkness ( the astonishing beauty and hottie, Valerie Léon ). Due to the confessions of her father and his fellow Egyptologists, Margaret soon finds out that she shares a lot more with Queen Tera then just the good looks. Possessed by the Egyptian Queen and influenced by a greedy vulture-scientist, Margaret slowly becomes the resurrection of Tera. I've read quite a share of negative reviews on this film but I strongly disagree…perhaps I'm a bit biased because I love mummies and stories about the ancient Egypt, but even from a subjective point of view, I think this film belongs to the greatest last efforts Hammer achieved. James Villiers gives away the best acting performance as Corbeck. He's an unscrupulous scientist who clearly enjoys the diabolical games he plays. Lovely!! Blood from the Mummy's Tomb breaths an irresistible atmosphere and makes great use of terrific relics and settings. The film also contains a rather large amount of gruesome sequences and bloody make-up. …But, why am I typing all these things to convince you?!? Perhaps it's enough to tell you that the heavenly beauty Léon has multiple cleavage scenes!!

To quote "South Park", when the film begins it's obvious that the film will feature lots of "awesome boobage", as the film seems to VERY prominently display the very well-endowed ladies in the film--though there is no actual nudity. In a way, they are sort of the co-stars in "Blood From a Mummy's Tomb"! This AIN'T the sort of film grandpa used to watch back in the good ol' days of Boris Karloff! Archeologists discover a queen buried in an ancient Egyptian tomb. Oddly, she was neither skeletal nor mummified, but looks as if she's still alive--all regaled like an Egyptian queen. It gets weirder when they see a severed hand and the stump on the body begins to bleed! Pretty weird, but weirder still, the expedition's leader's wife has a baby at the exact moment the tomb is opened and the baby grows up to be an exact duplicate of the dead woman. Later, you realize it has the dead woman's soul as well, as it goes about do bad things...very bad things indeed.

If you are looking for mummies, the film, despite the title, has none. Instead, an incredibly voluptuous lady who kills along with the help of a weirdo who LIKES the idea of her running amok! Frankly, this film is an excellent example for why Hammer Films was having financial problems by the 1970s--their horror films were becoming rather bereft of ideas. This film is a far cry from the studio's original mummy film (which was awfully good) or the Frankenstein and Dracula films. Few, if any chills here--just lots of awesome boobage and a rather silly story. I give the story a 2 and Miss Leon's boobage a 9 or 10.

By the way, in the final scene, look closely at the queen's teeth. you can clearly see modern fillings in them! Not bad for an ancient Egyptian!

While Blood from the Mummy's Tomb is far from terrible and has a number of good things, it really is not Hammer at its best. If anything it's lesser Hammer, with enough to make it watchable but very much an uneven film and one where the troubled production shows.

Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, as ever with Hammer, is a good-looking film. Not their best-looking, mind you, sometimes like with some overly-bright lighting and tacky sets towards the end the low-budget does show but the photography is superbly eerie and rich in colour, the editing is tight and the sets and relics generally are suitably exotic and macabre. The music score is creepy and stirring, complementing the film very well. Blood from the Mummy's Tomb also starts off well, with an eerie opening and some parts do have a menacing atmosphere and a deliciously ironic touch, you do wish that that was sustained throughout the entire film but while it is frustrating that it does peter out Blood from the Mummy's Tomb thankfully is not completely inept and has its atmospheric moments.

Performances vary, with only three being good. Those three are James Villiers, Andrew Keir and Rosalie Crutchley. Of those three, if I were to choose who gave the best performance, my answer would be Villiers, who is terrifyingly unscrupulous and is clearly enjoying himself while still being careful not to dominate the film too much and being out of kilter. Keir is memorably astute and sympathetic and Crutchley gives charming, seasoned support.

Valerie Leon, in terms of her overall performance, is serviceable but not great; she is rather wooden and expressionless as Margaret but as Terra she does make quite possibly the sultriest Mummy ever on film with her exquisitely exotic looks and killer cleavage. A lot of her dubbed line delivery however comes over as detached and without much feeling which takes away from the performance. The rest of the cast are only so-so at best, and a stronger script and better written characters would have helped matters. The script has moments but most of the time sounds very awkward and underdeveloped, also not developing the characters well at all. The characters are very stock in fact and the way they believe comes over as confused and all over the place, the worst case being with Leon's dual role where a lot of her motivations don't make sense and the way she behaves almost erratic.

Despite starting off well, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb peters out. The story was initially intriguing with some menacing and ironic atmosphere, but for most of the time it dragged badly with a lot of filler talk and nowhere near enough suspense or sense of dread, so everything just became dull, dry and a mess of static interaction and all-over-the-place character motivations which made the film hard to follow at times. The direction is on one half technically accomplished and allows the atmosphere to speak, and on the other half it's only competent at best and often hackneyed and pedestrian, the film had two directors and it feels it.

Overall, watchable but very much a lesser Hammer effort. 5/10 Bethany Cox