The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969)

The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is a very low-budget 1969 horror flick made by an outfit called Vega International. This company had a brief and very chaotic history and it appears that some of the half dozen or so movies they planned to make were never completed, or simply ended up being lost. The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals seems not to have had much, if anything, of a proper release and was pretty much unknown until it turned up on VHS in the 80s.

Egyptologist Dave Barrie (Anthony Eisley) steals two Ninth Dynasty Egyptian mummies after the plane carrying them to a museum crashes near Las Vegas. One is the mummy of the Princess Akana. The other is the mummy of some high priest dude who had been her lover.

Akana is perfectly preserved. Dave is immediately fascinated by her. He had already come up with a theory that she could be revived after being dead (or apparently dead) for several thousand years.

It turns out he was right and she does indeed revive. He naturally falls in love with her but the bad news is that he is now the victim of a curse. He has become a jackal-man, a werejackal.

He runs amok, kills a couple of cops, then returns to his extraordinarily dilapidated house and goes to sleep. He wakes up with no knowledge of his nocturnal rampage.

Meanwhile the other mummy has revived as well and he is determined to destroy Dave, seeing him as a rival to Akana’s love. Their ongoing battle provides most of the movie’s action.

Dave takes Akana out on the town, along with his friends Bob and Donna. Akana likes 1960s Vegas.

Dave has more werejackal episodes and that other mummy is causing mayhem as well. Fortunately people in Vegas are sophisticated enough not to be overly disturbed by rampaging mummies and werejackals roaming the streets.

A movie like this wouldn’t be complete without John Carradine who plays a professor who is a bit worried about what Dave is up to.

The plot obviously borrows heavily from other mummy movies but I can’t recall another movie with a werejackal.

In low-budget movies that rely on iffy makeup effects it’s usually a good idea not to let the audience see too much of the monsters until it’s unavoidable. But in this movie we see lots of both monsters. The werejackal prosthetic head is actually not that bad.

The acting is mostly dull. Anthony Eisley isn’t going to convince anyone that he’s an Egyptologist. Marliza Pons as Princess Akana is a problem. Apart from not being able to act she does does not have the necessary glamour or allure.

On the plus side the pacing isn’t too bad (pacing is where very low budget movie so often fall down).

The fact that the story is crazy is no great problem. A great gothic horror movie doesn’t need a dazzling plot. What it needs is a suitably spooky or creepy atmosphere and a sense of dread - a sense that something is happening that just isn’t possible. These are the things that this movie fails to pull off.

A gothic horror movie set in Vegas is however a cool idea.

It’s all very silly and to be honest it’s a very bad movie but if you’re in the right mood you’ll get some fun out of it.

Severin have released The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals on Blu-Ray. The transfer is acceptable given that this movie probably never looked stunning to begin with. The disc comes with a stack of extras plus a bonus film, another Vega International production - Angelica, the Young Vixen.