Pharaoh's Curse | |
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Directed by | Lee Sholem |
Screenplay by | Richard H. Landau |
Produced by | Howard W. Koch |
Starring | Mark Dana Ziva Rodann Diane Brewster George N. Neise Alvaro Guillot Ben Wright |
Cinematography | William Margulies |
Edited by | George A. Gittens |
Music by | Les Baxter |
Production companies | Schenck-Koch Productions Bel-Air Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 66 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Pharaoh's Curse is a 1957 American horror film directed by Lee Sholem and written by Richard H. Landau. The film stars Mark Dana, Ziva Rodann, Diane Brewster, George N. Neise, Alvaro Guillot and Ben Wright. The film was released in February 1957 by United Artists, [1] [2] as a double feature with Voodoo Island . [3]
In 1902 Cairo Egypt, as a riot breaks out in the street, Captain Storm is assigned with a small contingent consisting of himself, Gromley, and Smolet to retrieve the members of an unsanctioned archeological expedition in the Valley of the Kings who are seeking the lost tomb of Rahateb. Storm's mission is compounded to escort the expedition leader's wife Sylvia Quentin as they take a planned route, the group encountering a strange woman named Simira whose brother Numar is helping the Rahateb expedition. Though Storm turns down Simira's offer to lead them on a more direct route, he relents after Sylvia is stung by a scorpion. By the time the group arrive to the site, Simira announces they are too late as Robert Quentin and his group have opened a sarcophagus with Numar suddenly collapsing to the floor.
Quentin is upset about learning he is return to Cairo and that Sylvia only came to end their relationship in person. Returning to the tomb with Storm following after him, they find the mummy is missing with cat footprints leading from the sarcophagus to a solid wall. Quentin storms off to confront Numar upon realizing something was off about the guide's joining the expedition, only to learn that Numar is rapidly aging with no pulse. Later that night, Numar enters the tomb complex as Gromley found one of the animals drained of its blood. Storm confines an unhelpful Simira to her tent as the group chase after Numar, the group splitting up and later finding Gromley after Numar drained him of his blood. During Gromley's autopsy, Andrews and Brecht had translated a stone tablet which details the sarcophagus belonging to Rahateb's high priest who executed ritualistic suicide to be bound by a three-thousand year curse to kill all intruders in the tomb after possessing another body.
Storm leads another venture into the tomb before finding a dying Brecht emerging from the Chamber of Bastet where he was attacked by Numar. Storm attempts to grab Numar when he falls back into Rahateb's chamber and unintentionally rips his arm off. As Farraday deduces that Numar's body had decomposed to the point of gradual disintegration, Simara warns Storm that the survivors must leave or also be killed by Numar. Later, a fearful Sylvia runs into the tomb complex after seeing a cat-like shadow prior to Simira's entering her tent. Sylvia is found by Smolet and is brought to Storm, convincing him and the others to find Simira. But Quentin forces Andrews at gunpoint to find a way to open the pathway to Rahateb's resting place, only to be let in by the decaying Numar and fall victim to a rigged cave-in. After Storm and Beauchamp confirm Quentin's death, Beauchamp finds Simira's amulet as the group proceed to leave the tomb complex. But they find the lid of the high priest's sarcophagus back in place, finding the mummy inside to be Numar. The group then realize Numar was the reincarnation of the high priest while deducing that Simira is the goddess Bastet in human form. Everyone agrees to cover up what had occurred and never divulge the tomb's existence.
Egyptology is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the 4th century AD.
Saqqara, also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English, is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. Saqqara contains numerous pyramids, including the Pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Tomb, and a number of mastaba tombs. Located some 30 km (19 mi) south of modern-day Cairo, Saqqara covers an area of around 7 by 1.5 km.
George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon,, styled Lord Porchester until 1890, was an English peer and aristocrat best known as the financial backer of the search for and excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
The Mummy is a 1932 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed by Karl Freund. The screenplay by John L. Balderston was adapted from a treatment written by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer. Released by Universal Studios as a part of the Universal Monsters franchise, the film stars Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan and Arthur Byron.
Tale of the Mummy is a 1998 adventure horror thriller film directed by Russell Mulcahy. The film stars Jason Scott Lee, Jack Davenport, Louise Lombard and Christopher Lee.
Tomb WV22, also known as KV22, was the burial place of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the western arm of the Valley of the Kings. The tomb is unique in that it has two subsidiary burial chambers for the pharaoh's wives Tiye and Sitamen. It was officially discovered in August 1799 by Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, engineers with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt but had probably been open for some time. The tomb was first excavated in the early 1900s by Theodore M. Davis; the details of this are lost. The first documented clearance was carried out by Howard Carter in 1915. Since 1989, a Japanese team from Waseda University led by Sakuji Yoshimura and Jiro Kondo has excavated and conserved the tomb. The sarcophagus is missing from the tomb. The tomb's layout and decoration follow the tombs of the king's predecessors, Amenhotep II (KV35) and Thutmose IV (KV43); however, the decoration is much finer in quality. Several images of the pharaoh's head have been cut out and can be seen today in the Louvre.
KV20 is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings (Egypt). It was probably the first royal tomb to be constructed in the valley. KV20 was the original burial place of Thutmose I and later was adapted by his daughter Hatshepsut to accommodate her and her father. The tomb was known to Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition in 1799 and had been visited by several explorers between 1799 and 1903. A full clearance of the tomb was undertaken by Howard Carter in 1903–1904. KV20 is distinguishable from other tombs in the valley, both in its general layout and because of the atypical clockwise curvature of its corridors.
Usermaatre Amenemope was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the 21st Dynasty who ruled between 1001–992 BC or 993–984 BC.
Scooby-Doo! in Where's My Mummy? is a 2005 American animated adventure film, and the ninth in a series of direct-to-video animated films based on the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. The film had a limited theatrical release in the United States on May 13, 2005. The film was first aired on Cartoon Network in the United States on November 24, 2005. It was released on VHS and DVD in the United States and Canada on December 13, 2005. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation, though it featured a logo and copyright for Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. at the end. This is the last Scooby-Doo film to have a VHS release.
The Curse of the Pharaohs is a historical mystery novel by Elizabeth Peters, first published in 1981 and the second in the Amelia Peabody series of novels; it takes place in the excavation season of 1892–1893.
The Department of Ancient Egypt is a department forming an historic part of the British Museum, with Its more than 100,000 pieces making it the largest[h] and most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The Mummy is a media franchise based on films by Universal Pictures about a mummified ancient Egyptian priest who is accidentally resurrected, bringing with him a powerful curse, and the ensuing efforts of heroic archaeologists to stop him. The franchise was created by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer.
Papyrus is a Belgian comic book series, written and illustrated by Lucien De Gieter. The story takes place in Ancient Egypt. It was first published in 1974 in Spirou magazine in the form of episodes.
The curse of the pharaohs or the mummy's curse is a curse alleged to be cast upon anyone who disturbs the mummy of an ancient Egyptian, especially a pharaoh. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, is claimed to cause bad luck, illness, or death. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is 'real' in the sense of having scientifically explicable causes such as bacteria, fungi or radiation. However, the modern origins of Egyptian mummy curse tales, their development primarily in European cultures, the shift from magic to science to explain curses, and their changing uses—from condemning disturbance of the dead to entertaining horror film audiences—suggest that Egyptian curses are primarily a cultural, not scientific, phenomenon.
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The Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre is a department of the Louvre that is responsible for artifacts from the Nile civilizations which date from 4,000 BC to the 4th century. The collection, comprising over 50,000 pieces, is among the world's largest, overviews Egyptian life spanning Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, Coptic art, and the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Byzantine periods.
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