Dawn of the Mummy | 1981 | USA/Egypt | Frank Agrama

Set amongst the incomparable Egyptian pyramids, Frank Agrama’s Dawn of the Mummy is actually a slight misnomer in that the film’s main genre inspiration is that of the then-popular zombie movie. A despotic pharaoh is laid to rest with protective curses on his tomb, only to be distrubed centuries later by a photographer, his cast of models and a band of gold hunters. When the spotlights of the model crew revives the pharaoh from his eternal sleep, he and his army of slaves rise from the sands and begin to devour the living in an orgiastic spree of flesh-eating that reaches the nearby town. A fair amount of the movie is quite sedate, though the final act more than makes up for it with a gleeful smattering of gory violence including meat cleavers in heads, throat rippings and a bride being eviscerated at her own wedding ceremony. Unfortunately, this last twenty minutes also got it relegated as a nasty.