What could possibly go wrong?: Four Sided Triangle

Now Playing: Four Sided Triangle (1953)

Pros: The unique, ironic premise of out-of-control science is still fresh and relevant to our present age; Terence Fisher's direction shows flashes of a talent that would make Hammer world famous for its horror films.
Cons: Some will find the pacing slow and the production design of the laboratory "slapdash."

Terence Towles Canote is hosting his 13th annual Rule Britannia Blogathon over at A Shroud of Thoughts, wherein bloggers are invited to write about any British film or any topic related to Britain's contributions to film. Not being particularly superstitious, I signed on to this year's event with the thought that not only would I write about a British film, I'd write about one in which Britannia indeed rules, at least in terms of its setting and plot.

An obvious choice would be an adventure or war film set at the height of Great Britain's empire, but since this blog is focused on sci-fi and horror, and since I'm not a big fan of empires, you'll have to go elsewhere for that sort of thing. Nope, Four Sided Triangle has no sword fights, broadsides between sailing ships, or any of the derring-do that you might normally associate with a phrase like "Rule Britannia."

In place of daring action, Four Sided Triangle features a daring idea that, brought to fruition by two unassuming British inventors, has the capacity to revolutionize the world economy and life in general. "A load of rubbish!" you say?  "Nothing earth shattering or innovative came out of Britain after it was exhausted by two world wars and could only manage to shed itself of its costly empire!" you say? Well, Hammer Films, and reality, beg to differ.

I'll let Bill Bryson, American expatriate and travel writer, speak to the British innovative spirit (if not their marketing genius): 

"The British are an ingenious race. There can be no question about that. Their contribution to the world's comfort and knowledge are way beyond what, measured proportionately, ought to come off a little island in the North Sea. Some years ago, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry made a study of national inventiveness and concluded that in the modern era Britain had produced 55 percent of all the world's 'significant inventions,' against 22 percent for the United States and 6 percent for Japan. ... It is remarkable how often Britons invent or discover something of great value, then fail to cash in on it. The list of things invented, discovered, or developed in Britain that benefited Britain barely or not at all includes computers, radar, the endoscope, the zoom lens, holography, in vitro fertilization, animal cloning, magnetically levitated trains, and Viagra." [Bill Bryson, The Little Road to Dribbling, Doubleday, 2015, pp. 148, 150.]

In the first half of the 1950s, before Hammer Films went all in on Gothic horror, the studio echoed that innovative spirit with several black and white sci-fi films. While American sci-fi movie heroes were set back on their heels battling space invaders (It Came from Outer Space, 1953) and giant monsters unleashed by atomic tests (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, 1953; Them!, 1954), British protagonists were proactively preparing rockets for the first piloted flights into space (The Quatermass Xperiment, 1955; Spaceways, 1954).

Okay, so the spacecraft in The Quatermass Xperiment ended up nosediving into the ground, but still... brilliant!

And most unusual of all (if not quite as glamorous or terrifying), British inventors Bill and Robin (Stephen Murray and John Van Eyssen, respectively) were perfecting their ground-breaking matter duplicator in Four Sided Triangle. The film invests heavily in the romantic notion, so beloved by sci-fi filmmakers and fans, of the lone, eccentric inventor (or mad scientist) making earth-shattering discoveries in his remote laboratory, unhindered by the prying eyes of the uncomprehending masses.

Okay, so in this case it takes two to tango with the laws of science and dance the two step with things better left alone, but there's still a healthy helping of suspended disbelief necessary to accept that these pioneering tech bros have managed to make matter out of energy in a converted barn in the middle of  the English countryside. (AI tech bros take note: Bill and Robin have also apparently figured out how to do their scientific magic without hogging their neighbors' electricity and water. Also noteworthy: the pair's fictional breakthrough predated by several years Andre Delambre's notorious experiments with matter teleportation in 1958's The Fly.)

The men may be scientific geniuses, but in matters of love and life they're a little less whippy. As narrated by the village's kindly (and somewhat busybody-ish) doctor Harvey (James Hayter), in their childhood Bill and Robin had been thick as thieves with a local girl, Lena. Inevitably, the trio had broken up -- the two boys going off to university to learn how to upend the laws of physics, and Lena (Barbara Payton) emigrating to America with her mother (thus explaining the actress' American accent). Just as the geniuses were perfecting their invention, Lena had returned to the bucolic village where she grew up, confiding to the doctor that she considered herself a failure, and had only returned to sell off her deceased mother's things in order to scrape by for a few more years.

Everyone's happy that the childhood friends have been reunited... well, maybe not everyone.

Lena's path veers in a direction she could never have imagined when Bill and Robin demonstrate their matter duplicator to her and Dr. Harvey by exactly reproducing the good doctor's pocket watch. With the success, Robin's wealthy and influential father Sir Walter instantly becomes an enthusiastic investor instead of a reluctant one (the good doctor -- ever supportive of the lads -- had sold his practice to provide more capital for the experiments after Sir Walter had turned his son down, not wanting to throw "good money after bad.")

At this point, Lena has become, in the words of the sentimental doctor, "cook, nurse, confessor, chief bottle washer, and occasional mechanic to those two conspirators." (Patronizing, but then this was 1953.) But unfortunately for Bill, she's not above playing favorites, up to and including handing over her heart to good old, smiling, guileless Robin. And who could blame this woman who, just a short while ago, had been at poverty's door and been so down on herself?

As we learn from the doctor's narration, Bill had been born on the wrong side of the tracks (I guess in this case, the wrong side of the hedgerow), and had grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father. While possessing a brilliant mind, he's also alternately taciturn, impulsive and impolitic, at one point telling his partner he's already bored with their invention and ready to move on. By contrast, Robin is enthusiastic, optimistic and practical (not to mention handsome and rich).

Poor long-faced Bill doesn't stand a chance. Instead of talking to Lena, Bill confides in the doctor about his love for her, and in his hesitation, loses out when Robin and Lena announce their engagement at a dinner party celebrating the team's success.

Handsome, wealthy and charismatic Robin is smiling like the cat that ate the canary.

After the wedding, practical Robin is off to London to negotiate more money, equipment and security arrangements with the government, while Bill stews in his bitter disappointment. But, in the grand tradition of the genre, you can't keep a mad scientist down for long, even a depressed one, and before you know it, Bill, with the aid of the conflicted and worried Doc Harvey, is experimenting with guinea pigs and rabbits to take the invention to its logical conclusion -- the duplication of living organisms.

"I think you know where I'm going with this," Bill tells the doctor, who at first refuses to help with the mad scheme. But sure enough, Harvey's scientific curiosity gets the better of him, and soon he's staring wide-eyed in amazement at the duplication of living beings. Curiosity so overtakes the doc's rational caution that he ends up convincing Lena to submit to being duplicated, assuring her that no harm will come to her. Et tu Doctor Harvey?

Also in the grand tradition of the genre, there is no way this is going to end well, and it doesn't. It's not because Bill, as a true blue mad scientist, has been reckless or careless (as in a fly in the duplicator chamber), but because he has done his job too well. Lena 2 (dubbed Helen) is a perfect replica of the original, right down to her wants, desires and... loves. Oops. Now, all Bill has to do is erase Helen's memories (along with her desires) so that the two can start over. What could possibly go wrong?

"Okay, back to the duplicating board..."

The rustic country setting and the kindly doctor's voiceover narration initially lend an almost quaint fairytale atmosphere to the film. Early on we know a reckoning is coming with the reuniting of the childhood friends, but the mood is as light as the sun on an English meadow. Director Terence Fisher does some interesting shot blocking, giving Bill a physical prominence that suggests that he is the more valuable member of the inventor duo (in one scene in the converted barn laboratory, Bill is standing on a platform, visually dominating the other characters as if his scientific prowess has made him King of his own little world).

But once it becomes obvious that Lena has chosen between her childhood pals, Triangle trades in its day-lit quaintness for the Gothic darkness and brooding that is the hallmark of mad science. As Bill becomes more haggard and desperate in his quest to reclaim (or more accurately, reproduce) his lost love, nighttime takes over, and the barn/laboratory grows darker even as new equipment for duplicating human beings fills up the space.

The production designers go full on Frankenstein with Bill's lair, and the bubbling beakers, lights and assorted levers and dials on the equipment panels harken back to Universal's Gothic labs while prefiguring the Hammer Films domain that Peter Cushing as Frankenstein would thrive in several years later. A couple of shots of Bill's under-lit face as the machinery buzzes and flashes around him, make him seem far madder and ominous than Colin Clive or Peter Cushing. (Interestingly, for all the equipment in the lab, there's nary a computer in sight or a reference to one, even though by the early '50s mainframes were fairly well known in popular culture. It's truly mad, magical science that can create matter out of energy without the help of a computer.)

You can't have mad science without a bubbling beaker.

Of course, every mad scientist needs a loyal assistant, and Doc Harvey steps in as one of the more gentle and erudite assistants to help expedite a barkin' mad scheme. Before there's any mention of duplicating living beings (not to mention beautiful Lena), the doctor is excited at the prospect of cheaply duplicating expensive or rare medicines for the benefit of humanity. But then, his empathy for poor "wrong-side-of-the-tracks" Bill and an innate human curiosity override his caution, and soon he's pulling levers and twisting dials to help in the dangerous work of replicating living things. (You also have to wonder if the doctor is himself smitten with the beautiful creature Lena has become, and would have been as enthusiastic if the human guinea pig had been someone else.)

In real life, Barbara Payton (Lena) was no stranger to love triangles, four sided or of the more conventional kind. In 1951, at the height of her brief Hollywood career, she was sharing her affections with two actors simultaneously, Franchot Tone and Tom Neal, which resulted in a vicious fight between the two men that sent Tone to the hospital. She married Tone, but after only seven weeks went back to the handsome but brutish Neal. Along the way, she wracked up affairs with the likes of Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, John Ireland, Howard Hughes and Guy Madison (not to mention five marriages). [IMDb] Incautiously burning her candle at both ends, she most definitely could have used a machine for duplicating herself.

With scandal haunting her in the U.S., Payton traveled to London to make two films for Hammer, one of which was Four Sided Triangle. While she was very graciously received by Hammer chairman James Carreras and son Michael, unfortunately the two bottom-of-the-bill B movies did nothing for her career, and by the mid-'50s she was immersed in alcohol, drugs and petty larceny; tragically she would succumb to heart and liver failure at the age of 39.

Payton biographer John O'Dowd is pretty harsh on the film and Barbara's performance:

"As the lone American in a provincial setting, Barbara delivered a distracted performance, leading one to believe she had only taken the job as a temporary diversion from her nightclubbing activities in London. ... In a prosaic bit of pap like this, Barbara must have felt she was under no obligation to extend any more than the most rudimentary effort ... and it showed. Additionally hampered by a stagnant, creeping pace and its slapdash special effects (the latter aptly described by author Philip Strick in his book, Science Fiction Movies, as 'flashing lights and cork-screws'), Four Sided Triangle proved a crashing bore and did nothing for Barbara's career." [John O'Dowd, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story, BearManor Media, 2006, p. 225]

In the grand tradition of British science, Bill works feverishly on an invention from which he will not profit in the slightest.

On the flip side of fate, Triangle's director and co-writer Terence Fisher would go on to helm some of Hammer's best and most iconic horror films, starting with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and following up with a parade of classic monsters: Horror of Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1958), The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and The Gorgon (1964), among a slew of others.

In writing about Four Sided Triangle, film scholar Peter Hutchings is not nearly as dismissive as O'Dowd, and he finds some interesting character dynamics and ideas in the modest B programmer:

"[F]our Sided Triangle is that rare beast, a pre-1956 British science fiction film. While it follows Spaceways in privileging romantic relationships over scientific investigation, it nevertheless embraces more thoroughly some of the ideas and conventions associated with the SF genre. ... As is the case with those other pre-1956 Fisher films that are distinctive in some way or other, there appears to be conservative tone to the proceedings here. A comment made by the old doctor in Four Sided Triangle might well stand for the aspect of the work generally: 'There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.'" [Peter Hutchings, Terence Fisher: British Film Makers, Manchester University Press, 2001, pp. 63, 67.]

While Four Sided Triangle can't be counted among Hammer's classics, this modest black and white film benefits from a unique, ironic premise, and serves as a modern fairytale-like warning that love can't be understood or captured by rationality and science. Maybe in the age of runaway AI simulacra flooding our culture and erasing the boundaries between humans and machines, we need this message more than ever.

"Damn, there's a fly buzzing around the laboratory! Now where did I put the flyswatter?"

The Frightful Fate of a Forlorn Flunky: The Mummy's Shroud

Now Playing: The Mummy's Shroud (1967)

Pros: The performances of the supporting cast, especially Michael Ripper as a harried, put-upon factotum, are a joy to watch; A couple of the mummy's kills are set up masterfully.
Cons: The recycled plot of a reanimated mummy wreaking vengeance on the expedition members that discovered its tomb is as musty and dusty as the mummy himself; The pre-titles sequence set in ancient Egypt lasts over seven grueling minutes.

Blogger extraordinaire Rebecca Deniston over at Taking Up Room has come up with a very simple and original blogathon idea: write about a film or TV show that underwhelmed you when you first saw it, but upon subsequent viewing(s) grew on you. If that concept appeals, by all means head over to her blogathon for more intriguing reassessments.

My choice for the blogathon is precisely no one's favorite of the many technicolor reboots of the classic monsters that Hammer Studios hammered out over a three decade period. Hammer is rightly famous (notorious?) for their Dracula and Frankenstein reboots featuring legendary actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. But they didn't stop with that Dastardly Duo.

From the late '50s through the '70s, Hammer added their own colorful spins to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, 1960 and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, 1971), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), werewolves (Curse of the Werewolf, 1961), and the Mummy saga with four (count 'em!) entries: The Mummy (1959), The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1967) and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971).

Somewhat like Universal's Mummy series, Hammer started out strong with their 1959 offering, starring Christopher Lee as the ancient cloth-wrapped instrument of vengeance, and Peter Cushing as a bookish yet formidable target of the curse. Although lacking in the mystical atmosphere of Universal's 1932 classic with Boris Karloff, 6'5" Lee brought several extra levels of physicality and impending doom to the title role.

1964's Curse of the Mummy's Tomb added some comic relief in the form of a brash, self-centered American entrepreneur (played by Fred Clark), but also leveraged the reincarnation angle to set up a surprise climax. By 1967 and The Mummy's Shroud, it seemed as if Hammer, like Universal's Mummy B pictures of the '40s, had run out of ideas and was in the lather, rinse and repeat mode. (However, they would infuse new blood, so to speak, into the series by adapting Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars and releasing it as Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.)

A synopsis of The Mummy's Shroud will seem very familiar to fans of Universal's Mummy franchise:

• An Egyptian royal runs afoul of court rivals and is entombed in a secret location along with his loyal manservant and guardian. Check.
• A 1920s expedition finds the tomb, which sets in motion the terrible consequences for the expedition members. Check.
• A modern-day Egyptian keeper of the tomb warns the expedition to stay away or be cursed. Check.
• The keeper reanimates the mummified guardian of the tomb by reading a sacred text from the royal shroud. Check.
• One by one, the defilers meet terrible fates at the hands of the avenging mummy. Check.

"Is anyone else feeling a sense of deja vu?"

When I first saw The Mummy's Shroud sometime around my high school days (not quite 3000 years ago, but sometimes it feels that way), my reaction was "been there, done that." Mind you, that was a time of pimply-faced adolescence when I couldn't get enough of Hammer's bloody technicolored reboots of the Universal classics I'd been raised on. So of course I was going to see Shroud at the first opportunity, regardless.

But that first viewing was a slog, kind of like sifting through tons of Egyptian sand to find a shard of pottery or two. There was the seemingly interminable pre-titles sequence (lasting over 7 minutes!) depicting the Egyptian prince's flight into the desert to avoid being assassinated, and his lonely death attended only by his loyal manservant. Okay, it was poignant, I guess, and filmed in glorious color with striking costumes, but did it have to be that long?

And instead of being rewarded with a bit of action for making it through the sonorously narrated fictional history lesson, my juvenile self was treated to yet another interminable sequence, this time featuring a pompous, rich jackass bellowing at the help as he arrives at an Egyptian hotel.

Stanley Preston (John Phillips), is the jackass and wealthy financier of the expedition, which includes his son Paul (David Buck). It seems the expedition hasn't communicated with the outside world for some time and is feared lost, and Preston has arrived in Egypt to yell at underlings to do something.

Preston blusters and berates his way through more exposition and back story as his meek and harried press secretary Longbarrow (Michael Ripper) twists himself into a pretzel trying to keep up with his boss's demands. It seemed to take forever in my teen hormone-clouded mind for the film to just get to the expedition camp, where the search party headed up by Preston arrives just in time to learn that they've finally found the lost tomb of the benighted Egyptian prince Kah-to-Bey (played in the pre-titles sequence by Toolsie Persaud).

Longbarrow (Michael Ripper) tries to ingratiate himself with his irate boss.

After being threatened by the sinister self-appointed keeper of the tomb Hasmid (Roger Delgado), the expedition leader, Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell), wants to be cautious, but the arrogant money-man Preston forces the issue and gets the excavation going pronto, little knowing that he is sealing his, and the expedition's, doom.

Some 45 long minutes into the film, the mummy of the Prince's manservant Prem (played in the prologue by Dickie Owen; the mummy is played by Eddie Powell), finally gets around to his bloody avenging of the tomb's desecration, jump-started by Hasmid's malevolent ministrations.

Okay, so at this point the film goes on to do a credible job of building suspense and an impending sense of doom with the giant mummy lurking in every dark corner of the old city, but man, there's a ton of exposition and dialog to get through first!

Fast forward to 2019, when I was bit by the Hammer mummy bug after a rewatch of the original 1959 reboot. Being the red-haired stepchild of Hammer's mummy series, The Mummy's Shroud seemed to have successfully eluded any streaming services, so I took advantage of a classic horror convention I was attending to secure a DVD copy.

Far older and somewhat more mature, I was more receptive to the character development in the first part of the film that my younger self saw as an unforgivable delay in getting to the good stuff. But it wasn't John Phillips bloviating as Preston that got my attention, so much as master character actor Michael Ripper's wonderful performance as the put-upon factotum Longbarrow.

They never learn. That thing is going to start walking, and it's not going to be pretty.

At this point in Hammer's filmography, Ripper was a very familiar face, popping up in seemingly everything bearing the Hammer name. Many of his appearances were brief, but they were always memorable. Complementing the exotic classiness of stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Ripper specialized in rough and tumble working class characters, from barkeepers to coachmen to day laborers. He was a relatable everyman who provided a bit of comic relief or a simple, common sense perspective in Hammer's world of monsters and swashbucklers (for more on Ripper and his extensive career, see my friend Barry's tribute to the versatile character actor over at Cinematic Catharsis).

His portrayal of Longbarrow in Shroud is something of a departure -- in the film he is dapper in a linen suit, complete with immaculate hair and pince-nez glasses (not to mention this is one of his heftier roles). At the beginning of the film Preston refers to Longbarrow as his press secretary, but like many underlings of the capricious rich, he has a boatload of "other duties as assigned," arranging hotel accommodations, getting together search parties, booking passage on ships, ad nauseum.

Ripper's poor, harried character doesn't even merit a first name, and the name he does answer to brings to mind "wheelbarrow" -- appropriate, as Preston seems to only see him as an expendable tool to haul around his baggage, real and metaphorical.

Ripper is a wonder to behold, at one and the same time meek, unctuous and efficient; one moment smiling in self satisfaction at a job well done and the next knitting his brow in worry that his master is displeased.

As the expedition members start to get picked off one by one, Preston's former brash self confidence collapses into gnawing fear, and he instructs his flunky to book passage for he and his wife on the next steamship out of Dodge -- against the explicit instructions of the Egyptian police inspector to stay put until the murders are cleared up. You can see the wheels turning under Longbarrow's brow as he wonders, "are you taking me with you?" and we're relieved for the worried assistant as Preston begrudgingly tells him he can book for himself as well.

"I can't take you with me Longbarrow, but here, get yourself something nice out of the hotel vending machine."

Alas, the police get wind of Preston's plan to escape and shuts it down. When yet another expedition member, the photographer, is burned to death in his hotel room, the financier goes into full panic mode and commands poor Longbarrow to get up in the dead of night to make arrangements for the first ship out of port. When Longbarrow realizes that his boss won't be taking him along after all, the look of grief and disappointment on his face is heart rending. And, without spoiling too much, the pitiful assistant's fate is so very, very undeserved (but at least there's some justice in the Mummy universe -- Preston pays dearly for being Preston as the film draws to a close).

I would be remiss not to mention two other supporting actors who help elevate the film from a trite snoozefest to something that, for all its faults, bears a rewatch. Elizabeth Sellars plays Preston's elegantly cool and composed wife, Barbara, who for most of the film keeps to the background with a detached, slightly bemused smile as her husband grandstands and sucks the air out of every room he's in.

"Whoa Preston, you're way too tense! Here, let me give you a shoulder rub..."

With nothing more than subtle facial expressions and some offhand comments, Sellars makes it clear that her character has calculated the trade off she has made -- affluence at the cost of living with a horse's ass -- and decided it was a bad bargain. When her panicked husband tells her to pack up, that they're leaving Egypt, she calmly tells him she's not going. "I'll be alright," she icily informs him. "After all, I didn't enter the tomb." Ouch!

Mirroring Barbara Preston's icy contempt, but hiding that contempt behind a twisted, toothless grin and a cackling, menacing laugh, is Catherine Lacey as Haiti, Hasmid's fortune-telling mother and prophetess of doom for the expedition members. Looking like a prototypical refugee from a central European gypsy camp and armed with a stage prop crystal ball, Lacey complements Sellars' cool detachment, her eyes glinting with mischievous glee at the terrible fates of the English interlopers.

Some viewers will chuckle as Haiti keeps tabs on the tomb defilers by watching their movements on the crystal ball as if it were a TV monitor. But there is one chillingly effective scene with the prop, when Sir Basil, exhausted and on the run from authorities who want to commit him to an asylum, encounters Haiti. Told that he has mere seconds to live by the malevolent soothsayer, Basil blinks wearily as he looks at the crystal ball and sees the cloudy reflection of the mummy creeping up behind him.

Haiti and Hasmid are hoping there's a DoorDash delivery in their near future.

If you need someone to blame, or alternately, compliment for The Mummy's Shroud, John Gilling, who directed and wrote the screenplay from a story by producer Anthony Hinds, is your man. The previous year, Gilling had helmed two Hammer horrors, The Reptile and Plague of the Zombies, filming them back to back at Bray Studios for budget savings. Although not involving popular characters like Frankenstein or Dracula, over the years the two films have acquired a loyal cult following. An earlier Gilling-directed horror film, The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), starring Peter Cushing, is a very good adaptation of the infamous Burke and Hare murderous grave robbers story (see my review here).

While Shroud is nowhere near the top of Gilling's resume, it does represent the end of an era for Hammer, as it was their last film shot at Bray Studios, which had been home to the company for 16 creative and lucrative years.

Another notable feature is the mummy itself. According to Hammer historians Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes, the creature was based on "a genuine relic resident in the British Museum's Egypt rooms of a later, Roman-era body. Its impressive demise, wherein the creature claws away at its own, disintegrating head, was filmed in Les Bowie's Slough studio. It was assistant Ian Scoones' gloved hands that crumbled a dummy wax head filled with fuller's earth, paint dust, and a prop skeleton." [Hearn and Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorized History of Hammer Films, Titan Books, 2007, p. 115]

If you haven't seen The Mummy's Shroud (and there's no reason you should have), it still presents challenges to the curious who want to check it out. It doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere, but there are DVD and Blu-ray copies available for those who have some spare change lying around. If you're a Mummy or Hammer completist, you definitely will want to take a look. Or maybe you're a Michael Ripper fan, and want to see him at the top of his game in one of his very best and most poignant Hammer roles. Whatever the reason, "beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet" (as the tagline goes) as you mount your own expedition to unearth The Mummy's Shroud.

In addition to the requisite avenging mummy, The Mummy's Shroud features a fictional ancient Egyptian history lesson.