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The Tomb (1986 film)

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The Tomb
VHS cover
Directed byFred Olen Ray
Written byKenneth J. Hall
T.L. Lankford
Produced byFred Olen Ray
Ronnie Hadar
Paul Hertzberg
Richard Kaye
StarringCameron Mitchell
John Carradine
Sybil Danning
CinematographyPaul Elliott
Edited byMiriam L. Preissel
Music byDrew Neumann
Production
company
Distributed byTrans World Entertainment
Release date
  • October 2, 1986 (1986-10-02)
[1]
Running time
84 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Tomb is a 1986 American supernatural horror film directed by Fred Olen Ray and starring Michelle Bauer, Richard Alan Hench, David Pearson and Susan Stokey. Despite being respectively given first and second billing, Cameron Mitchell only has a supporting role, and John Carradine features in single scene. Sybil Danning also only appears in the prologue, despite being prominently shown on the poster.[2][3] The plot concerns an ancient Egyptian vampire who kills those in possession of artifacts stolen from her and taken to the United States by grave robbers.[3]

Plot synopsis

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Dr. Howard Phillips robs tombs for a living, selling artifacts he steals from an unmarked tomb in Egypt. His desecration of a tomb displeases an immortal woman, who is out for revenge for the theft.

Cast

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Production

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Development

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The film's basic idea came to Fred Olen Ray when he learned from an insider at New World Pictures that the company was considering an adaptation of F. Paul Wilson's 1984 novel The Tomb. The director reasoned that if he managed to get a homonymous film into production before they made their own, his competitors might give him an easy payday to rename it and keep the title for themselves (New World ultimately passed on the adaptation).[4] Although a rumor asserts that The Tomb was loosely based on Bram Stoker's 1903 novel The Jewel of Seven Stars, this is not mentioned on the film's poster, nor in the credits or in Ray's 1991 book where its genesis is discussed.[5][6][7] Several characters, however, bear names that appear in classic installments of Universal Pictures' Mummy franchise.[3]

Preliminary filming

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Towards the end of 1984, a friend of Ray's opened to him about a problem. He had rented some set panels for a student film he was making at Columbia University, but the school had granted him restrictive time slots at their in-house film studio.[5] The set, an Indiana Jones-inspired tomb, had been built by production designer Alan Jones and carpenters from Cinebar on behalf of advertising agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. It had been commissioned for a pair of lavish Wrangler Jeans TV commercials, together budgeted at $1 million.[4][5][8]

Ray realized the production value he could get out of it, and offered his friend to rent a studio for two full days, on the condition that he could use the set during both nights to make a sizzle reel for a film of his own. The director quickly commissioned two sections of the screenplay, both taking place inside the tomb and bookending the central story arc. He then crammed the filming of their combined twenty to thirty pages into those two nights.[4] Ray showed the resulting footage to producer Richard Kaye, who made a successful pitch to Trans World Entertainment for the complete film.[5] The Tomb was Ray's first project for Trans World, who had previously bought select international distribution rights to his film Biohazard from 21st Century Films.[5]

Casting

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The film marked Michelle Bauer's first lead role, and her first work with Fred Olen Ray, to whom she was introduced by a mutual acquaintance, producer Paul Hertzberg.[9] She was chosen over one of Ray's established stars, who would have had to cover her blonde hair with a wig for the role.[10] It was the first of several films from the director in which John Carradine appears, although Ray had worked with Carradine in a more minor capacity on Ken Wiederhorn's Shock Waves.[11][12] Ray tried to get Martin Landau to play Dr. Phillips, but the latter demanded $10,000 for his appearance. When Cameron Mitchell, whose phone number had recently been passed onto him by a journalist, accepted to do it for $2,000, the producers deemed that he represented similar marquee value and cast him instead.[13][14] The role of Dr. Manners marked the feature debut of former scientist and California State University at Bakersfield president Jack Frankel, who had left his function one year prior to embrace acting after "it struck [him] that [he] didn't want to do this for the rest of [his] life".[15]

Principal photography

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Trans World Entertainment put up a modest $185,000 for Ray to shoot the rest of The Tomb.[5] The second sessions spanned thirteen days and took place in April 1985.[5][16] The land around Iverson Ranch, California, stood in for the Egyptian desert.[5][17]

Post-production

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While Ray found Trans World to be a step up from 21st Century regarding business dealings, it was also his first experience with a vertical production structure. Ray's cut featured more comedic elements, including seven musical numbers spread throughout the film, as well as nudity and violence. His bosses had most of them edited out from their final cut to make it closer to a classic adventure film.[5][11] Although Trans World was initially lukewarm about Ray's approach, the film's commercial success prompted them to reconnect one year later, and offer him a two-picture deal, consisting of Commando Squad and a sequel to Creature (which became Deep Space).[5]

Release

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The Tomb was released by Trans World in the U.S. on October 2, 1984.[1] It was apparently delayed from an earlier date of September 22, for which some advertising material was circulated.[18] The film was a commercial success, moving between 29,000 and 40,000 tapes depending on recollections, a rare number at the time for a direct-to-video film.[11] According to Ray, the tape quickly received a Gold certification from one of the industry's sanctioning bodies.[12] The domestic release was preceded by a U.K. bow in the third week of May 1986 by Frontier, a short-lived label of Guild Home Video.[2][19]

Reception

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The Tomb received mixed-to-negative reviews. Ballantine Books' Video Movie Guide called it a "[t]ypical high-energy and low-budget Fred Olen Ray production, with the veteran stars on hand for B-movie marquee value, while a largely unknown young cast handles the strenuous mayhem.[20] In his syndicated column, British reviewer John Brooker criticized the bait-and-switch tactic of casting actors in shorter roles than their billing suggested, although he was moderately positive about the overall film, saying there was "[n]othing new here, but the special effects are passable and horror fans will not find it too hard to take".[2]

Joe Kane of the New York Daily News disagreed, and called the film "memorably bad".[21] John Stanley, author of the Creature Features series of compendiums, panned it too: he complained that The Tomb failed to immerse in its ancient culture, due to "bad" direction and dialogue, as well as "really bad" acting laden with "pointless cameos".[22] British reference book Elliot's Guide to Home Entertainment summed it up as a "campy horror yarn of three parts tedium and one part chills".[23]

References

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  1. ^ a b Trans World Entertainment (August 30, 1986). "The Tomb pre-release advertisement". Billboard Magazine. Vol. 98, no. 35. New York: Billboard Publications. p. V-70. ISSN 0006-2510.
  2. ^ a b c Brooker, John (May 16, 1986). "Treasure trail of ship of skeletons". Hertfordshire Mercury. p. E6  – via newspapers.com (subscription required) .
  3. ^ a b c Scheib, Richard (January 19, 2003). "The Tomb (1985)". moriareviews.com. Retrieved April 2, 2023.
  4. ^ a b c Gilpin, Kris (February 1990). "Fred Olen Ray". Draculina. No. 10. Moro: Draculina Publishing. pp. 5–11.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ray, Fred Olen (1991). "American Independent Productions, Inc.". The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors. Jefferson; London: McFarland & Company. pp. 181–182. ISBN 9780899506289.
  6. ^ Matt Cardin (November 17, 2014). Mummies Around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture. Santa Barbara; Denver; Oxford: ABC-Clio. p. 189. ISBN 9781610694209.
  7. ^ Craddock, Jim, ed. (2002). VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever 2002. Farmington Hills: Gale. p. 770. ISBN 978-0-7876-5756-7.
  8. ^ Kanner, Bernice (November 26, 1984). "Raiders of the Lost Market". New York Magazine. Vol. 17, no. 47. News Group Publications. pp. 18, 22, 24.
  9. ^ Shinnick, Kevin (1995). "Michelle Bauer!". Chiller Theatre. No. 5. Rutherford: Clement, Kevin; Bracco, Phil. p. 65.
  10. ^ Yanko, Mark (Winter 1994). "Michelle Bauer Expresses her Point of View". Scream Queens Illustrated. Vol. 1, no. 2. Plymouth: Stray Cat Publishing. pp. 33–36.
  11. ^ a b c George, Bill (Summer 1989). "Interview: Fred Olen Ray". HorrorFan. Vol. 1, no. 2. New York: CGR Publishing Group. pp. 51–53, 59.
  12. ^ a b Voce, Steve (December 1992) [March 1992]. "Fred Olen Ray – David Decoteau". Draculina. No. 14. Centralia: Draculina Publishing. pp. 7–16.
  13. ^ Farmer, Donald; Levinson, Gary (Winter 1985–86). "The Tomb". Splatter Times. No. 7. Palm City: Donald Farmer. pp. 4–6.
  14. ^ Vogel, Robert (February 26, 1995). "The 'Guitar Pick' Years". The Asbury Press Park. p. E6  – via newspapers.com (subscription required) .
  15. ^ "Livermore Lab co-founder trades star study for stardom". The Oakland Tribune. Associated Press. June 4, 1985. p. C-1, C-3  – via newspapers.com (subscription required) .
  16. ^ "Miscellaneous Notes: The Tomb". tcm.com. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved March 14, 2024.
  17. ^ Nano, Swami (November 27, 2011). "'The Tomb': A rare shoot at the Iverson Movie Ranch in the 1980s". The Iverson Movie Ranch... And Other Historic Filming Locations. Retrieved April 2, 2023.
  18. ^ "The Tomb September 22, 1986 release press advertisement". ebay.com. Archived from the original on May 9, 2023.
  19. ^ "Frontier (Guild Home Video)". vivavhs.co.uk. May 8, 2013. Retrieved April 2, 2023.
  20. ^ Martin, Mick; Porter, Marsha (2001). Video Movie Guide 2002. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 1176. ISBN 9780345420961.
  21. ^ Kane, Joe. "The Phantom of the Movies". Daily News. New York. p. –  – via newspapers.com (subscription required) .
  22. ^ Stanley, John (1994) [1981]. Creature Features Movie Guide Strikes Again (4th ed.). Pacifica: Creatures at Large Press. p. 371. ISBN 9780940064102.
  23. ^ Elliot, John (1997). "The Films". Elliot's Guide to Home Entertainment (4th ed.). London: Aurum Press. p. 852. ISBN 1854104853.
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