The Tomb (2004)

Under the alias of David Hunt, Maestro Bruno Mattei gives us another of his crazy exploitation-movies which rips of everything that happens to be in his way. The Tomb is shot in the Philippines and Mexico and though the budget probably was lower than my yearly salary, they manage to make it looks quite good and at least gave the set designer some money to build a temple!

The movie starts with a human sacrifice, an ancient Maya-king wants to have eternal life or something... but in the last minute he has to sacrifice himself to be able to resurrect next time some one happens to walk by the temple and decides to stir up a mess there. Well, he had to wait one thousand year or something like that, until our team of stupid university students, led by Robert Madison (who kinda reminds me of Wings Hauser in some angles). These are a bunch of absurdly stupid people, and the lines they utter are so bad that it's impossible to understand how anyone could write them. But we don't watch a movie like The Tomb for the dialogue, but for the horror. It kinda works. It's still very, very, very, very, very silly - but it's fun to watch because of the cheap but impressive sets and jungle exteriors.

Mattei was a great craftsman and this movie is no exception. It's well-shot and Mattei tells the weak story like a pro. When he seem to miss footage, he (or his editor or producers) just steals some footage from Army of Darkness, some jungle movie and maybe The Mummy (the one with Brendan Fraser) too! It's not that much, and it's incorporate in the new footage quite well - but we, as the movie experts we are - will recognize every single stolen frame. The temple is masonit and plastic, but has that wonderful b-movie quality that I prefer than no temple at all. There's a big sacrifical hall, some tombs and corridors - and of course everything falls apart in the end, just like in a good old Indiana Jones-movie.

Most of the actors are mediocre, David Brass who behaves like an old queer even when tries to hook up with young women, is good but has as usual very little to do. Robert Madison is quite okey, and so the bad guys - but the rest, the university students are among the worst actors I've seen in quite a long while. We have rolling eyes, facial expressions from hell, awkward movements and most of the time they just don't know what to do with their bodies when they are in front of the camera.

Gore and tits then? There's very little nudity, and the gore-quota was far less then I thought it would be. It's not completely dry, and has some nice after the fact-make up, a graphic slith throat, some decomposing bodies and a couple of very cool make-up effects when the bad guys are showing their demon-faces. But it should have been a lot more! Maybe they spent everything on the sets? I guess you can't afford everything all the time...

The official US DVD is easy and very cheap to find on ebay. I bought mine for one dollar and of course it's worth that for us Matteiophiles. It's also in widescreen and good quality.