By Richard Winters
My Rating: 1 out of 10
4-Word Review: Queen possesses his daughter.
Based on the 1903 Bran Stoker novel ‘The Jewel of the Seven Stars’, the film centers around Matthew (Charlton Heston) who is at an archeological dig in Egypt in 1961 along with his assistant Jane (Susanah York) and his wife Anne (Jill Townsend) who is pregnant with their child. One day he and Jane come upon a lost tomb that houses Queen Kara. When the tomb is opened it unleashes her spirit, which resides itself in the baby that Anne is carrying. The delivery is painful and at one point puts Anne into a trance, but the baby survives even though at first it was considered still born. Anne takes the child and leaves the country while also divorcing Matthew. Eighteen years later Matthew is now married to Jane and working at a college professor in England. He reunites with his daughter Margaret (Stephanie Zimblast) but finds her displaying odd behaviors and eventually realizes that she’s possessed.
The movie seems intent on stealing ideas and effects from The Omen, as well as The Exorcist. The scares and effects are light and at times non-existent, which is the biggest thing going against it. When there is a killing, it comes off as very routine, or something stolen from another, better movie, particularly the sequence dealing with York falling from a balcony. The on-location shooting, shot mostly in Egypt, is picturesque, but that’s unfortunately about the only good thing I can say about it as everything else fall flat and is boring.
Heston’s presence doesn’t help things. During the opening sequence, when he’s supposed to be ‘younger’ he already looks too old, like he’s better prepared to be a grandfather than a father expecting a newborn. The only thing that changes when he gets ‘older’ is that he grows a goatee, which in some ways actually makes him appear younger. York has the same problem. During the modern-day scenes, she has longer hair while in the segments when she was supposed to be younger, she has short hair, which makes her appear older and the styles should’ve been reversed.
Townsend, this marks to date her last film appearance, doesn’t change at all between the two time periods and looks more like Zimblast’s older sister than her mother. My biggest gripe is the way her eyes never blink when she’s in her trance, which would’ve caused severe damage to the cornea and potential vision loss. Meaning that when she does ultimately snap out of her trance it most likely would’ve blinded her though here it has no effect.
Zimblast is the best thing about it. The scenes done with her inside her therapist’s office are effective and it would’ve worked better had she been the main character all the way through. She could’ve been like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, an otherwise nice person who doesn’t understand why she’s having these strange thoughts and impulses, and the viewer could’ve gotten wrapped up in hoping she could find some answers before it’s too late. Making it a mystery about what was causing it would’ve been more intriguing than spelling it all out right away.
Spoiler Alert!
The ending is a huge letdown as it has Heston dying while Zimblast goes completely into queen mode but then cuts to the credits. This then leaves open a whole plethora of questions. Like what happens to her? Does she go out and terrorize the world as this queen, or remain in the tomb and if so, what does she do there? Is she ever able to fight off the spirit and come back to being herself? This is stuff we needed to see and not just have left hanging, which makes the viewer feel unsatisfied and like they’ve only seen half a movie.
My Rating: 1 out of 10
Release: October 31, 1980
Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Mike Newell
Studio: Orion Pictures
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