Synopsis: It is 1933, and eight years have passed since dashing legionnaire Rick O'Connell and fearless Egyptologist Evelyn fought for their lives against a 3000-year-old enemy named Imhotep. Rick and Evelyn are married now, raising their son Alex in London. A chain of events finds the mummy of Imhotep resurrected in the British Museum, walking the earth once more in his search for immortality. But another force has also been set loose in the world - one born of the darkest rituals of ancient Egyptian mysticism, and even more powerful than Imhotep. When these two forces clash, the fate of the world will hang in the balance, sending the O'Connells on a desperate race to save the world from unspeakable evil and rescue their son before it's too late.

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Proving that bigger is rarely better, The Mummy Returns serves up so much action and so many computer-generated effects that it quickly grows exhausting. In his zeal to establish a lucrative franchise, writer-director Stephen Sommers dispenses with such trivial matters as character development and plot logic, and charges headlong into an almost random buffet of minimum story and maximum mayhem, beginning with a prologue establishing the ominous fate of the Scorpion King (played by World Wrestling Federation star the Rock, in a cameo teaser for his later starring role in--you guessed it--The Scorpion King). Dormant for 5,000 years, under control of the Egyptian god Anubis, the Scorpion King will rise again in 1933, which is where we find The Mummy's returning heroes Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, now married and scouring Egyptian ruins with their 8-year-old son, Alex (Freddie Boath).

John Hannah (as Weisz's brother) and Oded Fehr (as mystical warrior Ardeth Bay) also return from The Mummy, and trouble begins when Alex dons the Scorpion King's ancient bracelet, coveted by the evil mummy Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), who's been revived by... oh, but does any of this matter? With a plot so disposable that it's impossible to care about anything that happens, The Mummy Returns is best enjoyed as an intermittently amusing and physically impressive monument of Hollywood machinery, with gorgeous sets that scream for a better showcase, and digital trickery that tops its predecessor in ambition, if not in payoff. By the time our heroes encounter a hoard of ravenous pygmy mummies, you'll probably enjoy this movie in spite of itself. --Jeff Shannon

Additional features
Fans of the special edition of the original Mummy will find just as satisfying a treasure room in this sequel DVD. Director Stephen Sommers and executive producer-editor Bob Ducsay are back with an animated play-by-play commentary, complementing the movie with technical tidbits and entertaining production stories. The "Spotlight on Location" featurette is the usual promotional puff piece, but the Visual and Special Effects Formation galleries dig deep into four key effects scenes (including the pygmy mummy attack), each broken down into four stages of development and illustrated with work-in-progress footage, raw animation, and production sketches. In addition to the historical factoids, production notes, games, and promotions for The Scorpion King is a five-minute collection of outtakes cleverly cut together like a mock movie trailer. --Sean Axmaker

Synopsis: Amazon.com
If you're expecting bandaged-wrapped corpses and a lurching Boris Karloff-type villain, then you've come to the wrong movie. But if outrageous effects, a hunky hero, and some hearty laughs are what you're looking for, the 1999 version of The Mummy is spectacularly good fun. Yes, the critics called it "hokey," "cheesy," and "pallid." Well, the critics are unjust. Granted, the plot tends to stray, the acting is a bit of a stretch, and the characters occasionally slip into cliché, but who cares? When that action gets going, hold tight--those two hours just fly by.

The premise of the movie isn't that far off from the original. Egyptologist and general mess Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) discovers a map to the lost city of Hamunaptra, and so she hires rogue Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) to lead her there. Once there, Evelyn accidentally unlocks the tomb of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), a man who had been buried alive a couple of millennia ago with flesh-eating bugs as punishment for sleeping with the pharaoh's girlfriend. The ancient mummy is revived, and he is determined to bring his old love back to life, which of course means much mayhem (including the unleashing of the 10 plagues) and human sacrifice. Despite the rather gory premise, this movie is fairly tame in terms of violence; most of the magic and surprise come from the special effects, which are glorious to watch, although Imhotep, before being fully reconstituted, is, as one explorer puts it, rather "juicy." Keep in mind this film is as much comedy as it is adventure--those looking for a straightforward horror pic will be disappointed. But for those who want good old-fashioned eye-candy kind of fun, The Mummy ranks as one of choicest flicks of 1999. --Jenny Brown

Synopsis: Set in the 1830s in some fictitious east European country, it begins with the evil Count and Countess Karnstein catching themselves a young virgin from the village whom they sacrifice to the Devil in order to resurrect the beautiful Countess Carmilla (Yutte Stensgaard). We then switch scene to young writer of horror stories, Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson) arriving in the local village to hear the usual stories about how the castle on the hill is a Place of Evil blah blah blah. So off he goes to investigate only to discover that, place of evil or not, it is now adjacent to a posh girl's finishing school brimful of stunning young women including a certain Mircalla who he is instantly smitten by, rather unhappily as her name being an anagram for `Carmilla' is no accident. Smitten as he is he quickly contrives to get taken on as an English teacher and is given lodgings to share with the decidedly strange history teacher Giles Barton played by Ralph Bates. Obviously it isn't long before nubile young ladies start cropping up dead with strange marks on their necks.

A fair amount of confusion seems to have reigned over the making of this. It's a sequel to the earlier 'Vampire Lovers' where Ingrid Pitt played the role of Carmilla. Here they couldn't get her so they used the relatively unkown Stensgaard. Terence Fisher was originally pencilled in to direct but Sangster had to take over when that fell through. And Peter Cushing was originally to have been cast as Barton but was replaced by Bates when that didn't work out either. Not that any of these replacements prove so very disastrous. Sangster does a decent enough job. Stensgaard is pretty good in the lead: it was probably the high point of her short career before she quit to work for a Christian radio station in the USA. And Bates isn't Cushing but is still serviceably creepy. The weak point of the film and the main reason this is one of Hammer's less successful vampire movies is Johnson as LeStrange who should be the dramatic and emotional centre of the movie but who fails to breath life into a serious disappointingly feeble and uninteresting character. Suzanna Leigh is equally lacklustre as Janet Playfair, the main goodie female character, the virtuous young teacher who takes a fancy to LeStrange (who is surely just not interesting enough to be very credibly such a big hit with the ladies, both dead and undead, as he is here). So by no means the greatest of the Hammer vampires but great fun nonetheless. If you like this sort of thing (and I have to say love it) all the ingredients are there: blood, sex, evil old counts with V-shaped haircuts, muttering villagers, peasant girls with heaving bosoms, black carriages with big black horses, noctural assignations, vampires turning to skeletons after getting `staked', bodies down wells, stalwart local policemen who don't really know what they're up against, creepy graveyards... Oh go on. You know you really want to.
~Amazon Reviewer