Post by Eddie Love on Nov 26, 2010 22:19:44 GMT -5
The tomb of an evil, Egyptian princess is dug up with disastrous results in THE AWAKENING, a so-so but kinda fun, late 1970s mummy tale that also resurrects much of the plot of THE OMEN.
It stars Charlton Heston as an Egyptologist obsessed with unearthing the tomb of a princess long dead, even if her reputation for cruelty lives on. Heston’s so single-minded he barely stops working even during his wife’s difficult pregnancy. When she finally delivers, the child has died – but suddenly comes back to life at the very moment Heston breaks open the crypt housing his prized quarry. Years later, the daughter now grown, visits her father in London and Cairo and her sinister destiny comes to light.
Heston provides his patented routine of the toweringly erect, granite profiled anti-hero. It’s usually a daringly, counter-intuitive approach, but here he seems a little lost. This may be because in the first half he’s playing younger and the later scenes older than his actual age. Plus, in one scene, lecturing before a classroom, he employs a Ronald Coleman-esque accent that we never hear elsewhere. Indeed, the rest of the picture he ruminates in his self-conscious, stentorian intoning, at times bordering on self-parody.
When I was kid, I was in love with Stephanie Zimbalist and all those fond affections came rushing back watching this. She has a simply perfect face and she’s a marvelous talent as well. When she’s seemingly possessed by the ancient creature, she’s suitably enigmatic and even has some hair-raising outbursts towards the end. There’s a scene where she takes her father aback by kissing him full on the mouth in a darkened tomb, where she easily summons Heston’s total ill ease. She’s really commanding. (It’s a shame her post-TV series career didn’t pan out as us fans would have liked. It’s always bugged me that when Remington Steele was called back for a final season, putting the kibosh on Brosnan’s Bond, no one seemed to care that this the fact also nixed her starring in the role that later went to Nancy Allen in ROBOCOP as she’d been cast.) Anyway, the small cast here is rounded out by the incomparable Susannah York.
This marks an early film, possibly his first, of the director Mike Newell who went on to helm modern classics like FOUR WEDDINGS… and DONNIE BRASCO. Currently he’s in the blockbuster game, helming one of the Harry Potters and the recent PRINCE OF PERSIA. With THE AWAKENING, he seems a bit over-infatuated with the early dig scenes, possibly hoping to recreate the subtle, doom-laden opening of the THE EXCORIST and he just doesn’t have the chops. Additionally, the bulk of the actual plot commences in the later half of the film, by which time my interest had wanderered a bit.
The movie’s fitfully involving if a little unclear on exactly what “the rules” are. For instance, if the daughter is the reincarnation of the Egyptian princess, why all the ceremony to restore her? Also, there’s a nondescript colleague of Heston’s and suitor to the daughter who we see piecing things together at the end, but nothing really comes of it.
This picture doesn't break new ground, but it's watchable.