The Tomb
This film was directed by Fred Olen Ray. It stars Michelle Bauer and some other people, one being Cameron Mitchell. There are some notable cameos, like a very old John Carradine, B-movie vixen Sybil Danning, and the crazy Kitten Natividad of Russ Meyer fame who does a cameo as a topless stripper who does her nightclub act in a policeman's outfit.
This starts off as an Indiana Jones sort of thing. Two guys go to Egypt and rob an unknown tomb and wake up Michelle Bauer who is an ancient Egyptian Princess who also happens to be a vampire with evil powers who can shoot electricity out of her fingertips and kill people. The guys take the artifacts from the tomb and bring them back to the United States and sell them. Michelle Bauer shows up and wants her artifacts back. She puts a live ancient scarab (a large beetle) inside the chest of one of the thieves in order to control him. She can make the scarab bite the guy's heart at will. He tells her who he sold the artifacts to, and she goes out to find the purchasers of said artifacts. There's a whole other subplot going on. And somehow John Carradine fits into that, and it looks like he's going to keel over dead right there during the filming. For some unexplained reason, Michelle puts lesbian moves on some woman at a bar. They end up in a room and Michele tells the woman to take off her clothes and get in bed. The woman takes off all of her clothes, jumps into bed, and a big snake strangles her. Michele is just plain mean. So, she's off on a killing spree, getting her artifacts back, and some inane cops try to figure out who the killer is. At one point, one of the cops says, and I paraphrase, "All I know is this man is Dead. Murdered. And someone's responsible" which is an infamous line from Plan 9 From Outer Space. You can always expect those little in-jokes in Fred's movies. And then other stuff happens and then the movie ends. Generally, Fred's movies are just good natured campy exploitation fun.
This movie actually has a lot going for it. It has a lot of wonderful cameos from cult stars, and it actually stars Michelle Bauer, who could never seem to land any starring roles. While she is wonderful, she never gets nude. I was emailing Fred Olen Ray and I asked him about this and he said "She did, but they didn't go for it (the Israeli backers) so I swiped the footage and it appears in BEVERLY HILLS VAMP -- and is pretty obvious. Her hair is different, make-up too!" Well, first of all, I think it's weird that a movie about ancient Egypt would have Israeli backers. Secondly, it is not obvious that footage from this movie is spliced into Beverly Hills Vamp, because I never noticed, and she always seems to be in scenes with other people in BHV who aren't even in The Tomb. And thirdly, remember that weird snake scene I mentioned? That women was nude, and so was the crazy Kitten Natividad. So why would these people object to Michelle being nude as well? None of this makes sense. But you do get the impression that the best parts of this movie ended up on the cutting room floor. It makes me wonder if you couldn't recut this movie and improve it a whole lot. Even though it's not a bad way to waste an hour and a half, it never really gets too awfully exciting, so I'll rate it a 3. There are better Fred Olen Ray movies, and there are worse Fred Olen Ray movies.