THE SECRET OF THE MUMMY

When cinema becomes pure entertainment, without pretensions or forced elements, with the sole aim of transmitting to the audience its love for films and its desire to take risks without fear. In the preamble, a dying scientist gives his students clues that could lead to the discovery of a very ancient Egyptian mummy. Years later, one of the students, who has since become a leading expert in the field and ambitious beyond all limits, kills all his former colleagues in possession of the other pieces of the map, finds the mummy, and like a new Dr. Frankenstein, brings it back to life. The mummy, however, escapes his control and, under the command of a mad assistant very similar to the legendary Igor of Mel Brooks, begins to kidnap young and beautiful maidens, with the aim of turning them into crude and bestial creatures to satisfy his unrestrained sexual desires. The authorities investigate these mysterious disappearances, trace the cause of everything, and kill the mummy that, meanwhile, had fallen in love with a maiden who reminded her of the woman she loved during her earthly life. A pure delirium, where the story is only a vague pretext to offer 80 minutes of pure Z-movie trash. Deliberately over-the-top acting, hilarious jokes in rapid succession, cinephile references one after another, black-and-white inserts and newsreel clips, grotesque and crazy characters, insults hurled without shame and made even funnier by the emphatic Brazilian speech, naked women in almost every shot, tons of animalistic erotic scenes, and a melodramatic ending almost moving and in total contrast with the rest of the film. For trash lovers, a cult film, unfortunately never released in Italy, screened at the Torino Film Festival with even an appearance at the end of the screening by Cardoso himself, who announces to the ecstatic audience the preparation of the sequel, which will be titled "O Sarcofago Macabro".