Let’s first clear the air. No one should be surprised that Zach (Gremlins Galligan) and Bruce (Babylon 5) Boxleitner are not the main actors in the film although their names are plastered on the DVD box art. Galligan plays a sexually aroused professor who is disposed of within the first 15 minutes of the film and Boxleitner plays the town sheriff who is introduced much later for some investigative purposes. All these parts are so irrelevant for the overall film that if the entire character was written out it would not have changed anything in the movie.
Furthermore, the film’s title used to be Unraveled, a title that is much more appropriate and accentuates the tongue-in-cheek way in which a campy mummy film like this is specifically called Unraveled. This is more appropriate than the zombie movie dead-sounding Legion of the Dead. The Asylum seems to have a knack for retitling films after the names of recently released atrocious horror films, but then again why would I be concerned about the box art choices? The real question is how the cover art for Ancient Evil 2: Guardian of The Underworld featuring the fang Egyptian Mudmi ends up on the cover for this film.
I think it was the Mohave Desert, though there were an awful lot of trees for a desert, which has a place where an ancient Egyptian priestess’s underground tomb has been discovered. I digress. For those of you who are confused on how an Egyptian tomb reached America, I will say that the script actually does have an explanation involving a trade route to the Americas and a defeat evil priestess. The reason for these things happening is al the logic for it is highly tangential og overly complicated. It does however make more sense than how that evil alchemist got to the island in House of the Dead.
The supervisor, who is a reticent Egyptologist, Roland Giles, and the over, much more noticeable face of Asylum, Rhett Giles, has recruited a brilliant undergraduate named Molly in order to translate the text beyond The Asylum’s comprehension. To Rhett’s dismay, she outdoes him on this, and she does it quite easily. While these people are exasperated at Molly’s antics, the group is worse off as Molly begins the text she has translated which instantly awakens the mummified priestess who looks good for being 4000 years old and married for quite some time.
After Annoh-tet’s flamboyant mummy unraveling comes to an end, she is ready to pick up right where she left off centuries ago. All she needs to get started is some clothing, an elaborate amulet, a dagger, the usual virgin sacrifice, and six male souls to resurrect her hench mummies. But first, she wants to find some clothing before proceeding any further. The lovely Claudia Lynx plays Anoh-tet while Paul Bales, the writer/director, makes a wise decision to keep her in some state of undress for the duration of the movie. She starts parachuting in wearing nothing but ripped-up mummy bandages, spends the next bit stark naked (at this point I was starting to think they would use her like Mathilda May in Lifeforce), and eventually ends up borrowing a belly shirt and some Daisy Dukes, and finally ends up wearing a modern-day Egyptian priest she must’ve found lying around in some tomb.
Honestly, Miss Lynx’s abs get as much, if not more, screen time than her face. Not that I am complaining, mind you.
Now, like every other evil Egyptian, Annoh-tet had some superpowers too. In this particular case, it is soul-sucking via the ability to grab a virgin’s crotch and instantly tell if they are a virgin and the sixth sense of knowing where the most desperate of drunken Black men are going to be looking for a hot chick to have intercourse with.
Not long after coming back to life, Annoh-tet runs into Molly who she first assumes is one of her priestesses, along with Molly’s “Virgin Alert!” younger sister. To no one’s surprise, the two lack any semblance of intelligence when they presume the naked Persian goddess they found in the sketchy motel swimming pool who only converses in a dead Egyptian language is one of the professor’s students named Anette. To Molly’s credit, it doesn’t take her much longer to figure out that ‘Anette’ was Annoh-tet resurrected, yet she still doesn’t seem nearly as freaked out as one would expect under the circumstances, or for that matter, all that concerned with the whole “her resurrection will help bring about the end of the world” prophecy she deciphered earlier.
Annoh-tet proceeds to zap men with lightning that burns their faces off and turns their bodies into perfectly dry skeletons. While carrying out these tasks, she swipes their souls and puts them into one of the six mummies that are still waiting to be awakened. As Molly and Carter think of a way to stop the evil Egyptian supermodel, the crazed and uncontrollable Egyptologist who serves as her high priest, and her powerful yet foolish zombie-like slaves, all while trying to protect her sister from harm and reignite their almost extinguished love, things start to get difficult.
I kept remembering that episode from “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” where the Incan mummy princess seduces Xander, who everyone thinks is just another South American exchange student. It seems to me that this is the most glaring defect of Legion of the Dead there is a very strong feeling of “been there, done that” with the material. The movie is not bad, just as it is argued above. Perhaps, the phrase “not bad” is more accurate to say than “good.” Given the current state of low-budget direct-to-video horror films, Legion of the Dead is exceptionally well crafted. It’s just a little lacking in substance at times, largely because the plot is something that you’ve seen previously and can predict where it is going. Plus, the low budget eventually catches up to the film. The muffled climactic showdown after so much anticipation and build-up leaves viewers baffled and in disbelief of the hasty end to the movie “Whatever. Just put this nonsense to rest.”
The whole film can be summarized during the climax scene when the six mummies come back to life and go on a rampage. Something about human spines really irks them. The best part was that Molly and Connor tried to fight the ‘mummies’ armed with nothing but whatever was lying around in the motel. The entire movie could have benefited from these instances, where the characters are much more dynamic and lively.
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