Customer Reviews

Legion of the Dead

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you have a fondness for silly, low-budget horror flicks, you may want to check this one out. A team of archeaology students find an Egyptian tomb in the woods of America! (Don't worry, there is an explanation.) They end up resurrecting a princess who proceeds to pick them off one by one.

If you watch a lot of horror films, you'll know what to expect. There's nudity, gore, bad dialouge. Still, this would be a fun one to watch on a rainy day. A guilty pleasure with a place of honor in my DVD library.

WARNING: possible spoilers ahead...

With the exception of the newly resurrected Full Moon movies, the Asylum distributes and produces the absolute worst horror movies on the video store shelves. The Asylum's legacy of lousiness continues with their Mummy epic, Legion of the Dead.

This movie is basically like Queen of the Damned with mummies instead of vampires and with Bruce Boxleitner and the kid from Gremlins instead of Aaliyah. This tepid tale begins when a couple of dirt bikers stumble on an ancient Egyptian burial tomb somewhere in the mountains of Los Angeles. You heard me right, this ancient Egyptian burial chamber is in the foothills of Los Angeles. Somehow those wacky Egyptians managed to make it all the way to California with a bunch of their loot and sarcophagus with a Queen Mummy in it. The Gremlins kid (can't remember his name) is an archaeologist who is summoned to the site after the two dirt bikers tell the cops about what they found.

The Gremlins guy leads a team on an expedition into the burial chamber. There's ten minutes of Indiana Jones shenanigans as our intrepid explorers make their way through into the tomb. Poisoned arrows, cryptic warnings written in hieroglyphs and trap doors abound. They make it through a winding maze of styrofoam cave walls and find a sarcophagus with an ancient Queen Mummy in it. Of course, they awaken this mummy from her slumber and it turns into an episode of Scooby Doo. The Queen Mummy reanimates a bunch of her mummy pals and they make short work of our explorers.

As far as the story goes, it doesn't get any more cookie cutter than this. It's shot on someone's camcorder, just like all the other offerings from the Asylum. The acting is cardboard. Overall, it's just a complete waste of time. My hope is that all lovers of horror movies will stop renting and buying these cheap, irritating movies from the Asylum. Maybe if they realize that they can't make a profit churning out these foul flicks, they will stop making them. I sure hope so.

Wow...look it's Bruce Boxleitner, I've heard of him. And it's Zach Galligan from Gremlins. Hey, a low budget horror film with a couple of actors you've actually heard of...can't be bad right? Well hold on there Pilgrim, lets not go that far. We have to make the assumption that these two guys really...REALLY needed a paycheck. Legion of the dead isn't horrible..but it's far from passable either. I mean there's some pretty good hokey fun although I think much of it may be unintentional..or maybe it wasn't and I'm not giving them enough credit. It's certainly pretty cheesy though. If you can buy the ludicrous plot of an ancient Egyptian burial ground being found in the L.A. Mountains then give yourself a pat on the back. That's certainly the dumbest element to the plot. Galligan is an archaeologist who goes to investigate the tomb and finds the sarcophagus of a mummy queen who of course is revived and goes on a rampage by bringing mummy hordes to life ala "The Mummy" of a few years ago. Claudia Lynx, who plays the mummy queen is fairly attractive and that is one good feature of the film. As a cheesy, schlocky film it's OK. But it's certainly NOT a horror film per se...there's nothing remotely terrifying in it. It's like a Sci-Fi Channel film.

Another brain dead selection from the production company Asylum. LEGION OF THE DEAD attempts to mix mummy movie with sexploitation flick. The result, hardly a first, looks like an inferior remake of the much-maligned LIFEFORCE. This time, instead of a naked space-vampire chick that sucks the lifeforce out of entranced males, we get a naked mummy-vampire chick that sucks the lifeforce out of entranced males.

Calling this movie a rip-off would be a compliment, however. It would ignore how really bad this film is. Unconvinced? Think about this: the best feature of the movie is the bad acting.

So what are we left with? There's laughable CGI. A "legion of the dead" that amounts to a few badly made up mummies. An Egyptian tomb set that appears to have been made of cardboard (but perhaps that's how California's ancient Eyptians once constructed them). I kid you not, people. This tomb was discovered in the woods of Southern California. And don't make me start on the script. Please. I don't want to think about it in any kind of detail.

Thankfully, I am a guy.... and as such if the film has to suck at least I can still be entertained by the nudity. But skin aside, this film has nothing going for it.

If you've ever seen the remake of The Mummy, you might be thinking that something's missing. Maybe a plot.

But you know director Paul Bale thought was missing? Naked hot chicks.

Instead of a male mummy terrorizing the world, Legion of the Dead features a female mummy (Claudia Lynx as Aneh-Tet) who happens to be entombed in America. There's an explanation for why this is, but this being an Asylum film...to ask too many questions is to risk madness.

There's some tension between pretty undergraduate Molly (Courtney Cloch), her ex-boyfriend Carter (Chad Michael Collins), her sister Kevyn (Emily Falkenstein), and lead archeologist Dr. Ari Ben-David (Rhett Giles) who instantly switches sides when faced with a naked mummy queen.

And who can blame him? On the one side is a bunch of whiny graduate students who actually believe Aneh-Tet is Annette, think she's gay because she tries to grab Kevyn by the crotch, and basically run around dithering about the end of the world. On the other side is a hot Egyptian priestess who walks around naked. Legion of the Dead is that kind of movie.

Just for kicks, Aneh-Tet also needs six virgin souls to power six guardian mummies (far short of a legion). She collects these souls like Mario collects coins, and each death is rewarded with a glowing crystal within the mummy's corpse, animating it. It's not long before the whole mummy band is back together again, mutilating people in hilarious fashion via instant organ removal.

Legion of the Dead doesn't have any hope of being taken seriously and doesn't try. When Aneh-Tet isn't parading naked through the streets or melting peoples' faces off, she shoots badly animated lightning bolts from her fingertips. She's one "ancient spirits of evil, transform this decayed form..." phrase from a cartoon character.

Viewed in that light, Legion of the Dead is a silly gore flick with enough titillation to amuse those who aren't finicky about their mummies. Just don't expect much in the way of legions.

I liked it, but it lacked something. Maybe it just needed a larger budget. The storyline was okay. The filming fair to good, not a low budget feel. I always enjoy an egyptian motiff.

-And those who say or what were either not watching the same movie or watching it in an altered state of sorts.

(Possible spoilers.. like it matters).

-The story???, involves the ressurection of an Egyptian priestess found in a tomb in California (don't ask me how that happened, I'm not even sure any of the cast or crew knows). This priestess named Aneh-Tet (Claudia Lynx, sounds like a porn name of sorts to me) must collect souls to bring back an army of mummies (well seven actually, which I guess qualifies for an army in this movie). This must of couse be avoided and a student, her sister and a former boyfriend of the student must try to kill the mummies and Aneh-Tet.

-Lots of bad effects, dialogue and everything here throughtout the movie. The acting is really bad too and the director must have realized how uninteresting his film was, so he tried to peak interest by having Ms. Lynx wander around naked for a good portion of the movie, it didn't help the interest level at all.

-The death scenes are even bad, some shots of digital blood are used, hard to believe they spent about $500,000 on this. I'd sure like to know where it went as a lot of the sets looked fairly cheap, not as bad as other films, but bad never the less.

-Overall this is a bad movie throughout the whole running time, the pacing is off as is everything else. Watch only in an altered state otherwise it might be too painful to watch all the way through without realizing just how bad it is.

The only thing missing in this film was the sillouete of one human, a talking gumball machine and vaccumm cleaner in the front row cracking jokes throughout the movie. I enjoy semi-bad "B" movies but then there is this monstrosity. This film is so bad, you will have to watch it with a few buddies (and a pound of drinks) to get any joy out of it at all. This maybe the worst movie I've seen in 20 years. Move along quickly and don't make eye contact...

Legion of the Dead (Paul Bales, 2005)

I truly thought that I would never see a worse zombie movie than Oasis of the Dead, Jess Franco's early-eighties entry into the Nazi Zombie subgenre. Until, that is, last weekend, when I had the distinct displeasure to see Legion of the Dead, a movie so unbearably awful that I kept asking myself "why am I sitting through this?" as I did so. I'll tell you why, dear reader: so you don't have to.

This incredibly misnamed movie (the "legion" is actually a grand total of seven) focuses on an archaeological expedition aimed at uncovering and exploring an Egyptian tomb, complete with hieroglyphics. No one seems to have noticed that said tomb seems to be in southern California, complete with skater dudes and cars with California license plates. The main inhabitant of the tomb is Aneh-Tet (eye-popping Iranian beauty Claudia Lynx), a four thousand year old high priestess, and the secondary inhabitants are her six-member honor guard. When one of the aforementioned skater dudes crashes through a hole, Aneh-Tet wakes up, takes his soul to power one of her honor guard, and simply waits for the media attention that she seems to know will come from finding an Egyptian tomb in southern California. It comes, of course, and brings with it a raft of Hollywood has-beens, including Bruce Boxleitner and Zach Galligan. It also brings a somewhat unsurprising number of the young and nubile, including lead actress Courtney Clonch, who plays bookish, bespectacled, plucky Molly, the other side of Aneh-Tet's coin. And, well, maybe having these two together in a movie is enough to get you to watch (especially since Lynx spends a decent portion of her screen time wearing nothing but a scowl and some jewelry). The problem is, there's not all that much actual movie to go with it. It plays out like a basic slasher movie, but without any of the suspense, comedy, or even romance one might expect to find in a slasher film. Now, I grant you, this movie does attempt all those things. (To be fair, it does manage to pull off a few comedic bits.) It does so, however, in a technical framework incompetent enough to have put an Egyptian tomb in southern California. I mean, come on.

One of the worst movies I've seen this year, and believe me, that's saying something. (half)

This "horror" movie was recently shown on my cable television channel. The only horror about it, aside from the usual gore special effects, was the movie.

A silly plot about Egyptians crossing the great sea (except the Pacific is nowhere near) to end up in California where a tomb is dug in the ground sans pyramid, with a mummy accidentally brought to life by a student uttering words she reads from the wall etc etc supports the rest.

Multiple deaths, a naked priestess (suitably made opaque by the obliging cable channel, are all the ingredients one needs to make such a B, actually C class film. It seemed to me that the character of an Egyptian Professor with a distinct lack of accent resembled the voice of Imhotep in the Mummy while the resurrecting student had more than a passing resemblence to Evie.

However, moving on, the storylines fall apart easily. The site is supposedly a drive away from the nearby motel but the next thing you know it is merely a walk away. The linguistic student seemingly cannot understand some symbols yet does not persue the problem etc etc.

I suppose that the film was rushed out in the wake of the Mummy to cash in on it's wake. It reall is something to be left to late night television but should come with some sort of a health warning to deter the unsuspecting.