 Welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we're drinking Danny's Sweater Apollo Smash Ale. Alright. Today we're going to feature 1980's The Awakening. It is directed by Mike Newell, and he's done a few kind of blockbuster hits. He's done Donnie Brasco, he did one of the Harry Potter movies, and Four Weddings in a Funeral. It is based on the Bram Stoker novel. The Jewel of the Seven Stars. It stars Charlton Heston, and he's been in so many movies, I don't need to really say what he's been in, but there's one movie in particular we're going to mention that we should cover in the future, and that's The Omega Man. That scene is a little sped up. So we get introduced to Matthew Korbeck, an archaeologist, and he's hunting for this tomb of this forgotten Egyptian queen. He's kind of obsessed about it. His wife is pregnant too. He's kind of jealous too of his young assistant. Yeah, you know, they're kind of close. They're working with each other. Korbeck wants to take a drive, and he drives out into kind of the middle of nowhere. The Jewel of the Seven Stars knows that this is the place almost. He uncovers the tomb. He starts hacking away, hitting the wall. His wife is having like convulsions of like, I guess the baby, she's starting to go into labor. It could each hit. Korbeck and the assistant come back to the camp, and they take her to the hospital, and then he just leaves to go back to that tomb. Korbeck's wife has given birth now to a baby, but the baby seems to be like not breathing. I think it's stillborn, and it's premature. They find Queen Kara's tomb. As they peel off the lid of the sarcophagus, the baby comes to life. Charlton Heston is so happy that he found the queen, that he puts his hand on her hand. The fingers kind of move, they're trying to take stuff out of the tomb and get it hoisted up way over this cliff. One of the guys actually gets kind of wrapped up into one of the cables, and sort of hung it first, and then released again, and he like falls and like, wham, it's a big fucking rock. Like right in front of Charlton Heston, in the next shot, he's all drinking, he's got that bottle, and ahhhhh. Well yeah, your nerves would be rattled as hell. So at this point, his wife is fed up with all of his bullshit, goes back to the hospital, and they're gone. They just took off. Now the movie cuts to 18 years later, and we know this because Charlton Heston now has this really shitty fake beard on. He's now back in England, and he's a professor. He gets notified that there's this bacteria found on the mummy that he uncovered, so he goes back to Egypt. He wants to bring it back to England where there's better technology. There's another professor there from Egypt who's against this. He wants to keep the mummy here in Egypt. This guy happens to die in an accident where he gets hit by this truck, and then run over again. Find out that he's been sending birthday presents every year to his estranged daughter, but he's never actually met her. Just her mother's wishes. She travels back to England to meet her father, and she just sits in at one of his lectures. There was the sun, the spirit, and there was the Nile. He's wearing that lecturing cloak. You need that special lecturing cloak. The cloak? Yeah, the lecturing cloak. After the lecture, all the students leave the lecture hall, and his daughter Margaret stays behind, packing up your looks up and Margaret. He takes his estranged daughter Margaret back home, and they have dinner. With his new wife, we find out is his old assistant back from the Egyptian days. He did end up getting with her. His wife was right. During dinner, he tells his wife and his daughter that there's actually a ritual you can bring the Queen Cara back from the dead. In order to do this ritual, apparently you need the Knopic Jaws. His daughter is really interested in his work. So he actually takes her on a trip back to Egypt, and takes her to the tomb. The assistant of theirs like sets off this booby trap, and rolling things goes down the corridor, the big spike. They don't even really give a shit the fact this guy is dead. They just keep going further into the tomb, and they find the Knopic Jaws. He pulls these jars and takes them illegally back to England. His wife is kind of concerned like, you stole these? Kind of finds him outside, sitting under this tree, possessed look in his eyes, and he starts talking about how he actually wants to try to do this ritual to bring the Queen Cara back to life. And that's where we're going to end the plot point. So if you want to see what happens in the Awakening, finish watching the movie. One thing I like about this movie is that it's very in-depth. There's a lot of clues laid out throughout the entire movie that you have to pay attention to. But they don't really spell anything out for you, you know, and that's the thing that I like. I think it takes two viewings to really get what's going on. You said the first time you watched it, you thought, man, you watched it the second time, you appreciate it a lot more. The cinematography in this movie is just amazing, it's breathtaking. It was filmed in Egypt, and the England scenes were filmed in England, and I kind of like that contrast. Big, vast desert, wonderful shots of the mountains and the pyramids, and the desert and all that stuff. Beautiful, beautiful. And then you go to dark, dank, boring England, and you can understand Corabec's obsession with always wanting to go back to Egypt represents his best time when he did his best work in England. It's kind of like his retirement. He's just stuck teaching. It's boring. It's a different take on the whole mummy saga, right? Don't see anything in bandages walking around, trying to kill somebody. It's a very subtle possession movie. It's actually more realistic than, say, fucking the Tom Cruise movie that just came out, right? You're not going to believe that shit. This you'd believe. The movie is really about Corabec's obsession with the mummy. That's believable, because people get obsessed with their work, and it's really not just a possession movie, it's an obsession movie, because it's all about his and now his daughter's obsession with this Queen Cara, and they're possessed even though they're not possessed. Exactly. This is the idea that's possessed them. We have to mention that Charlton Heston's acting in this is actually pretty damn good. Of course he hams it up in the Charlton Heston way. The Kenobi Jaws. He doesn't phone it in. When I watched this movie I expected, okay, 1980 at this point. He's getting on his career. It's kind of a throwaway movie for him. It started a big blockbuster. Just assumed he would just phone it in, but no, he's like, he's on his A-game. Yeah, he's pretty good. He's really like living it. All the acting in this movie too is actually really good. It's all believable. All the death scenes in this movie are really fun too, like in a slasher way, kind of fun. Enjoyable. Like when the guy gets hung by that metal cable, he's like, ooh, yeah, look at that fucking goon. And then it keeps going. Then he lands on all those rocks and everything. And then when the guy gets run over, not only does he get hit, he all gets backed over again or whatever, and over again. And then his second wife ends up actually dying is a really good scene. She falls through that greenhouse. She lives through falling through it. And then there's a big shard that comes down and just, yeah, right in the throat, yeah. His daughter Margaret is seeing a psychiatrist at this point. She kind of pushes him or whatever, and he accidentally falls on this fucking needle. And then she keeps beating him up and beating the shit out of him while he's dying from this thing and like she kills the fucking emperor from Star Wars here. Double fisted Star Trek style. Another neat thing about this movie, it's got a very ambiguous ending. You kind of don't really know what happens next. It's like kind of a cliffhanger ending, which is pretty neat. It kind of reminds me a bit of Prince of Darkness in that way. Anything could happen, right? Anything could happen at this point. And there was two endings filmed for it. One for the UK release and one for the US release. A refreshing mummy movie, I think is very refreshing because it's almost like real. It's realistic. It's not outlandish like, you know, nowadays like the Tom Cruise movie or anything like that. The wild fight scenes and the CGI pouring out of your asshole. Yeah, exactly. And if you want a good Charlton Eston performance so you can watch him hammer it up a little bit, please go check out 1980s The Awakening. And until next time, keep drinking in the night.