Jeffrey Jones is teaching an Egyptology class in which Anthony Michael Hall is enrolled; sadly for Jones, this is several years after Hall’s John Hughes phase.
Today, Jones is discussing Pharaoh Ramseth aka “the mummy who wouldn’t die.” Seems he was obsessed with a maiden named Nefra. Sadly, he croaked before he could act on his desires so the moniker is not technically accurate. And, being Pharaoh, what was holding him up? Couldn’t he have any maiden he wanted? Or goat? What happened to jus primae noctis? He emerges from his tomb on each anniversary of this death to search for Nefra. Rigor mortis is nature’s Viagra.
To protect themselves, each year the locals delivered to Ramseth’s tomb a human sacrifice. When Ramseth was disappointed that each year’s offering was not Nefra, he would go berserk and kill each girl. Ya know, Nefra really could have taken one for the team and volunteered. Bitch.
Fascinating as this story is, student Anthony Michael Hall is more interested in his football playbook. Nerdy-girl Nina Siemaszko is also distracted — by Hall. As Hall has been sentenced to a purgatory, doomed to play each role in The Breakfast Club forever [1], he is now “the jock.” As such, he is a bonehead and seeks out Nina to tutor him.
She is thrilled at the attention and meets him in the library. Perhaps inspired by being in a building he had never visited before, Hall comes up with an alternative to studying. He tells Nina to ask Jones if she can visit his collection of Egyptian artifacts. While she is distracting Jones, Hall will make a copy of the mid-term exam. He backs her up against the card catalog and gets her decimal system all dewy, removes her glasses and asks her to go to a party. So she is putty in his hands — silly, silly putty.
She arrives at Jones’ homes and he leads her down to the basement, which might have actually been scary if she were a young boy. He shows off a full burial tomb. By shows off, I mean tosses her inside and closes the door. Turns out Hall and Jones are in cahoots. When the door is shut, Jones blows the shofar when he could have gotten away with just tipping him $5.00 for the ride. This awakens a mummy inside.
Jones didn’t mention he had ol’ Ramseth stored in his basement. Suspiciously, he didn’t mention if there was anyone in his crawlspace either. Nina is a smarty, though, as evidenced by her glasses. When Ramseth tries to strangle her, she grabs a head-dress and pretends to be Nefra, his blonde, spectacled, pasty white, English-speaking Egyptian crush.
Jones pours Hall a snifter of brandy having no more regard for 21 year old age limits than for 18 year old age limits. Hall decides to change the terms of their deal, but wisely, Jones had drugged his snifter. In the basement, he stuffs Hall into a sarcophagus. As he mops his brow, he hears the tomb’s door open, and we get the classic Jeffrey Jones / Ed Rooney “oh shit” stare which is always hilarious, unless it is through a camera viewfinder.
He enters the tomb and sees Ramseth standing erect, heh heh. Possibly because Nina has donned a suit similar to Princess Leia’s golden slave bikini. Ramseth gets jealous of Jones and begins choking him, then pulls his brains out through his nose.
The ending is a complete botch. Nina is arrested for her class project which involves the mummified Jones and Hall. First, this is a smart chick, why would she implicate herself in the murders? Second, the two stiffs are unrecognizable despite being unwrapped, due to their contorted faces, but who else would they be? Neither one appears to have a mustache as Jones had.
And a little sign says that Stella got an A+. Well, she was the nerdy-girl, an A+ is probably routine for her. But since Jones is dead, who assigned the grade?
Jones is always a hoot, and I’m a sucker for a good mummy story (which, ironically, the original The Mummy was not). I was also entranced by Nina Siemaszko. She played a great nerdy girl and consistently lit up the screen. I’m not usually a fan of the cleft chin, and have really learned to hate them after watching Henry Rollins. But she made it work.
Post-Post:
- [1] Tragically, I am not familiar enough with Mr. Hall’s oeuvre to know if this is true, but I liked the idea.
- Title Analysis: Junk. OK, there is a college course involved, but what the hell is “creep course”? That is not a common phrase or even close to any I can think of.
- Jeffrey Jones and Anthony Michael Hall were both in Edward Scissorhands. If Winona Ryder were here, they would have a hat-trick. But I’d keep an eye on the hat.
- The only directing credit by Jeffrey Boam. Sadly, he only lived to be 53 but in a five year span, he managed to write 2 Lethal Weapons, an Indiana Jones, the Witches of Eastwick, The Lost Boys, Funny Farm, and Innerspace.
- A few years earlier, he wrote the screenplay for The Dead Zone. Hall would later star in a series based on the same book.
When a jet plane disappeared in thin air, what was the explanation?
Donald flashes back to when he and Paula were first married. Paula is posing for photographers after winning her second 
Back in the present, Rutgers shows up to talk to Donald and Diedre. He also asks their maid Anna to stay because “she was closer to Paula than anyone,” which suggests that their marriage was a plane-wreck even before she took off.
The Millers look at a house that could charitably be called a fixer-upper and honestly be called a tearer-downer. They take their baby with them as the realtor opens the house. It is strange that once Keith sets the baby’s carrier on the floor, he is completely ignored. In fact, I must have blinked and missed him being carried into the house — until I rewound 30 seconds, I actually thought it was a ghost-baby they couldn’t see.
As he begins the titular renovation, a door slams and he hears a more voices from the night of the murder. Arriane comes in and suggests the “christen” every room in the house. She suggests starting in the dining room, which is indeed suggestive. I wonder if the writers intended that.
She finds the baby’s crib in the basement and comes back up to find a different crib in the baby’s room; also an empty whiskey bottle. Keith, holding groceries in one arm and their son in the other, seems a little tipsy. He then takes a belt right in front of his wife. When she starts to nag him, be punches her out at the urging of the murderer.
This was a fairly standard tale until the ending. It really looked like they were going to go for something truly shocking. Then it looked like they were going to settle for something somewhat shocking. Then it was clear they were going to completely puss out. Then we close on a shot that is supposed to be . . . profound? A revelation?
This twist might be even more botched than I give it credit for. Arriane finds a white toy rabbit in the basement crib. It is never established which baby this toy belonged to, however, new baby was seen in the company of a brown bear. So if the rabbit belonged to original baby, why was that still in the basement while original baby’s ball-toy was upstairs? Arriane carries the rabbit back upstairs as if it belongs there, so maybe it does belong to new baby.
