Today, I'm rewatching Bubba Ho-Tep for the first time since seeing it on the big screen in 2003.  In a retirement home in East Texas, Elvis and JFK have to stop a mummy that's sending their neighbors to an early checkout. Elvis is played by Bruce Campbell of the Evil Dead movies.  JFK is played by Ossie Davis.   Yep. JFK thinks the mummy might be LBJ, come to kill him. It's a crazy little thing even with the standard horror film suspension.   The mummy is indeed an revived ancient Egyptian, the how not as critical as the why, though they do include a nod to "The Mummy's Hand" and Tanna Leaves. Directed by the creator of the Phantasm series, Don Coscarelli, Bubba Hotep has a little more humor than most mummy films (not talking about the Sommer's movies of course).

 I've postponed the Universal Mummy again, delayed gratification.  Today, I'm looking at the next best thing: 1959's The Mummy from Hammer Films. While this film borrows the title of the 1932 film, it practically strip mines the subsequent Universal films in the series, The Mummy's Hand, -Tomb and -Ghost (I'll be getting to them eventually). Kharis, priest of Karnak (a who here, rather than a where)  violates the tomb of Ananka in order to bring her back to life.  This doesn't go as planned and he's discovered and mummified alive to be her protector through eternity.  He's played by Christopher Lee, and is just as effective in the wrappings and silent as he is all priestly. In 1898, Kharis is reawaken by a British expedition that includes Peter Cushing.  And because of the way these things go, Cushings's wife looks JUST! LIKE! ANANKA! There's the standard British archeological grave robbing because of course there is, and while they take Ananka, ...

  When trying to figure which movie to start this project with, I entertained the idea of going to the classic, the one that started it all, the amazing 1932 Universal Pictures Boris Karloff movie The Mummy.  But I can watch that over and over again- it's a comfort movie for me. Dawn of the Mummy ended up being my first for the series because it's awful.  I realize that's not the best reason to choose it but I really, really never want to see it again. Ever. So I'm getting it out of the way now, moving on and never looking back Dawn of the Mummy uses the standard plot of grave robbers breaking into a lost tomb, awakening an ancient evil.   Because it's 1981, it's complicated with the addition of a group of models on a photoshoot.  They tumble upon the tomb and steamroll over the grave robbers and commandeer it for an exotic setting for their photos. It's validated by the fact that Dawn of the Mummy is actually filmed in Egypt (with an Egyptian writer/direct...

Well, it's been a crazy few weeks here at the House of Bast. Heck, months.  First, we've taken in one of the porch cats, MacIntyre.  She was pregnant and we wanted her to have her kittens someplace safe. Like on the stairs.  Seriously, I was sitting on the stairs and she plopped down next to me.  I stepped away to get a glass of water and when I got back, there was a kitten, still tethered and wet.  I had a birthing box set up and put them in it.  There are now five kittens.  All healthy.  Which is something we were worried about, why we brought her in.  Mac's little more than a kitten herself, about ten months old.  She goes through a couple of cans of wet food a day.  She wouldn't have had that under the porch across the street.   So now, we're going to find homes for all six of them. Our next surprise are these two handsome fellows- Narmer (top) and Khonsu (bottom). They're newcomers to the ...

As of yesterday, I've had the House of Bast Facebook page up a year.  It's been a crazy year.  Nearly every principal of last year has... gone elsewhere*, except for Artemis.  She's pretty much queen these days with ladies in waiting.  One of whom is preggers.   This morning Marvin woke me.  I'm going to ascribe Lassie-Timmy's-in-the well to this because, despite it being 5am and a usual first-breakfast time, he'd been sitting in the window, watching the porch and Artemis & Co. were there, including a recent addition I call ScaredyCat because he usually runs away.  But when I went out with food, this time he didn't. SC hasn't been around too long, a little over a month.  I think he's a C19 dump who's probably a little (a lot) traumatized.  I hope I can reach him. If this seems disjointed, it's because I'm doing this on the phone and am about to go back to bed.     Here's Marvin. *I'll discuss that in a future po...

Taken from a blog where I wrote about horror movies. Yes, there will be Mummies, factual and fictional. Watched Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy for the first time in years and... hmmm.  It was enjoyable enough. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did when I watched it last- five or six years ago- mostly because I've rewatched The Mummy's Hand several times in the interim and the idea of two Americans in Egypt (A&C here and Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and Babe Jensen (Wallace Ford) in TMH), down on their luck, enmeshed in an adventure that takes them to a lost tomb where they have to contend with a Mummy and the head of an ancient cult... well it kind of wore out with me. Fortunately, it had A&C hijinks and the comedy made up for what I'd seen before, including some sufficiently silly parts I had to rewind to watch again- including a bit where the femme fatale is trying to seduce Lou by giving him all her contact information. Also, the wonderfully disco...

Welcome to The House of Bast. I started it as a Facebook page for the tribe of Ferals I've been feeding and helping and it fed into my interest in Ancient Egypt and now here I am! There will be lots of cat pictures.  Of course there will be- this is the internet. I'm also doing a lot of reading about Ancient Egypt and as I do, I'll share my thoughts on what I've read as well as sharing news stories about Egyptology. But mostly cats.