7 Mummies (2006)

7 mummies is one of those films that prove that something doesn't have to be good to be entertaining. It also proves that Danny Trejo is willing to appear in anything!

7 Mummies is about a group of prisoners whose transport truck crashes and they escape with a guard as a hostage. After a trek throught the desert, they come across a strange little town that may mean the end of them...

The film opens with a pair of prospectors hauling a coffin across the desert. During the haul, the coffin breaks, gold pouring out from the hole. Instead of being pissed off, the two guys just laugh...and laugh...and laugh! The laughing in this movie has only just begun! Their jubilation at being rich doesn't last long however, as a shadowy man on horseback comes and slices them both up. Then we're treated to a long opening credits sequence of a spider walking across the desert. After the thrilling spider-trek, the film cuts to a crashed prison van. A bloodied-up guard tries to radio for help, but is killed by the escaped prisoners.

The prisoners, led by Doug (Matt Schulze) take the other guard, Lacey (Cerina Vincent) hostage and start their long trek across the desert. As the group get thirsty, Travis (Billy Wirth) suggests digging for water. A few dig and they find a skeletal corpse buried in the soil, along with a medallion. They keep walking, and one of the guys decides to leave on his own, sure that Doug is leading everyone to their deaths. The walking finally stops when they come across the house of an old Indian man (Danny Trejo).

Trejo gives them food and water, and tells them the story of the Spanish who dug for gold in the area, and how the massive gold cache was moved and hidden by seven Jesuit priests, sworn to secrecy about the gold's location. Trejo explains further that a town was built near the site in an effort to try and find the gold. He gives vague directions to the town-"A place that can only be found when the day and the night are of equal length, everywhere at once". With the Mexico border in one direction and the gold  in the opposite, the gang choose the treasure.
Horror Film Survival Lesson No. 177776: If a mystical old wise man tells you of a legend of hidden gold in the middle of a desert, don't go, you are likely to be attacked by mummies who know kung-fu.

The gang leave to find the town and Danny Trejo laughs...and laughs some more for a full minute! The majority of his extended cameo in this film is him laughing! While the gang trek, the guy who abandoned them earlier stumbles around, delirious and trying to murder the sky with his gun, then shoots himself in the foot. The gang soon come across the town, which is full of wild-west types wearing old-timey clothes-and sporting modern-day boob jobs. the gang is greeted by a local (Martin Kove), who leads them into his saloon-"The first and last drinks are always free!".

The gang drink for a little while until Billy Drago shows up. Drago plays a preacher/sheriff who constantly rambles on about stuff and he laughs...and laughs...and at one point he's laughing so hard, it sounds like he's dying! He threatens the gang on the grounds that they had to register to him before going in the town. He gives them a free pass though and tells them to enjoy themselves-"As the darkness will be upon us...soon enough!". And he laughs some more...

The gang drink some more and a few enjoy themselves with hookers. But then night falls and the town's populace suddenly turn into vicious zompires! While the guys with the hookers are mostly screwed, the other guys can fight back, because they've got firepower. Doug and Travis take out heaps of the zompires with boomsticks, then Martin Kove has some fun dialogue, followed by a one-liner-Kove: "The first one's always free, but the second's one's gonna cost ya." Doug: "Keep the change!"

What's left of the gang escape from the bar with a human woman (Adrianne Palicki) who says she was kept alive to look for medallions, and the last surving prisoner upstairs kills the zompire hooker and jumps out the window, breaking his leg.

The gang take refuge in an abandoned building, and from it they see the guy with the broken leg hobble towards them. He nearly reaches them until Billy Drago sweeps by on horseback and decapitates him. The gang splits up to investigate the building they're in, with Travis and Lacey going upstairs. They go into a room and find the guy who abandoned the group earlier, alive and well. He shows them a vampire hooker that he killed and then a golden cross that he found. But then he makes the mistake of saying, 'that's not all I found', and he's immediately killed by the vampire, who comes back to life for no reason other than that the screenwriter probably couldn't be bothered to write what else the guy had found.

Travis, Lacey and Adrianne Palicki escape the room and go to a garage in another building and they find a motorbike. Their excitement is short-lived when Billy Drago and his goons corner them. Adrianne has betrayed Travis and Lacey to Drago, but when they don't have the medallions on them like Adrienne said, she's killed by a boob-slash from Drago. Before they can be killed, Travis and Lacey escape.

The gang all get together again and head for a church. In it is a massive stone tablet, which glows for a bit, then they push it open, revealing a ladder leading into the ground. Down in this pit is the worst horror of all!... ...well, it's kung-fu mummies actually, but I guess they can be called the greatest horror of all if guns don't kill them, unlike the three-quarters of the town's undead population that are killed. And if there was ever a way to make mummies threatening again after The Monster Squad, giving them kung-fu powers and the ability to fly was definitely the way to go!

7 Mummies isn't a good film, but is is a lot of fun, from the laughing (which Danny Trejo gets more of at the end) to the vampire hookers, the hilarious 19th century boob-jobs, a horse-motorbike chase scene, Billy Drago's crazy ramblings and of course, the karate mummies!

The film does have pacing issues though, the treks through the desert feel long and the middle of the film feels longer, in part due to the lighting, and lots of stumbling around in the dark. And as well as the lighting being too dark to see what's on screen some of the time, the characters are never given anything to do other than exist-they're just there. Billy Wirth plays a good-guy-prisoner, and Lacey is his love interest, that's all the character we get from the movie.

The acting is pretty dull overall, save for Danny Trejo and his exposition-cameo (and laughing), Billy Drago, whose overacting know's no bounds!, and Martin Kove, who only be's villainous for about twenty seconds before getting gunned down, but it's a fun enough twenty seconds. Billy Wirth and Cerina Vincent barely have twenty lines between them during the whole movie-Adrianne Palicki has a quarter of the screen-time as Wirth and Vincent, yet still has heaps more lines. The story is also a muddled mess!

So that's 7 Mummies, if you're in the mood for a fun horror movie, or you're lamenting the loss of mummies as a horror film villain, give it a watch, it's worth it.

Hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah-oh, word of warning, watching 7 Mummies will cause constant and random bouts of laughter!