The Awakening (1980)

Director:

Mike Newell

Writers:

Chris Bryant (writer)
Clive Exton (writer)

Release Date:

October 1980 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

They thought they had buried her forever!

Plot:

An archeologist discovers his daughter is possessed by the spirit of an Egyptian queen. To save mankind he must destroy her.

Plot Keywords:

Curse | Egypt | Incest | Mummy | Possession

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Charlton Heston	...	Matthew Corbeck
Susannah York	...	Jane Turner
Jill Townsend	...	Anne Corbeck
Stephanie Zimbalist	...	Margaret Corbeck
Patrick Drury	...	Paul Whittier
Bruce Myers	...	Dr. Khalid
Nadim Sawalha	...	Dr. El Sadek
Ian McDiarmid	...	Dr. Richter
Ahmed Osman	...	Yussef
Miriam Margolyes	...	Dr. Kadira
Michael Mellinger	...	Hamid
Leonard Maguire	...	John Matthews
Ishia Bennison	...	Nurse
Madhav Sharma	...	Doctor
Michael Halphie	...	Doctor

Also Known As:

The Wakening (UK)

Runtime:

105 min | Australia:101 min | USA:101 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R (certificate #25893) | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Cairo, Egypt

Company:

EMI Films

Movie Connections:

Version of Legend of the Mummy (1997)

The Omen Meets The Mummy

Starting in the Eighties although he certainly had some duds earlier in his career, the number of decent film projects seemed to dry up for Charlton Heston. My guess is that Heston decided to cash in on all the end time films that seemed to be cleaning up at the box office starting with The Omen. So the man most famous for starring in The Ten Commandments decided to do a combination of a Omen and Mummy tale.

Thus was born The Awakening. In it Charlton Heston plays an archaeologist who discovers the tomb of an unknown Egyptian princess. Heston knows something's afoot because he has previously uncovered records of a royal household member whose name like that of Prince Moses was stricken from all records because of some terrible occurrence.

Around the time Heston is unsealing the tomb in the valley of kings, his daughter is being born who grows up to be Stephanie Zimbalist. Flash forward to 18 years later and the daughter like Damien the devil's child seems to have a whole lot of people dropping dead around her.

Any film fan will recognize the plot threads in both The Omen and in the Boris Karloff classic, The Mummy. They're combined here in The Awakening with more or less mixed results. Susannah York is also along for the ride as Heston's girl Friday assistant who meets a rather grisly end.

It's not the worst film Heston ever did, but you sure long for the days of even the stilted Victorian dialog of Cecil B. DeMille.