This adaptation of Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars (which had previously inspired a Hammer horror, Blood from the Mummy's Tomb) is a dreadful plod. Surprising, given the film's credentials two of the screenwriters, Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, wrote Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece Don't Look Now, the cinematography's by the great Jack Cardiff and promising British director Mike Newell (who later made Four Weddings and a Funeral) is behind the camera. The symbolism is heavy-handed, Susannah York merely looks pretty and Charlton Heston reads the script as if it were the Ten Commandments, forgetting Cecil B DeMille's 11th commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bore.

When a British archaeologist violates an Egyptian queen's tomb, her evil spirit enters his daughter.