IMDb RATING
5.1/10
1.9K
YOUR RATING
Egyptologist Erica Baron finds more than she bargained for during her long-planned trip to The Land of the Pharoahs: murder, theft, betrayal, love, and a mummy's curse.Egyptologist Erica Baron finds more than she bargained for during her long-planned trip to The Land of the Pharoahs: murder, theft, betrayal, love, and a mummy's curse.Egyptologist Erica Baron finds more than she bargained for during her long-planned trip to The Land of the Pharoahs: murder, theft, betrayal, love, and a mummy's curse.
John Gielgud
- Abdu-Hamdi
- (as Sir John Gielgud)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaSphinx (1981) was budgeted at $11 million with an expected 13-week shooting schedule, including five weeks of filming in Egypt at Cairo and Luxor. More than $1 million was spent on the interior sets built at the Mafilm Studios. It took six months to create these "vast sets," including a replica of King Tutankhamun's tomb and the undiscovered tomb of Seti I, with approximately 900 recreated artifacts. A negative, containing approximately 30 minutes of footage featuring a boat sequence in Luxor, disappeared in transit to Cairo, Egypt. But due to "international tensions," the incident was kept quiet.
- GoofsThe heroine takes a taxi from the Nile Hilton hotel to the Cairo Museum--those two buildings are more or less next door to each other (e.g. online guides for tourists say it is a five-minute walk). Taking a taxi instead of walking is not a goof. Maybe she was tired.
Featured review
Erica Baron travels to Egypt to search for the lost treasure of Tutencamin. Once there she finds treachery and secrets are very common as she searches for the treasure. Who can she trust to help her?
This is a very dull archaeology movie, made before Indiana Jones made it all very much more lively. However this has a reasonable plot involving several twists and double crosses - some of which you'll see coming and some you won't, though don't get your hopes up, the twists are earth shattering but merely double crosses and the like. However it's delivered with so little life or excitement that I started to get bored and only really noticed the plot whenever a new character came in or something like that. When you think about the story afterwards you realise that the plot was actually quite interesting but that the delivery seemed to suck all life out of it.
Another problem is the actors. First of all the two leads are terrible. Lesley-Anne Down is a ridiculous archaeologist! And she is a terrible lead - here all she does is run around in a jump suit with groomed hair screaming and running, running and screaming, finding a statute, running, screaming etc. Also it is very irritating the way that she looks down at Arabs as savages. In fact almost all the Arab characters in this film are portrayed as bad men or savages when compared to the white, angelic Down - the few trustworthy Arabs being played by white or western actors, such as Sir John Gielguld. Frank Langella gives a drab, uninteresting performance as Khazzan. He manages to show almost no emotion and only one facial expression throughout the film - as a mysterious romantic character he totally fails.
Overall an interesting story is delivered with all the excitement of a traffic jam and is spoilt by a bad performance by an actress better suited to TV movies, an actor that is almost totally without character and a support cast that are portrayed as savages. Go watch Indiana Jones instead.
This is a very dull archaeology movie, made before Indiana Jones made it all very much more lively. However this has a reasonable plot involving several twists and double crosses - some of which you'll see coming and some you won't, though don't get your hopes up, the twists are earth shattering but merely double crosses and the like. However it's delivered with so little life or excitement that I started to get bored and only really noticed the plot whenever a new character came in or something like that. When you think about the story afterwards you realise that the plot was actually quite interesting but that the delivery seemed to suck all life out of it.
Another problem is the actors. First of all the two leads are terrible. Lesley-Anne Down is a ridiculous archaeologist! And she is a terrible lead - here all she does is run around in a jump suit with groomed hair screaming and running, running and screaming, finding a statute, running, screaming etc. Also it is very irritating the way that she looks down at Arabs as savages. In fact almost all the Arab characters in this film are portrayed as bad men or savages when compared to the white, angelic Down - the few trustworthy Arabs being played by white or western actors, such as Sir John Gielguld. Frank Langella gives a drab, uninteresting performance as Khazzan. He manages to show almost no emotion and only one facial expression throughout the film - as a mysterious romantic character he totally fails.
Overall an interesting story is delivered with all the excitement of a traffic jam and is spoilt by a bad performance by an actress better suited to TV movies, an actor that is almost totally without character and a support cast that are portrayed as savages. Go watch Indiana Jones instead.
- bob the moo
- Jan 3, 2002
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $14,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $2,022,771
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $439,564
- Feb 16, 1981
- Gross worldwide
- $2,022,771
- Runtime1 hour 58 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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