EDITOR’S NOTE: The Awakening was on USA Up All Night on June 30, 1990.

Based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars — which was also filmed as an episode of Mystery and Imagination as “The Curse of the Mummy,” Hammer’s Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb and the 90s movie Bram Stoker’s The Mummy — this movie places Matthew Corbeck (Charlton Heston), his pregnant wife Anne (Jill Townsend) and his assistant Jane Turner (Susannah York) in Egypt searching for the tomb of Queen Kara. One could argue that the most exploring Matthew is doing is between the thighs of Jane, but there you go.

When you see a sign that says “Do Not Approach the Nameless One Lest Your Soul Be Withered,” you may want to turn back. Nope, Matthew goes in hard — again, much like with his assistant — while his wife goes into labor. She’s dropped off at a hospital so he can get back to digging, and their stillborn child comes back to life once he unearths and opens a sarcophagus.

Eighteen years later and that daughter, Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist) is looking for her father, who is now married to Jane and still obsessed with the mummy that he found. It’s being destroyed by bacteria, so he gets it sent to England so that he can save it. Of course, the mummy queen wants to be reincarnated inside his daughter, who starts to believe that she really is Queen Kara.

Directed by Mike Newell (who went on to direct Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco) and written by Clive Exton, Chris Bryant and Allan Scott, The Awakening is a big dumb mess. It was recut by Monte Hellman after Newell lost final cut. The best thing I can say is that this was shot in Egypt with actual locations.