DAILY CALL SHEET: JULY 15, 2023

Pharaoh’s Curse (1957) Archaeologists who've apparently never watched a mummy movie before completely ignore warnings not to disturb a cursed Egyptian tomb. Instead, they do just that, which irritates a cat statue and causes one of them to transform into a wrinkled vampiric mummy who... doesn't do much to be honest. It's kind of a slog. Credit where credit is due, though. It takes a particular type of talent to make an hour long  movie feel like it's much, much longer.

TIL: In the Catholics are wonderfully weird category, Urbania's Chiesa dei Morti, or the Church of the Dead, has had 18 mummies on display behind its altar since 1833. The causes of their deaths were varied (crushed by a horse, died giving birth, stabbed at a dance, hung for stealing, etc.), but the cause of mummification was singular, traced to a particular mold that sucks moisture from corpses. The mummies are under the care of The Brotherhood of Good Death, a group founded during the Renaissance to provide free burial for the poor.

DAILY CALL SHEET: JULY 9, 2023

Confessions of a Police Captain (1971) An ideologically driven District Attorney investigates a legendary police captain who is suspected of releasing a madman knowing he would seek out and attempt to murder an otherwise untouchable criminal. If for some unexplainable reason you weren't fans of Martin Balsam or Franco Nero before this, you will be by the ending. Speaking of which, the struggle between law and justice has been filmed plenty, but rarely with a denouement this friggin' bleak.

TIL: Alas, political corruption goes way back. A good portion of the 23rd chapter of the Book of Exodus is pretty much a catalog of crimes which government officials are not to indulge in. Which, of course, they do anyway. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church notes that political corruption is one of the primary causes contributing to underdevelopment and poverty, especially in developing and debt ridden countries.

 

Freeze Frames #010: "Every moment spent in negativity is paid for with something truly priceless. That something is life." - Ralph "Red" Marston