But now it's 2004 and with the wealth of technological advances and digital daring do, the question becomes, what is the state of third dimension movie making. The answer is as bifurcated as those ancient lens colors. Theme parks love to employ the forgotten filmic technique to get people to actually watch Michael Jackson in a video again. And other big dollar attractions employ the gambit to make people feel they are getting the equivalent of their monthly paycheck's worth. And let's not forget IMAX, the 7000mm cinematic barrage that lets you see Mick Jagger's cavernous crow's feet and whales taking a dump in ten-story clarity. But below the radar, there are motion picture medicine men hoping to sell you a whole new system based around some very antique ideals. There is a home video variation on that polarized lens lunacy that "tricks" the internal abacas into thinking it's seeing touchable trees. And just when you thought it was safe to be fashionable again, those Christmas color contacts come calling to reassert their illegitimacy. Thankfully, Razor3D wants to change all that. Utilizing the "flicker glasses" style of stereoscopic cornea scrambling, their $70 living room theater subsystem allows you to watch their specially made movies in rather decent three dimensions. But as for the plot of these optical offerings, it's probably better if you saw them in NO-D. Evil Unleashed: The Mummy is one such example of advanced chump change.

The DVD:
We're back in ancient Egypt, and the way you can tell it's the Middle East during early civilization is that it looks just like the California mountains combined with shots of a tacky miniature golf course pyramid. Our authentic Nile nibblers resemble extras from "Remember the Time" and offer varying degrees of bronzer believability. Thankfully, Princess Nefertesia, or Nefertitty or Neosporin has been sipping her milk bathwater again and is loonier than Luxor. High on hieroglyphics, she calls upon Iman to answer her prayers. But since the former supermodel is too busy proving David Bowie is NOT bi, the so-called upper African version of the Devil will have to substitute. This demon drives a hard bargain. In order to provide life everlasting, he needs a few human heart sacrifices. Oh yeah, and he wants to see ole Neffy twist around topless. Our randy royalty airs out her flapjacks and, wouldn't you know it, it draws the attention of her boyfriend. He demands some respect. She tells him to go to Duat. With a ceremonial sword, they subdue the wild wench and wraps her in tissue paper. She is buried for a couple of million plot points (or about enough time onscreen for the credits).

It's now a couple dozen eons later and a group of archeologists uncover the kept crypt witch. She thanks them by giving them hundreds of plastic scorpion bites. Somehow, the TP'ed titan ends up on the campus of the only Junior College where alcoholism is required to be your minor. There, a drunken group of atrocious actors help a hopeless professor read a series of cracked concrete pieces and "SHAZAM", our she-mummy (maybe she prefers mommy...or handicapable female handkerchief?) goes on a heart hunt. She kills everyone or everything in her path, and offers a pre-death lap dance along with the vivisecting, just because she's a good sport. The co-eds try to stop her but they're too busy passing their beer finals to do much good. Neffy and her pity date Iman are ready to rule the world. Too bad that no one cares very much.

It's hard to pinpoint what is worse about Evil Unleashed: The Mummy. The movie itself is packed with so much unbelievable asp crap that you'll wish your brain had been yanked out through your nose by a hook and a spiced onion inserted in its place. Being wrapped in bandages, stashed in a sarcophagus and buried with flesh eating termites for thousands of years has to be better than enduring this film's flimsy as Sanskrit storyline. It's bad enough that we jump hundreds of years every couple of minutes, but each time we do the drama and action deteriorates. By the time we hit modern day L.A. and hook up with a band of boozed up Junior College morons, we can only hope that the powerful pungency of made for movie cheese starts to fill the air. Only a ripe Roquefort or a caustic Camembert can turn this torture tasty. But it never comes. Evil Unleashed doesn't so much as take itself too seriously as it forgets what it's supposed to be taking all together. More than once the narrative shrieks to a stifling halt as characters sit around and chatter endlessly. Sometime, they refer to expositional elements necessary to motivate the stillborn plot line ever forward. But mostly they discuss how they feel and usually, their responses range from "scared" to "very scared", with a little "clueless" thrown in to support the theory that these are actually college kids.

Now, by its very nature, a mummy is not very scary. Karloff and his crew tried to make it mortifying and all they managed to do was remind people that Frankenstein was what really got the screams going. Years later, Christopher Lee expressed interest in the well-wrapped wraith, but he too couldn't concoct the kind of creepiness necessary to keep passion pitters from puckering up. Then Stephen Sommers, he who at one time directed Frodo Baggins in a PC version of The Adventures of Huck Finn, would take Brendan Fraser, a few billion CGI scarabs and enough old-fashioned moldy malarkey to exploit extremes so corny that even octogenarians scoffed at their maturity. So when he decided to make his own version of the gauzed goofball, writer/director Joe Castro played 'Chinese Menu' with cinema's past, choosing various elements from all of the available motion picture combo platters. And even with all that extra duck sauce and spicy mustard, all he could come up with is a tit-bearing Tut. Evil Unleashed is a dull, derivative dark ride where the motivations are as unclear as the threat. It never gets its anthropology right, wastes tons of unintentionally funny foul-ups and appears to have been edited by dead longshoremen. We are supposed to be shocked and a-scared by this flimsy film. All we end up with is a clear case of Natural History museum nausea.

Nothing is typical in this movie and that's not meant in a good way. Let's begin with the title fiend her/itself. Our murderous mélange of soiled snot rags has a very strange way of killing her ritualistic sacrifices. Sure, she gets some ancient dagger of doom and eventually rips their heart out. But first, she has to do a little shape shifting stripper watusi act. That's right, before see pleases her demonic god's bloodlust, she has to get naked and swivel her drachma maker. Now, no one except ultra-feminists are complaining about the fact that a frisky female gets to show her fried egg figure to the world every time she wants to carve a little blood muscle. Chests and claret go hand in hand. It's just too bad the rest of the silicone-enhanced cast doesn't follow birthday suit. The biggest, most cup-overflowing felony in this entire film is that the ditzy blond who has schizophrenic mood swings (dumb to dumber, brave heart to limp biscuit) doesn't once let her massive mammaries slip from out of their pink spandex skin and breathe the fresh air of attentive male freedom. They keep poking over the top of her tunic like two overstuffed bags of microwave popcorn about ready to burst. She is just asking for a bodkin bearing. But no, all she and her equally jug band redheaded best friend manage to do is scream like confused castrati. Heck we, see more of some drunk, dorky dudes pierced pecs than either of our leading ladies personal peaks. Since he's not going to give us gore, story, scares, dread or sagacity, the least Castro can do is provide a little surgically improved tit-tilation. Apparently, we're wrong about what minimal effort he is capable of.

Essentially, Evil Unleashed is a bad home movie made by people who thought that a full-length feature about an undead exotic dancer who stabs beasts with her steely knife until their heart becomes unstuck in time would make for an engrossing night at the rental counter. But they forgot to include any of their promised pacifiers. Our mummy is pretty crummy, her supernatural surgeries are mostly off camera and the cast consists of fetuses just learning to sense memory for themselves. Combine them with poor blocking, arcane compositions and a total lack of interesting visuals and you've just described the majority of amateur movies released by Artisan in the last few years...and Evil Unleashed: The Mummy. There is nothing wrong with making a bad horror film. Heck, many major careers have been carved out of coasting along on crappy creature features. And when you load the lameness with lashings of Limburger, the foul fear fetidness is all the cheddar better. See, audiences will forgive terrible terror and simpering suspense as long as the fromage factor is high. But balk on the Brie and you're in for one big belch of lactose intolerance. Malevolence may think it's been set free by this film, but the only wickedness pouring out of this DVD is the bile of anger rising in your throat.

The Video:
Now, this movie is advertised as being a horrifying chiller. STRIKE ONE! It also claims to be state of the art, in both image and effects. STEEEERIKE TWO! Last but not least, it champions its novelty as a wonderful experience in 3-D...

Hmm...

That's up in the air. Frankly, most of the movie's 1.33:1 full screen image looks as muddy in an extra depth ratio as when it's viewed in the standard flat format. Now, you really can't watch the 2-D version of the film. The image is blurry and jittery, like it hasn't slept in three days and just downed a dozen double shot espressos before being transferred to DVD. So you have to go with three dimensions...which means you have to buy the special home theater adapter and glasses necessary (breaking out those old red and green or half pair of popped out Foster Grants won't do the job). If you don't have $70 bucks to lay down for the perception of distance, stop reading right now, skip to the Final Thoughts and giggle on a little longer. For those willing to experiment with the extra outlay, you will probably enjoy the experience. For the most part, the 3-D is very realistic and realized and several scenes make the most of the technology. But who wants to see people TALKING in three dimensions? Who wants to see people THINKING in three dimensions? We want action. We want 3-D DDD cups. We want arterial sprays that leap off the screen. Heck, we'd settle for Dr. Tongues 3-D House of Slave Chicks (actually, who wouldn't?). All we are offered here is something rather expensive that is only successful, depth perception wise, about 60% of the time.

The Audio:
One of the ways you can gauge a movie's budget is by listening to it. If it's clear and concise with lots of separation and speaker spunk, it's a big budget Hollywood film and it was made for about $60 million. If it's just two-speaker simplicity, it's an independent film made with some major studio backing for about $10 million. Now, if the sound wavers in and out, if it's filled with dropout and poor dubbing and requires you to mess with your volume control more than once every ten minutes, it's a direct to video varmint that barely saw a union member on its set and ran anywhere from $10K to $100K. Using this scale to judge Evil Unleashed's Dolby Digital disaster, the film cost $1.85 to make and was probably produced by a mental patient. The sound here is distorted, way out of balance, completely schizophrenic and without any redeeming quality. Enjoy the sonic ambiance.

The Extras:
Discussing the extras is very easy. There are none. Not a single one. Now, it could be argued that the 2-D version of the movie is the treat, or visa versa. But after seeing the film, you'll understand that, in any dimension, there is no bonus in having different distance phase ratios. Crap is crap, no matter how you "experience" it.

Final Thoughts:
Maybe man was never meant to witness the world in every dimension. After all, those who believe in the fourth dimension hope to break through the barrier between space and time to travel all throughout recorded (and even future) history. Anyone interested in the sixth dimension are probably pissed that, instead of seeing spooks and all manner of spiritual manifestations, they keep getting their keys caught on their zipper (according to Einstein, the 6th dimension is Magnetism???) And the fans of the fifth dimension agree that, once they left Burt Bacharach and Hal David, their career took a nosedive. So why should we want to see movies in 3-D? What's so great about seeing a pimple on someone's ass in full vision comprehensiveness? Is the notion of being able to virtually reach out and touch a tacky set that exciting? Is our imagination so minor that 3-D teats are a treat? Have we reached the point in our wretched lives where we'll buy into a carnival con, just because it's something novel and unusual. Looking at the ongoing success of Paige Davis seems to suggest an answer. Razor3-D, who puts out this product, may be laying the foundation for a home video revolution. With constant improvements in both title and technology, it is easy to see how digital depth and dimension could sweep the suburbs. But not if Evil Unleashed: The Mummy is any indication of their movie merchandise. When you know that people watching Robot Monster in 1953 (a) saw a better movie with (b) possibly better sound and vision, it's time to get back to basics. So let's just leave cheesy horror movies be and keep 3-D where it belongs: in PORN! Hardcore action you can almost "feel". Oh yeah. I sense a revolution in the making.

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