Normally I’d shy away from Casper Van Dien movies. Well, not so much “shy away from” as “laugh at and spit on” before returning the DVD to its place of destined ridicule in the “$5 or less” bin at Circuit City with copies of Mimic 3 and Mr. 3000. What would cause me to break such a personal mantra of movie watching? A giant mummy. What’s better than a mummy? Well, zombies and atomic monsters and mind-controlling perverted brain balloons from outer space, yes. But, a GIANT mummy definitely puts a little shot of celluloid steroids into the ass cheeks of an often glossed-over subgenre in the pantheon of spook show cinema. Though I take the following movie with my standard gallon of trepidation, as other supposed “can’t miss” ideas have left me hollowed out inside before, there’s still a part deep inside of me that keeps its talons crossed for something that won’t leave the nutty after taste of mummy turds where my soul would be once the end credits roll. Enough with the poetry Cletus! Put the shiny plastic Frisbee thing in the magic sex box machine and make her spin!

Way back in Ancient Egyptian times, when I held some sway and the Jews were still on their way up in the religious world, their big man upstairs, Yahweh, brought unto my homies and the rest of the world a monster flood to wash away the evils of man as well as the abominations known as the Nephalem. The Nephs were a breed of freaks born of fallen angels and human women (I guess “falling from grace” means you get to have reproductive organs?), most of which turned out having powers, making them Biblical X-Men. In preparation for the big washout, a mighty 50ft Neph colossus named Aramis was mummified and his resting place given one of our standard issue curses. You know the deal: when man intrudes upon Ary‘s tomb, he’ll rise from his eternal rest to lay a Godzilla-sized smashy-smashy on mankind and avenge his fallen people, blah blah blah, hence the title. FF>> to the modern day and enter Casper Van Dien (not literally, ewww) whose character Matt is a rebel always ruffling the feathers of the starched collar historical society crowd and wrestling with his dark archeological past… oh the tragic tortured soul of the noble archaeologist and the life he/she sacrifices for their love of old dusty shit they find in holes.

For his current job, Matt’s exploring a piece of dessert in Nevada to make sure there aren’t any important historical finds to be found before a construction crew moves in to build the latest greatest tourist trap to hit America’s personal Hedonism. A conveniently timed tremor drops our heartthrob into the tomb of a familiar freeze-dried goliath, who obviously didn’t quite wind up under the shifting sands we expected him to. Of course you can’t have a hunky guy like Casper Van Dien in a movie without an attractive piece of tail to play his inevitable love interest, so we also have Angela, with whom Matt is forced to share boss duties with in regards to who’s in charge of digging out the Jolly Grey Giant now that he’s been unearthed. Our protagonist also brings in his old rabbi buddy Eli (Tom Bosley!) to translate the ancient Hebrew tablets found around our enlarged Imhotep’s bedroom while he and Amanda work on exhuming the big worm farm. Eli’s that rare Jew who thinks that the Christians had a few things right, mostly the end of days courtesy of The Book of Revelation(s). He also makes the connection that the folks who spawned Ary were the same avenging fancy-pants that Yahweh sent to wipe out Sodom, the city of sin in the middle of the dessert. In an effort at ham-fisted metaphor, we can all see that when Aramis’s alarm clock finally goes off, he’s gonna do that old soft shoe all over our own sand surrounded sin city: sweet sweet Reno… I mean, Las Vegas. Good. With any luck he’ll be scraping the cast of “C.S.I.” off his size 280s by the time this cheese factory finishes up.

Members of both the excavation team and the construction crew start to disappear, kidnapped by oversized morons in ill-fitting purple bathrobes. The project’s foreman Morton (Robert Wagner!), rather than bring in the authorities to investigate their growing number of missing persons, decides that hiring “private security” will be a better option. Can you say “Blackwater”? Not without getting shot in the head? I didn’t think so. The security team is headed by a slimy corporate type named Raphael Ammon who looks familiar… and Egyptian. Of course he’s really the 4 story living dead’s immortal fallen angel daddy Ammon (“the Angel of Death”) who, indeed, also leads a cult of fanatical sheep in ill-fitting purple bathrobes. Ammy also finally ready to unleash the fruit of his freaky loom upon mankind after centuries of waiting what with the forthcoming lunar eclipse… because all curses, prophesies, and world-ending events all have to happen during some kind of eclipse. What I don’t get (besides the reason I insist on sitting through this shit without financial compensation) is this: if Ammy’s been around all this time and he is the one who put Aremis into the ground to begin with, then why the need for the whole curse/prophecy thing requiring him to wait until now exactly to give his undead kid his genocidal marching orders? Then again, that’s probably my fault, as somehow I knew from the moment I heard “giant mummy” that this flick, much like most religions, wasn’t going to be steeped in logic.

. The rest of the movie consists of stuff about prophesies, someone being the reincarnation of some incestuous cave lush, three other Nephs having been buried elsewhere in the world, some kind of giant slave-powered robo-effegy exercise machine of doom whose human engine sounds like they’re chanting “almonds” instead of “Ammon”, Ammy performing a ritual that looks more like beginner’s level Tai-Chi (not to be confused with chai tea, which would make no sense), plenty of inane dialogue rife with predictable lines, Robert Wagner trying his hardest to emote (to NO avail) before being lightly bludgeoned with a shotgun by an average sized mummy, a faux-Ted Raimi biting people left and right, and a last minute revelation that’s entirely unnecessary beyond a hollow attempt at filling a little more runtime with needless emotional drama and a peak at a sequel that will likely never get its silly ass off of the ground. And in the end? Well, since the movie’s not 5 years old as of this review, I won’t spoil it. I will tell you this much though: giant mummies and fallen angels have the same weakness as neon maniacs and that weird family made of cotton candy that moved next door to you last summer…

Some of the cg is pretty good (snake fingers), while most of it falls somewhere between “meh” and “bleh”. The chase scenes of undead Ary running after Matt’s jeep and batting down a helicopter are no Jurassic Park. I mean, the stuff in The Amazing Colossal Man was better done than this and that was filmed in, what, the 1840s? I’m of course exaggerating, but you get the idea. In a movie like this, the special effects are key, so you can imagine the “caliber” of the acting performances. Van Dien? Bad. Wagner? Baaaad. Everybody else? Better in comparison… except for Geoffrey Lewis (Gus), who seems drunk as a skunk for a lot of his scenes. Then again, maybe he’s just old and is coming back from a stroke. I don’t know, sometimes I have trouble telling the difference.

In the end (Hey! Get that out of there!), The Fallen Ones could’ve been a great Hollywood blockbuster. The concept isn’t a bad thing, but with a bad bout of badder acting and sans the proper financial foundation, a potential house of cards turns into a game of 52 Pick Up. So much potential laid out before us and so much of it untapped because nobody would pony up the cash for the proper drilling equipment. Truth be told, with that Tomb of the Dragon Emperor proving to us that those Brendan Fraser mummy movies refuse to stay dead, The Fallen Ones would’ve been a watchable addition to that franchise, what with its big deal budgets and a cast that’s at least a modicum of improvement over who we have here. Oh well, hopefully someday we’ll get the quality movie about a giant mummy that we all deserve. Until then, this is your resident Death God and Cthulhu’s little helper signing off. Keep it (Bad Mister) frosty all you kids out there in the world wide wasteland!