Now I've commented on some peculiar titles in my time, but this bonus feature from The Mummy Returns DVD takes the cake. It's a three minute tour of a haunted house in the Universal Studios theme park decked out with props and costumes from Stephen Sommer's Mummy movies. Since I can see the humor of someone taking the time and trouble to create an IMDb page for this feature, I'm game to a few minutes watching the 'Chamber of Doom' again and commenting on it. Of course the DVD box doesn't prepare you at all for what's in store. In fact, the one I'm holding in my hand describes the Chamber of Doom as a documentary. This is also the only special feature on the second disc to get it's own animated intro when you click on it so you might be tricked into thinking you're in for something special...
It's really nothing but a steady-cam operator's point of view as he enters The Mummy Returns Chamber of Doom. There are people walking around dressed in costumes from the picture trying to look either scared or scary. Familiar props such as the Golden book of Amun Ra can be glimpsed. Everybody's least favorite character from the Mummy sequel, little Alex, has left notes to follow all over the place. Animatronic skeletons and mummy pygmies pop up in places (though not all of them move). There are fluorescent scarabs, skulls in the wall, blocked exits, a man in a very unconvincing mummy outfit and another in a slightly better warrior mummy costume. Near the end a puppet that's supposed to be Rick O'Connell is seen hanging from a net above a tomb as we hear The Brendan Fraser shouting lines from the film. We end as we began, with a pretty girl beckoning the camera. Unfortunately she is wearing a dress instead of body paint like Anck Su Namun. It's a shame none of these theme park actors are credited here, for they could have gotten their own place on IMDb as well.
Apparently, the building that housed The Mummy Returns Chamber of Doom was changed into a Van Helsing themed haunted house when that other Stephen Sommers film was released in 2004 and has since been turned into the 'Universal's house of Horrors' attraction which celebrates all of the studio's classic monsters. Strangely enough, before The Mummy version was opened by Sommers and Oded Fehr in May 2001, it used to be a Chicken Run attraction.
9 out of 10
It's really nothing but a steady-cam operator's point of view as he enters The Mummy Returns Chamber of Doom. There are people walking around dressed in costumes from the picture trying to look either scared or scary. Familiar props such as the Golden book of Amun Ra can be glimpsed. Everybody's least favorite character from the Mummy sequel, little Alex, has left notes to follow all over the place. Animatronic skeletons and mummy pygmies pop up in places (though not all of them move). There are fluorescent scarabs, skulls in the wall, blocked exits, a man in a very unconvincing mummy outfit and another in a slightly better warrior mummy costume. Near the end a puppet that's supposed to be Rick O'Connell is seen hanging from a net above a tomb as we hear The Brendan Fraser shouting lines from the film. We end as we began, with a pretty girl beckoning the camera. Unfortunately she is wearing a dress instead of body paint like Anck Su Namun. It's a shame none of these theme park actors are credited here, for they could have gotten their own place on IMDb as well.
Apparently, the building that housed The Mummy Returns Chamber of Doom was changed into a Van Helsing themed haunted house when that other Stephen Sommers film was released in 2004 and has since been turned into the 'Universal's house of Horrors' attraction which celebrates all of the studio's classic monsters. Strangely enough, before The Mummy version was opened by Sommers and Oded Fehr in May 2001, it used to be a Chicken Run attraction.
9 out of 10
