Cast: Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend, Stephanie Zimbalist, Patrick Drury, Bruce Myers, Nadim Sawalha, Ian McDiarmid, Ahmed Osman, Miriam Margolyes, Michael Mellinger, Leonard Maguire, Ishia Bennison, Madhav Sharma, Michael Halphie, Christopher Fairbanks, Roger Kemp
In Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, American archaeologist Matthew Corbeck (Heston) and his assistant, Jane Turner (York), search for the tomb of an ancient queen. A man trying to stop the dig is killed in an unusual manner. Placing his zeal for discovery ahead of his family, Corbeck neglects his pregnant wife, Anne (Townsend), and presses on with his work. He finds a hidden passage and breaks into a chamber that had been sealed for thirty-eight centuries. Inside he finds mummified remains which a cartouche identifies as those of Queen Kara. At the same time, Anne gives birth to a baby girl. Years later, Matthew Corbeck has divorced Anne and is married to Jane. He teaches at an English university. Corbeck’s daughter, Margaret (Zimbalist), lives in New York with her mother. Just short of her eighteenth birthday, Margaret decides to visit her father and flies to England to see him. As Margaret arrives, Queen Kara’s remains are brought to London from a museum in Cairo in an attempt to prevent their deterioration. Strange accidental deaths occur, as if Kara somehow exerts a supernatural force that advances her interests. Margaret, a fresh-faced, attractive teenager, begins to change, sometimes assuming mature and somewhat sinister traits. She learns the story of Kara, whose father had killed her lover. Later taking a ruthless revenge, Kara killed her father and his followers. Margaret, like Matthew interested in archaeology, is troubled as she becomes less kind and more imperious, more like Kara. As his sense of foreboding mounts, Corbeck realizes that the ancient spirit of Kara has somehow connected with his daughter. Through Margaret, Kara wishes to live again and control her new environment with her terrible powers. Corbeck must find a way, through arcane rituals, to stop the ancient malevolent queen that will use his own daughter to threaten him and all he holds dear. Filmed on location in Egypt and England. Based on the novel The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker.
Return