Belphégor Phantom of the Louvre (DVD)
Reviewed by Uncle Creepy
Starring Pierre Aussedat, Jean-François Balmer, Julie Christie, Juliette Greco, Sophie Marceau
Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé
Distributed by Lionsgate Home Entertainment
With all the disappointment surrounding Egyptian themed monster madness floating around lately, it’s only fitting that Lionsgate dig up a flick from its catalog to capitalize on the trend. Their entry? Belphégor Phantom of the Louvre, a 2001 French horror quickie that sports a great acting pedigree in Christie and Marceau, and of course a mummy. You won’t find anyone shambling around in bandages here though as this is a straight ghost story. Sit back, kids, as it’s time to go Tutankhamun on your ass!
The Louvre is an amazing attraction in France that’s home to millions of tourists a year. It’s also home to a nameless forgotten mummy that’s recently been rediscovered. Through a series of “are you kidding me” type events the spirit of Mr. Bag-o-bones is freed to possess the body of a young woman (Marceau) who lives across the street. What does our disembodied baddie want? Someone to say his name out loud so that he could drift off happily to the land of the dead. I can’t help feeling that a lot was lost in translation here. There’s was lots going on onscreen, but the story seemed pretty paper-thin. I mean honestly!
What we have here is near two hours of a CGI spooker floating in and out of Marceau (man, that sounded a lot more dirty and exciting than what we actually got) while collecting clues in the Louvre so that the powers-that-be will figure out its identity. There’s no “Mummy terrorizing the Louvre” as the film’s box would lead you to believe. In fact, the only real horror elements to be found here come in the form of the spirit’s look which is kind of cool even though we see very little of it, and that its “defense mechanism” is that it causes folks to hallucinate their worst fears when confronted. Other than that this is strictly paint-by-numbers stuff that will cause little excitement and rouse even littler interest.
Speaking of lack of interest don’t bother looking for special features here because all you’ll find is the subtitle menu, and the chapter selection screen. There’s not even the slew of prerequisite Lionsgate trailers. The foil cover is cool though. I guess.
For all that it has going for it in the acting department, Belphégor Phantom of the Louvre comes up on the short side of the fence nearly everywhere else. It’s a decent little time killer, but you’ll ultimately start forgetting about it even before the end credits run.
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