The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

Life’s A Dragon, 
Then You Die

The Mummy - 
Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor
United States/Germany/China/Canada 
2008 Directed by Rob Cohen
Universal UK Blu Ray

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

We were all smacking our lips in anticipation of a third film in the Rick O’ Connell Mummy series after the brilliance of The Mummy (reviewed here) and the pretty great follow up The Mummy Returns (reviewed here). And we were all dreadfully disappointed in what finally came out in cinemas. Stephen Sommers, who wrote and directed the previous two installments, did not direct this movie... other than he’s listed as one of the producers. I hate to say it but... it really shows. I don’t know why he wasn’t involved but his 2004 movie Van Helsing, where he further expanded his reimagining of the classic Universal monster movies, was not treated kindly by critics or box office alike. I don’t know why because I thought that particular take was also pretty good but, I don’t know, maybe that’s why he didn’t do the third Mummy movie. He is sorely missed in this sequel. 

Now, the film isn’t a total mess... it certainly works as a typical action adventure movie of the 2000s but, that’s where this film also fails big time. The thing about the previous two installments is that they were both something very special... so expectations were high this would deliver a similar concoction and, to be fair, a lot of the ingredients which made those two a huge success are present and relatively correct. There’s a huge element missing though and, that element would be... fun. Despite an overemphasis perhaps on the humour found in the first two, this film is not the entertaining romp it should have been and falls flat a lot of the time. That being said, there are one or two notable things in the film and, honestly, it’s not the cast’s fault for sure.

We only have two returning actors from the first film present and correct here... that would be Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and John Hannah as Evelyn’s brother Jonathan. And they’re as good as they can be with this script... as are all the other actors. Another character returns from the previous film, Rick and Evie’s son Alex but, of course, since this is set halfway through the next decade again (each Mummy move in this series is set in a different decade) and Alex is supposed to be considerably older and grown up, he couldn’t be played by the same actor (as this was only about seven years since the last film). Instead they get Luke Ford, who makes a not bad stab at this and even, somehow, manages to have some of the same character traits of the child version from that last story. I say somehow because, character consistency is not high on the priority with the next actor I’ll talk about... again, not her fault.

Okay, so the great Rachel Weisz did not, for reasons known best to her (with many different reported explanations for her absence but I think I believe her when she says she didn’t like the script), return for this sequel. However, the character of Evelyn is all present and correct and the original actress was replaced in this film by Maria Bello. And she does a great job so I mean it as no disrespect to say that, in this role, she is no Miss Weisz. Now, one of the problems I have with her is that she is playing it in a much different manner to the character we’ve come to know. That decision could be defended by remembering that, in the last movie, Evelyn was resurrected from the dead as both herself and the daughter of the murdered Pharaoh in the first film... so a slightly different personality could be a valid choice... if that fact were at all referenced in this one but, nope, not much (if anything) is said about it (this time it’s her husband who gets killed and then brought back to life). She does get a nice line of dialogue though... which I’ll come back to in a minute. 

For the record, both Arnold Vosloo and Oded Fehr declined to return for this film also... so the original script must have been pretty different from what we ended up with. 

Two other big actors in this movie are both kung fu legends in their own country... Jet Li as the villainous Dragon Emperor himself and future Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. Both are great but, come on... another reason people were chomping at the bit for this movie was that we wanted to see them both put their kung fu skills to use (and a ten minute fight scene between the two would have been most welcome). It would be an understatement to say that neither has a chance to shine in this one... especially in Yeoh’s case. 

Right... there are a few nice things. One is that we are re-introduced to Evelyn at a book reading of her latest novel, based on the second of her adventures. When someone asks her if the character in her book is based on her, Bello’s face is revealed and she says... “Honestly, I can say she's a completely different person.” Which is a nice and cheeky nod to the audience (pretty much the only one in the film, I’ll get to that) that she is a different actress taking over the role. It’s the exact same kind of metatextual comment on casting that George Lazenby delivers at the end of the pre-credits sequence in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) when he turns to the camera and says, “This never happened to the other fellow.” So... a nice moment. 

The only other nice thing in this movie... for me... asides from a nod to the first two films by having the name of Jonathan’s night club be “Imhotep’s”... is the inclusion of a small bunch of abominable snowmen... aka yetis... who help out our merry band of heroes at a crucial time. They’re nicely done although, I’ve no idea how two of the creatures can make a visual reference to the game of American Football... to be sure. Maybe try not to think about that too hard. 

A curious thing is that, when Jet Li’s character is fully resurrected, he can take on various forms. The two things he shape shifts into seem curious choices. One is a three headed dragon which bears an uncanny resemblance to King Ghidorah in the original Godzilla films and the other creature he changes into seems to slightly resemble King Caesar, from that same cycle of Godzilla films so... I dunno... I’m surprised the studio didn’t get sued over this. Maybe the director was secretly trying to pitch for a Godzilla reboot at the time? Who knows but... anyone who is into their kaiju eiga would surely get a jolt at seeing these creatures here.

As I was watching the film... I was trying to figure out why it just doesn’t work. There’s loads of humour (which mostly falls flat for me... unlike the other two movies), the action set pieces are well put together, the actors are all good and Randy Eidelman’s score for this (although partially replaced by stuff from John Debney, it would seem) is sweeping and fine... if not a patch on the scores provided for the earlier films by Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri. I think, for me, the film loses out in terms of the script and the way the humour is played. The script is really stating the obvious and explaining every last thing to the audience and capitalising it... me and my father looked at each other this time when a particularly stupid line (one of the unintentionally stupid lines) came up. And the other problem with it is that, unlike its predecessors, the audience aren’t let in on the joke. Asides from the “different person altogether” line, there are none of the sly winks to the audience that the other two had. It feels like its taking itself too seriously and, consequently, it never really gets us on its side... it’s just not as entertaining as either previous installment and... yeah... it’s just a bit of a let down.

No further films were made (as yet) in this series although, the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy (reviewed here) does include the book of the dead from the first film as a visual reference in one scene... so it’s technically taking place in the same universe. A fourth one featuring an Aztec Mummy was planned but never came to fruition... again, as yet. As for how I stand on this... well, for me, The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor certainly hasn’t grown on me. It was as much of a disappointment this time around as the previous times I saw it so, yeah, if you only see this one, don’t miss out on the first two just because this is not up to scratch. I hope someday the original writer/director and cast will come back to do just one more but... who knows if that will happen. 

Egyptomania Goes To The Movies

Tut N’ Come In

Egyptomania Goes to the Movies:
From Archaeology to Popular Craze to Hollywood Fantasy
by Matthew Coniam
McFarland & Co
ISBN: 978-1476668284

Wow, this is an awesome book. I’ve always had a low level fascination with the plundered artefacts and bandaged, monstrous, vengeful hellspawn of this far off accursed land, especially in connection to movies inspired by such but, it wasn’t until I saw Valerie Leon, glamorous star of Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb (reviewed by me here) tweeting about this book that I even knew of its existence... nor of Matthew Coniam’s existence either, it has to be said.

Well, I went out on an unbandaged limb and added Egyptomania Goes to the Movies: From Archaeology to Popular Craze to Hollywood Fantasy to my holiday reading (via the US Amazon shopping cart, which was somehow cheaper than a UK resident such as myself ordering it from the UK Amazon at the time... go figure) and embarked upon a somewhat irreverent, thoroughly entertaining and surprisingly knowledgeable encapsulation of all that stuff it says on the subtitle of the book above. I’m now very pleased I took that leap of faith, kickstarted by a knowing social media wink from the reincarnated Queen Tera to the physical manifestation of Matthew Coniam’s sacred text, as soon as possible.

And he had me right from the start, as the book begins with a wonderfully comic ‘Dramatis Personae’ of all the important movers, shufflers and shakers who feature in the book, acting as a glossary for those readers who are unfamiliar with the identity of such luminaries as Lord Carnarvon, Howard Carter, Tutenkhamon and, of course, Karloff the Uncanny.... to name but a few. And it’s in this light hearted spirit in which he manifests all his ideas and research for the book, starting off with an introduction which references a recent archaeological excavation of artefacts from the desert that some readers may remember being in the news a few years back... the various sets from Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, buried in the sand over time and becoming almost as ‘sought after’ as the real artefacts that inspired DeMille’s two versions of the film in the first place.

Another thing which won me over straight away on Mr. Coniam’s behalf was the delightful use of BC and AK... where AK stands for Anno Karloff. This is the way to suck me into a book which is, at the very least, as much about the actual events and history of Egypt that inspired various movies as it is the films themselves. Coniam appears to be something of an expert in the subject and his enthusiastic filling in and way of completely enlightening those readers who are alarmingly ignorant of such matters (a list in which I count myself, having proven myself a thoroughly ignorant reader on more than one occasion), like the basics of Egyptology and mummery and such like, is done in a way that’s extremely informative.

For instance, I had no idea that for many centuries, excavated mummies were ground up and consumed by many people for their medicinal properties... even finding their way onto the dinner table with the other condiments in later centuries. Indeed, the tradition of consuming portions of powdered mummy was so popular that supply could not keep up with demand and fresh killings were being carried out and then ‘processed’ as a trade in bootleg mummy remains also surfaced, it would seem.

I also didn’t know certain things about the ‘not so aptly named, it turns out’ Cleopatra’s Needle, which now famously resides in London. Such as the problems with shipping it over to my rainy capital, how a cylinder was constructed to float it to the United Kingdom, how it got further ‘lost at sea’ for quite a while and how, after languishing in its own country after the British ignored it for centuries, we only got interested in shipping it back to England after we found out the French had their eyes on it too. All very illuminating.

Of course, Mr. Coniam also says a lot of good and interesting stuff about various selected movies inspired by Egypt and, especially, the mummies... including many films that never got before the cameras or were lost soon after. Not to mention the latest, far from accurate but nevertheless entertaining novelty songs and dance crazes inspired by what he calls Egyptomania.

A few things made me sit up and take note when the author has his ‘film head’ securely screwed on... and I was pleased that he acknowledged that the one bandaged scene, lasting not very many seconds, of Karloff slowly opening his twinkling eyes... is a subtle moment which rivals the best of Val Lewton’s rival/antidotes to the success of Universal Horror. I was also very pleased that he makes note of the absolute insanity of the four ‘sequels’ to the movie, in terms of both their timelines (where years and even decades pass between films but they are all set contemporary to their release within a year of the last one) and also the fact that Kharis the mummy sinks into a swamp in one country at the end of one film and then, timelessly over the decades, re-emerges from the same swamp which has bafflingly been relocated to New Orleans while he slept. I’ve never understood how the writers let these huge continuity errors exist but I’m glad Mr. Coniam seems as baffled by them as me.

Coniam also talks about Universal maestro of make-up Jack Pearce's influences on the medium and, interestingly, points out that the antagonistic creature in the much later Hammer movie, The Mummy's Shroud, actually has the most accurate make-up in terms of being compared to those specimens found on archaeological digs, although he also points out the movie is problematic in terms of accuracy for other reasons. He also kept me happy by mentioning neglected movie gems like The Awakening (another adaptation, starring Charlton Heston, of Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, which Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb was based on) and both the book and movie version of Robin Cook’s Sphinx (which has a gorgeous soundtrack that should be commercially released... at least I have a promo copy).

So, yes, a wonderfully informative book by someone who really seems to know what he is talking about... which isn’t always a given thing for some writers of recent years, I’ve noticed. As an added extra, after the writer’s epilogue, we are treated to a section of, quite humorous, pocket reviews of a large list (not quite exhaustive, I fear... it seems a little Santo/Blue Demon light although, to be fair, although some of the mummies they fought may have been Aztec rather than Egyptian) of Egyptomania movies, including a wonderful Paul Naschy one, Vengeance Of The Mummy (which I reviewed here). He also includes some of the Egyptian themed porn movies made and I was especially taken with his rather cheeky, two sentence review of the 2004 film Attack Of The Virgin Mummies... "Undead Egyptian hotties revived in a future where sex is illegal. Two directors were necessary to bring it off."

And that rather concludes my look at Mr. Coniam’s truly wonderful book Egyptomania Goes to the Movies: From Archaeology to Popular Craze to Hollywood Fantasy. Well written, blisteringly entertaining and an absolute must read for fans of Egyptology, cinema and, of course, that thrilling combination of the two. I can’t wait to track down one of the writers other books on The Marx Brothers at some point in the near future. Awesome stuff.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb

Reap Throat

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb
1971 Spain Directed by Seth Holt & Michael Carreras 
UK London FrightFest screening 27th August 2017.

Warning: Spoilers towards the end.

Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb is one of my top six favourite Hammer movies and, as such, I was pleased to find that a new restoration for Blu Ray release was being premiered at this year’s FrightFest. Although it is one of my favourites, it must have been at least a decade since I last watched it and I found, on rewatching this now, that I’d forgotten quite a few things about the film since I’d last seen it. I also found I’d got it mixed up in my head with Bram Stoker’s original story, The Jewel Of Seven Stars, on which this film (along with a few other movies) is based.

The film stars the absolutely wonderful Valerie Leon in a dual role as Amanda and the ‘mummy’ of the title, Tera. While this isn’t the first movie to depict a female mummy (I’m sure that, at the very least, Santo or some other Mexican character probably got to it first and there was also a TV adaptation of this Stoker story which aired just before this was released), it’s still a pretty rare phenomenom in film and you can kind of see the influence of this and how it possibly paved the way for such modern female Mummys as Patricia Velasquez in The Mummy Returns and Sofia Boutella in the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, The Mummy (reviewed here).

Miss Leon is just amazing here in a role which is perhaps a little less talky than you would expect but, then again, there are a lot of stretches in this movie which are done without dialogue and the film is, arguably, better for it. Her mere presence tends to dominate every scene she’s in so I’m surprised we didn’t see a lot more of her in similar roles over the years. It’s an interesting character in that one never quite knows, as the film progresses, if Amanda is the main protagonist or antagonist as the grip of Tera’s legacy takes a hold of her mind at various moments.

In this, the character is joined boy her ‘boyfriend straight out of the sixties... luv’, played by Mark Edwards. In a bizarre twist, as in-jokes go, the character he plays is named Tod Browning, after the director of the US version of the 1931 Dracula (and strangely not after the director of the 1932 film The Mummy, which would maybe have made a little more sense). The film has a few sly little references, actually, such as a To Let sign on a house being named after Hammer’s own Christopher Neame and Roy Skeggs.

Although the plot is fairly close to Stoker’s original novel (or perhaps novella?), it’s a little bit of a departure in terms of where the narrative direction goes... it’s anything but formulaic... and this helps mark it out as being from a particular period in Hammer’s cinematic history when they were being a bit more experimental (perhaps that’s why it’s one of my favourites). That being said, the film does have a ‘Mummy’s curse’... or perhaps legacy would be a better word in this case... as Amanda was born as her mother died, at the exact time her father discovered and opened the tomb in Egypt which housed Tera (as in the original story, if memory recalls). She is destined to become Tera reborn if certain elements, years later, are brought together when the Seven Stars align in the right way on a certain date. Of course, the party who discovered the tomb have all split up in later years and each have one of these essential artefacts in their ownership. However, by the power of Tera’s severed hand, the artefacts are slowly brought together as the ‘body count’ element of the film gets underway. As the distinguished Kim Newman said in his introduction to the screening, there’s a heck of a lot of throat ripping in this movie and, for some reason, people seem to have their throats torn out by a magical, invisible enemy and not directly by the creeping severed hand which is rendered, as it is in every other film featuring a creeping severed hand, in a way which in no way detracts from the comedic element of having... well... a creeping severed hand (wow... I managed to work that phrase three times into the same sentence and am still not bored with typing it... I’ll see if I can return to it at some point).

The film has a troubled production history... Peter Cushing started filming in this one as Amanda’s father, Professor Julian Fuchs, but his wife died very early on in the filming and he left to be replaced by the always excellent Andrew Keir, who had previously played iconic character Professor Bernard Quatermass in Hammer’s own excellent remake of Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed here) four years before... a role he would return to decades later on the radio. As if that was not bad enough, director Seth Holt, whom Mr. Newman told us tended to know exactly how his movies would slot together in his head, died half way through production and Michael Carreras took over to carry on shooting and editing. Alas, Holt never told anybody how the film would slot together in the editing room and so, despite having a script, there are probably some differences in the way it was put together as opposed to what it was supposed to look like. Perhaps this jigsaw puzzle of an exercise explains why Miss Leon’s night gown seems to inexplicably change colour in a scene following on from another... maybe the footage was supposed to be taking place on another night rather than as seen here (did anyone else notice that or is my mind playing tricks on me?). Indeed, some scenes like the death of a character in his car are pieced together in a truly abstract manner and make it something of an expressionist piece, although I suspect the original intent may have been quite different. It’s a neat solution if not all the footage was available to be put together (perhaps a creeping severed hand absconded with the film stock)... never mind the fact that a pair of characters react instantly to the death, even though at least one of them couldn’t have known about it yet. Again, possibly an editing mistake or even, as is such the case with a lot of questionable moments in modern movies, an editing decision.

Everyone is, of course, marvellous in this picture, which has a whole host of familiar British character actors (although, alas, not Hammer regular Michael Ripper, as this was the only Hammer Mummy movie not to feature him). We also have a more sinister... ‘almost but not quite but maybe he is depending on a certain point of view’... villain of a character played absolutely brilliantly by James Villiers, who some might remember best as the lead villain in the second of Richard Johnson’s Bullldog Drummond movies, Some Girls Do.

In addition to the sterling cast, though, we have a tremendously loose atmosphere which, admittedly, doesn’t do much for the pacing but certainly gives the film a very strange vibe to it and which I truly think does the movie a lot of good. There’s some wonderful shot compositions using vertical shapes in one sequence and some truly amazing camerawork in a scene where the camera just pans around speedily at weird Dutch angles in an insane asylum as the laughter and wails of the patients play on the soundtrack to a fairly disconcerting effect. Add to this the great Tristram Cary’s not so subtle but extremely striking score to the film and you have a sure fire winner. Add in Tera’s amazingly ornate costume which, as Kim Newman pointed out... nobody in the world could have worn as well as Valerie Leon... and you have a minor but no less potent piece of iconic Hammer Horror imagery added into the mix too.

One thing about the Hammer films of this specific period which always got me was their unbelievably bleak endings. In the original TV serial of Quatermass And The Pit, for example, things are all wrapped up happily by the good Professor when he delivers a speech telling people what just happened and why everything is going to be fine for a while, if I’m remembering correctly. The Hammer film version eschews that ending and just concentrates on a spent Professor Quatermass and his female companion as they look on silently recovering from the destruction caused in the last twenty or so minutes of the film. It’s far bleaker and Hammer had a phase where all their films were ending with this kind of pessimistic atmosphere and this one is no exception. Bram Stoker revised his original story years later to give it a far more optimistic and upbeat ending to what it had in his original text but the Hammer film has a much more ambiguous ending. It has been noted that this is the first time Hammer had filmed a Mummy movie where the Mummy wasn’t swathed in bandages and that’s quite correct except... in the ending that claim possibly comes into question. As the Professor’s house falls in on him and kills two of the characters, including the Professor, we have a little scene where one of the characters has survived and is wrapped in bandages for her wounds in a hospital. It’s Valerie Leon again, her eyes are quite distinctive (as they need to be here) but, the film leaves us with the question as to which version of Valerie Leon it is... Amanda or Tera. Actually, if you listen to one of the nurses mention her state of undress when she was brought in, I would have to conclude that it’s definitely Tera who survives the movie to live and rip throats another day but I guess the case could be argued either way. Whatever the answer is, the camera freezes on her open eyes peaking from behind the bandages to give us another grim ending to a Hammer Horror.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb has been nicely restored here and if you’ve never seen it before then this is probably the best version to catch... since they seem to have sorted out their ‘day for night’ photography shenanigans from the previous release of the film. So it’s good news that this latest version will be out as a new Blu Ray/DVD later in the year, then. Certainly a nice thing for those Hammer enthusiasts out there to add to their Christmas list, no doubt. I know I’ll be after this one, for sure. Now if they could just do the same kind of Blu Ray corrections for Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, I’d be even happier. 

Vengeance Of The Mummy

Naschy Come Home

Vengeance Of The Mummy 

(aka La Venganza De La Momia)

1973 Spain

Directed by Carlos Aured

Camden Collection DVD Region 0

Vengeance Of The Mummy is one of Paul Naschy’s loving homages to the classic Universal horror movies of old. Naschy, best known for his portrayal of the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky in many films, also wrote this one. Like the 1959 Hammer update of The Mummy (reviewed here), this mixes elements from the 1932 classic version of The Mummy, which starred Boris Karloff in the titular role, with ingredients from the 1940s pseudo-sequel series, which followed the bandage-wrapped exploits of Kharis, as played by both Tom Tyler (The Adventures Of Captain Marvel, The Phantom) and by the legendary Lon Chaney Jr (who had the privilege of playing all four of the top tier Universal monsters in his time). 

In this interpretation, Naschy plays a dual role in that he plays both Amenhotep (which is obviously a name check reference to Imhotep) and also a devoted, Victorian follower of the same tyrant, Assed Bay. Unlike the Karloff “dual role”, where he played the bandaged wrapped version and the modern Egyptian version of the same character using an assumed name, the roles  in this version are actually two different characters, with Amenhotep prowling around in bandages while Assed Bay seeks to reunite him with the spirit reincarnation of his former lover (which is a concept with direct lineage from the Karloff version, of course). A concoction very similar to the “tana leaves” of the Kharis series of Mummy films is also used in this version, although Amanhotep only needs to drink this the once.

In Vengeance Of The Mummy, the main male protagonist who, with his wife, discovers the accursed tomb of Amenhotep, is Jack Taylor (start of such genre movies as The Ghost Galleon aka Tombs Of The Blind Dead 3, Female Vampire, Vampyros Lesbos etc) who I also liked in what I consider to be the best of the Naschy/Daninsky films I’ve seen to date, Dr. Jekyll And The Wolfman. Interestingly, it’s not this character’s wife who is the love object of Amenhotep’s curse in this version, but the daughter of his professor friend and, I’m guessing because of certain gender and genre expectations at the time this was made, she is played as a single lady... I just can’t tell you why because I don’t want to spoil the end of the movie for you.

The film has a prelude set in Egypt (this one doesn’t make extensive use of flashbacks as did the 1932 version of The Mummy and various other incarnations of it over the years) but the majority of the movie is set in London, England and in this way it plugs into the same feeling of nostalgia (I used to go into London a lot as a kid) that I got from Taylor and Naschy’s collaboration from the year before, the aforementioned Dr. Jekyll And The Wolfman. I don’t quite remember the Natural History Museum having a big sign out in front of it saying British Museum (Natural History) but... I guess it could have done and I just wasn’t paying attention as a kid. The montage of establishing shots to tell us we’re in London is bizarrely long, though. Clocking in as a few minutes and outstaying its welcome somewhat as a “short” intro to a scene. 

Even so, this film is one of the best of the Naschy productions I’ve seen. The set design is a little simplistic, especially the stuff in the Egyptian setting at the start of the movie, but it’s also very colourful and lively and I loved it. Similarly, the shot design and the way things are dollied through or edited together is all excellent with some really nice, Hitchcockian moments which are almost birds eye views of the characters as they go about their business in a few sections. Really nice stuff.

The musical score, by a guy named Alfonso Santisteban, is pretty good too. It’s not exactly as subtle as you might hear in a lot of horror films but that doesn’t count against it and the melodies and elements of the orchestration are all quite toe tapping and listenable throughout, certainly defending its honour against such brilliant scores as Franz Reizenstein’s score to the Hammer version of The Mummy, for instance. I’d love to get my hands on a recording of this score but, unless a boutique label like Quartet decide to give it a go (they released two Naschy scores but I think they were slow sellers and possibly underperformed for them), then I’m not holding out much hope.

What we have in this movie is one for all fans of the always familiar and iconic movie monsters which have stood the test of time throughout the years from the early talkies (and sometimes before) and if you are into these kinds of films, or even if you like Paul Naschy movies in general, then this one is a definite must-see. For people expecting something a little more sophisticated... well, you’re probably going to be a little disappointed, to be honest... but fans of 50s and 60s Hammer/Amicus style productions will surely love it. As did I. Hope I get to it again sometime soon before I die.