On 6 October 2022, I watched on DVD the TV monster movie Riddles of the Sphinx (aka Crse of the Pharaoh).
Directed by George Mendeluk, and originally screened on TV by The Sci-Fi Channel in 2008, Riddles of the Sphinx concerns an archaeologist's search for the fabled Hall of Knowledge of ancient Egypt, the repository for all human wisdom and knowledge acquired since time began, but now long lost – or so historians thought.
It turns out to be an interdimensional chamber, access to which is only obtained by solving a series of riddles that spontaneously appear upon an ammonite-shaped key-functioning stone, and are linked to various other interdimensional chambers associated with certain of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The archaeologist (referred to simply as Thomas, and played by Donnelly Rhodes) succeeds in accessing the first of these chambers, only to be confronted and killed by a ferocious, ostensibly indestructible sphinx that escapes to track down the dead man's history schoolteacher son, Robert (Lochlyn Munro), an Indiana Jones facsimile who is also highly knowledgeable in Egyptology and cryptography.
When given the ammonite stone by his father's former professional partner Jessica (a Lara Croft lookalike who just so happens to be Robert's former romantic partner), Robert realises that the sphinx's release not only threatens himself and his mega-intelligent teenage daughter Karen (Emily Tennant) but also presages the imminent release of a terrifying plague-like pandemic that will wipe out all of humanity.
Consequently, he seeks urgent assistance from a secret quasi-US governmental organisation called The Sentinel, where he used to work, and from where chief operative Ryder (Mackenzie Gray) readily agrees to join them in their quest, duly requisitioning from The Sentinel whatever they need to assist them. However, Ryder has his own secret agenda…
Riddles of the Sphinx inevitably samples everything from the Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider franchises to Stargate, The Librarian, and more, but not in a good way, sadly, as it is all glaringly derivative with little originality of its own.
Far worse for me, however, was the almost entirely unintelligible dialogue delivery of the film's principal actress, Dina Meyer (playing gun-toting leather-clad action heroine Jessica). Enunciation of separate words by her was all but non-existent, at least to my ears as a Brit – instead, her words just slipped and blended together into a non-delineated stream of incomprehensible sound. Bearing in mind that Jessica is one of the movie's two lead characters, being unable to tell what she is saying means that I missed all manner of important clues as to what was happening and back-story aspects.
Worse still, when I resorted to employing subtitles, I discovered that the DVD doesn't include any! Rewinding frequently to attempt lip-reading helped on occasion, but by and large this major problem ruined the film for me. Everyone else's dialogue was perfectly intelligible, so my ears clearly weren't at fault.
As for the CGI sphinx: to be fair, it is impressive, effortlessly transforming from huge sphinx to massive lion-like man (played by Dario Delacio) and back again, but again there is an intrinsic problem. This sphinx is winged, enabling it to chase after its human quarry wherever and however they seek to escape from it, whether on foot, by car, or even in an aeroplane. However, in Egyptian mythology, sphinxes are not winged (as confirmed by the huge wingless Great Sphinx of Giza edifice, for instance) – they are only winged in Greek mythology. However, a wingless sphinx would pose a far lesser threat than a winged one, so I can forgive the film makers for this muddling of mythologies.
Overall, had Meyer's diction been (a lot) clearer, Riddles of the Sphinx would have been an enjoyable 90-minute romp. As it was, its DVD definitely needs a subtitle option, because at least for me the riddle of what Meyer was saying proved far more difficult to solve than any riddles contained in this movie's plot.
If you'd like to catch a glimpse of this movie's spectacular sphinx in all its monstrous majesty and malevolence, be sure to click here to watch an official Riddles of the Sphinx trailer on YouTube.
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