Opening scene: sometime in the 1800's two miners are dragging a coffin across the desert. A mysterious rider on horseback armed with a saber kills both of them and rides off into the horizon. One of the dead miners drops a medallion that's covered in blood. Flash to present day: A prisoner van transporting convicts through the Arizona desert crashes allowing them to escape with a voluptuous guard as hostage. After traipsing across the seemingly endless desert, they come upon a skeleton and a medallion nearby. Moving forward they meet Apache (Trejo) who tells them of a story of how the invading Spaniards forced the Indians to mine for gold. This gold was hidden and was to be guarded by seven Jesuit monks (hence the title of the movie) and the key was a gold medallion seal that looks just like the one our group found a few moments earlier. To keep the treasure hidden even better, a town was built upon the hiding place. Yeah, that is what I would do if I was trying to hide something!!! Apache points them in the direction of freedom - the Mexican border - and to the direction of the gold. Well, if they chose the Mexican border, this movie would be over and we would have been spared. But, we couldn't be so lucky!

I've always thought that there aren't enough horror movies set in the Old West and I was extremely excited when my random pick from my local Hollywood Video store was supposedly set in this period. I put on my boots, chaps, six-shooters, and of course my trusty cowboy hat and settled down for what I thought would be a hootenanny good time much like one had in From Dusk Til Dawn. Hell, it had Danny Trejo in it! Man, was I in for a bit of a rough ride. As you can tell from the length of the above synopsis, All Movie Guide did not have much to say about this movie. Hell, I'm not sure whether I should truly bash it with the countless problems I had with it or just come out and tell you in the shortest amount of space - and as little of your attention as I wish to take from you - how frivolous and meaningless this was. This movie actually put back the undead genre a few steps. Now, there are worse undead films out there and non-traditional undead are not new - remember the gun-toting zombies in Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City or the Yakuza zombies in Versus - but why add your movie to IMDb's bottom 100 movies voted by their users?

Knowing that this was a low budget, direct-to-DVD release, my first impression weren't really verbal but more of a head shaking motion...all this within the first 5 minutes! But more was to come and it didn't take long for my impression to turn into reality...this movie was going to blow. Don't get me wrong. With a cast that included familiar independent/low-budget film regulars Billy Drago, Danny Trejo, and Martin Kove I had high hopes that this film would claw its way out of canyon hell but even these veterans couldn't do it and it was no fault of theirs. What really set this movie down the wrong path was the production. First time feature-length director Nick Quested was way out of this league and should have just stuck with music videos because I heard he was at least good at that. His inexperience at movie-making really shone through and he must have gathered his college buddies to help him make this movie because it was amateurish. I really liked the premise and if made more serious enough could have reminded me of Amando de Ossorio's Tombs of the Blind Dead.

Other factors you ask? The camerawork was out of focus, frequently did not frame the actors and background correctly, and seemed to lose its timing. The supporting cast - particularly Noel Gugliemi, Noreaga, and Andrew Bryniarski (sorry Andrew but you should only appear onscreen wearing a mask and not saying a word!) - were not able to deliver their stupid lines much less act out the scene with realism (watching Noreaga act like he was eating snake meat when he CLEARLY never put his lips to it was laughable.) The music was horrendous, didn't go with the scene and was just plain overwhelming most of the time. It was clear to me that the defining factor was the bad editing. Many of the scenes did not make sense and the use of editing gimmicks such as fade-ins and overlays, were annoying and added no value. There was one scene in particular where the prisoners are entering the town and the first shot of the townspeople is actually playing backwards. Watch the burly guy hammering the nails into the coffin lid!

The entire setting in the town was an conundrum. This apparently was a ghost town because everyone was still wearing Old West garb. But our gang of escaped convicts wouldn't notice a little thing like that while strolling nonchalantly down center street. They were unfazed that they were getting the stare-down from the entire town of armed gunfighters. If that weren't enough, Quested decides to throw in a few modern-day bikers with their beards, bandannas and leather coats to add some spice to the party. Where did those bikers come from anyways? They must have figured if you can't whoop 'em, join 'em.

And where are these mummies? Despite the title including the number "Seven" and the word "Mummies", one would think that there would be...uhhh...seven mummies. Maybe we were supposed to count each mummy at least twice because I only saw three...maybe four. I wasn't really sure because I think that one of them appears as a human at first but changes into one. It was all way too confusing. And to take it one more notch up, they're Kung Fu fighting mummies! If Ray Park showed up in his Darth Maul costume and fought them off, that would have been even more kick ass!!!

Despite a hopeful premise, good acting from some B actors, pretty decent gore, and Kung Fu mummies, I was disappointed in the product. Low budget fare with confusing editing, horrid script and terrible acting from the rest of the cast really made me want to puke. For now, I will hang up my spurs and sheath my machete for the next western horror and pray to God that someone will get it right. Skip this one!