SANDS OF OBLIVION (2007) is a pretty crappy TV movie that debuted on SYFY channel. It's actually based on a real event when Cecil B. DeMille finished making THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1923. The obsessed director had created a huge "city of the Pharaohs" in The Guadalupe desert around 170 miles north of L.A. When filming was over he had the whole thing bulldozed and buried beneath the sand. Eventually artifacts began to appear and the place became known as "the lost city of DeMille". This boring production proposes that DeMille (played here briefly by THE SIMPSONS' Don Castellaneta) was a Mason and he buried some lost relic, (an "inverted pyramid") in the sands and some kind of jackal monster kills people. A giant cobra made of sand, an attack of locusts and a dune buggy car chase are the highlights and Academy Award winner George Kennedy has a small role as the guy kind of responsible for the mayhem. The initial plot is good but as usual it's undermined by bad acting, long stretches of talk and mediocre SFX. Director David Flores also made BOA VS. PYTHON and LAKE PLACID 2.
Two of the stars Adam Baldwin (as an archaeologist who overacts ("The Master has come for us!")) and Morena Baccarin (as his ex-wife, also an archaeologist) had starred in the 2002 series FIREFLY. A TV actor Victor Webster is the hero who says things like "weapon up" and "walking meat puppet" and has to fight cardboard cutout ancient Egyptians!
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