We’ll admit we watched Lesley-Anne Down’s 1981 thriller Sphinx just to see if she ever got into the gauzy number she’s wearing in the promo photo above. We thought it unlikely, and we were right. She mostly wore what you see below—no spike heels with asp straps, sorry. But it wasn’t the worst expenditure of time, finding this out. Sphinx feels like a television movie by today’s standards, but the location shooting is excellent, and some interesting performers pop up—among them Sir John Gielgud and John Rhys-Davies, the latter of whom you may remember as Sallah from another Egyptian themed movie—Raiders of the Lost Ark, which hit cinemas four months after Sphinx. Like Raiders, in Sphinx you get an antiquarian on the trail of a lost tomb while baffled by arcane clues and beset by duplicitous locals. We don’t think a single Egyptian had a noteworthy role here, but at least a few of the cultural details are accurate (though perhaps not the most flattering ones). Are we recommending this one? Not without Down wearing that outfit we aren’t, but the movie isn’t as bad as many would have you believe. It premiered today in 1981, and the awesome poster was painted by Bob Peak.
