CURSE OF THE MUMMY; TOMB RAIDERS: Getting to grips with the story of the ancient Egyptian undead seemed to open a sarcophagus and unleash a plague problems for the cast and crew.

AS makers of the new block-buster movie The Mummy delved into the chilling story of an ancient Egyptian High Priest, they didn't realise they were opening a Pandora's Box.

Even before the cameras had stopped rolling relationships had floundered, the lead actor had performed a stunt so dangerous he almost died and hundreds of the crew had been struck down by an illness that mysteriously didn't respond to any treatment.

The pounds 60 million film, starring Rachel Weisz, Brendan Fraser and Arnold Vosloo, features the fictional story of Imhotep, High Priest of Osiris and Keeper of the Dead, who was cursed and mummified alive for killing Pharaoh Seti 1.

When a group of archaeologists open the tomb, they accidentally bring him back to life -and have to then find a way to get rid of him.

It can be no coincidence that all of the main characters found their life changing dramatically after they made the movie. Almost no- one left the set untouched by what has been dubbed by the crew "The Mummy's Curse."

Lead actor Brendan Fraser "died" for 18 seconds when a hanging stunt went wrong.

Arnold Vosloo, the actor who played The Mummy, was so wrapped up in his dark role that his girlfriend left him, claiming he was turning into the film's monster.

Leading lady Rachel Weisz's relationship with Neil Morrissey was also put under strain and there were rumours they'd split up.

Two members of the crew had to be airlifted from their desert set in Morocco to hospital. One had been bitten by a snake and the other by a scorpion.

The cast and crew caught a strain of dysentery that was untreatable.

The makers of The Mummy should have known what to expect before they began making the film. For a start, the unstable political climate in Egypt the company had to move to Morocco and the Sahara desert and also shoot scenes in Marrakech.

The 800 cast and crew had to endure temperatures of 130 degrees in early morning, sandstorms and the threat of scorpions and snakes as they built sets in the searing heat.

While life was uncomfortable for everyone, it nearly ended for actor Brendan Fraser, who plays Rick O'Connell.

In a scene where he was supposed to be hanged, things went so wrong that he actually died

He said: "I was hanging from this noose standing on a board. Then something went wrong and the next thing I knew, I was waking up.

"They killed me for 18 seconds."

He wasn't the only one to receive medical treatment. While in the Sahara two crew members had to be airlifted to hospital after being bitten, one by a scorpion, the other by a snake.

Each day the medical team had to give the entire crew a potion to stop them fainting in the heat.

But the curse of The Mummy didn't stop with the good guys -even the movie's villain ended up a victim of The Curse.

South African Arnold Vosloo became so engrossed in his role of the evil Imhotep, that he nearly destroyed his relationship with his girlfriend.

As Imhotep he had to be wrapped in bandages, placed in a sarcophagus with live beetles so he could jump out when Rachel Weisz's character frees him.

The character was dark and gruesome, with a half-decayed face and a thirst for human organs to restore his own body.

Sylvia became so frightened of her boyfriend that she had to leave London, where they were filming at Shepperton Studios and fly back to California.

They had been together for two years and planned to start a family - but after only a few days of shooting she became worried.

He said: "Sylvia told me: `You're frightening and I can't stand it. You know what's happening - you're turning into him.'

"Of course, The Mummy is the stuff of myth and legend, but my whole mental attitude and personality changed."

Luckily for Sylvia she had left him before he went to Morocco for the desert scenes - it was there that he became trapped with morbid thoughts of death.

He didn't even care if Sylvia had left him - all that consumed him what the evil Imhotep.

Arnold said: "I didn't feel like going to the bar or socialising with the other cast or the crew.

"I'd go to my room and stand at the window staring out into the desert night. I found my thoughts turning to death ... things like what it might be like to be buried under the sand I was walking on?"

He was also haunted by images of a smiling Anthony Perkins in Psycho and kept hallucinating that he was at the Moroccan hotel window looking in.

Arnold's walk with his darker side ended when he finished filming and put Imhotep's loin cloth and robes away.

He added: "It took a few weeks for me to become human again. When I came to my senses I knew Sylvia was the right girl for me and that I couldn't bear to lose her. So I popped the question."

The curse didn't stop with the leading men. Rachel Weisz, who plays leading lady Evelyn Carnahan, falls in love with O'Connell in the movie.

But there were rumours that, since filming finished, her relationship with Men Behaving Badly actor Neil Morrissey was put under strain.

He moved out of her flat in Primrose Hill, but they have since patched up whatever differences there were and Rachel admitted last week that the reason for their problems was because she could be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster sometimes.

She said: "As an actor, I'm a trouble-maker."

Scot John Hannah, who plays Rachel Weisz's brother Jonathan in the film, escaped relatively unscathed from the curse of the Mummy. But his wife Joanna didn't. When she flew from their home in London to see him on set in Marrakech she fell so ill she spent the whole time in bed.

He said: "Joanna came to Marrakech but she got ill. In fact everybody got ill, but she was the first.

"She arrived on Friday, spent four days in bed and then went home.

"Everybody was sick. After Morocco we had 10 weeks of filming over here and a lot of people had what turned out to be a form of dysentery which antibiotics wouldn't treat."

Mummies and curses have gone hand in bandaged hand ever since Herbert Carter and the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon discovered Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922.

When Carnarvon died in suspicious circumstances along with members of his team - the myth of the Mummy's curse began.

Tales of Egyptian explorers being terrified with fear have helped create a romance about the period that doesn't go away. But the truth is that Imhotep was a sage, architect, astrologer and chief Minster to Djoser, the second king of Egypt's Third Dynasty and later worshipped as the god of medicine in Egypt and in Greece.

Rather than any curse, his claim to fame is as the architect of the step pyramid built at the necropolis of Saqqarah - the oldest monument of hewn stone in the world.

But you don't have to travel to the land of the Pharoahs to find a cursed Mummy.

The British Museum in London has The Unlucky Mummy, whose curse is based on two stories. In the 1920s a tale began about a mummy which, when left in a room, would smash it to pieces.

This story was wrapped up in another tale about an inner cover of a sarcophagus which was also given to the Museum.

According to records at the time the expression of the woman on the cover looked like a soul in torment and a seance was undertaken to find out more.

The two stories became one - with the cover becoming a thing of death and disease and claims that workers in the Egyptian Rooms of the Museum had died.

Finally, it was claimed that the cover was on board the Titanic when it sunk, but was saved and taken to America where it continued to spread havoc.

As it was sold to different people it would cause misery and sometimes death until it sunk when the Empress of Ireland went down in the St Lawrence River.

The Museum deny this, claiming that the cover is still locked away - but isn't on show.

Although this curse may not be true it hasn't stopped Hollywood churning out this remake of the 1932 movie which had Boris Karloff lurching across the screen as the bandaged horror.

The curse doesn't seem to have stretched to the box office though -The Mummy has been a massive hit in America, raking in pounds 100 million and millions of British fans have watched it since it opened last Friday.

Now that the film is over and the money is rolling in, the actors and crew have moved on.

But the curse may yet be stalking them. There are already talks of a sequel to The Mummy. Back to the heat and the desert sands and the emotional turmoil.

The curse strikes again.