Universal’s 1932 Boris Karloff vehicle gets a thorough makeover in this, the first of four 1940s B-movies to feature what is now the popular conception of the mummy. Trading dialogue for screen time, the newly-christened Kharis shuffles silently through the film like a one-handed Nemesis, while around him the human characters make speeches to the gods, dig for treasure, flirt, practice magic tricks and crack bad jokes. Endless, endless bad jokes…
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[Edited to add: I have added screenshots to Frankenstein and Dracula, and re-formatted and added screenshots to Dracula’s Daughter.]
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#1 by Carl on December 14, 2009 - 8:56 pm
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Liz, the “Mymmy’s” hand? (Title tag)
#2 by lyzard on December 14, 2009 - 9:56 pm
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Where are you looking?
#3 by Carl on December 14, 2009 - 10:31 pm
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The title bar of my web browser, like I wrote.
#4 by lyzard on December 15, 2009 - 12:08 am
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Ah, on the review! Sorry, when you said “tag” I started looking around the blog, me not using tags as such. Anyway, fixed.
#5 by supersonic on December 15, 2009 - 7:03 pm
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re the canonical mummy-walk, canonical franken-walk, etc… these are the things that an eight year old takes home from this kind of movie. And that’s what therefore endures the longest, right?
#6 by lyzard on December 15, 2009 - 7:46 pm
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It certainly seems so! It would be interesting to compare the television broadcast histories of the various installments, and see what the relative exposures of those eight-year-olds to the different interpretations of these monsters might have been.
#7 by MatthewF on December 16, 2009 - 10:37 am
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Cerainly when Hammer went to the remake well in the fifites, they didn’t mess about too much with a Karloff-alike moping over his lost love, but rather went straight for the shambling bandaged menace style.
I think that the original Mummy is a bit too creaky for modern tastes, whereas the later sequels are easier to digest. Also, of course, The Mummy is just flipping Dracula again.
#8 by lyzard on December 16, 2009 - 3:11 pm
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It is, except executed with a lot more artistry and imagination, and containing a very fine performance from Boris Karloff. The sequels are easy to digest because there’s no substance to them.
I actually went into this a bit in the first draft of this review, before deciding it wasn’t the time or the place, but the Hammer version is interesting both for its decision to follow the 40s films rather than the original, and for learning from their mistakes. So it eliminates the physical disabilities to make its mummy scarier, while going back to the reincarnation angle, to add a touch of sympathy.
It’s a very fine film, but all the same I do regret that we never got Lee’s interpretation of Ardath Bey. (Chris probably would have preferred it done that way too!)
#9 by El Santo on December 16, 2009 - 6:47 pm
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Not a chance of that happening in 1959. Even Horror of Dracula traded less on Lee’s acting ability than on his physical presence and sheer size. That might have made for an interesting Mummy sequel circa 1963, though– assuming, of course, that the writers could think of a way around that whole “his tongue was cut out” thing.
#10 by lyzard on December 16, 2009 - 7:18 pm
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A Scroll Of Thoth reading that undoes all physical damage??
Yeah, I guess you’re right about the timing being wrong; pity. The irony of it is, Lee gives a fabulous performance in spite of the bandages.