The Universal Mummy

The Mummy:  After 3,700 years, a team of British archeologists uncover the mummy of Im-Ho-Tep (Boris Karloff), an Egytpian high priest who had been embalmed alive for trying to revive the woman he loved. While searching through the treasures that were housed by Im-Ho-Tep’s tomb, they also uncover an old scroll and accidentally resurrect the mummy by opening a cursed case and reading from the scroll inside.  Finally alive again, Im-Ho-Tep has only one plan, to find his long lost love, but it still takes years for him to find a trace. As Ardath Bey he tried to revive his former love once again, until one day, almost by accident, he meets Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann) and immediately senses that she is the eincarnation of Anck-es-an-Amon, the woman he had always loved. From then on, Im-Ho-Tep has only one goal. To immortalize his love and to kill everyone who should dare to step in his way. 

“The Mummy” was consciously designed to be a vehicle for Boris Karloff who was celebrating a major success with “Frankenstein” at the time. The filmmakers were instinctively aware of the fact however that with “The Mummy” they could not use the same recipe, but instead had to create a different kind of suspense than the one created in “Frankenstein”. William Balderston, who had already adapted the screenplay’s for “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” was brought in to work on “The Mummy”. The result is a script that contains a very ominous, brooding atmosphere without real shocks and strong parallels to his work on “Dracula”, although the films are really quite different. It is the subtlety of “The Mummy”, its understatement and the breathtaking cinematography that make “The Mummy” a very remarkable experience. Ultimately it is the same reason why from the pool of all Mummy movies of the past, only this 1932 version can truly be considered a classic.   

“The Mummy” is the directorial debut of Karl Freund, a veteran cameraman from Germany who had worked on numerous of F.W. Murnau’s films, as well as Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and the genre classic “Der Golem”, and who had also served as the cameraman on Tod Brownings “Dracula” with Bela Lugosi. It is his remarkably restrained direction that puts the film in a league of its own and it only makes you wonder how good a film “Dracula” could have been with him as the director instead of only lensing it. Not only is the photography of “The Mummy” breathtaking and the element that creates the most scares throughout the film, the way Freund unfolds the story and decides not to show certain things is what makes “The Mummy” a genre highlight. The best example of the restrained approach is the scene when the Mummy is resurrected in the film’s beginning. We do not even get to see Boris Karloff’s full-body make-up for which he endured endless hours in the make-up chair. The scene simply shows us a close-up of his head as he slowly opens his eyes. Next thing we see is the Mummy’s hand demanding the scroll, and then the lose ends of the bandages being dragged out the door. It is the slowness of this scene, and the fact that the Mummy isn’t really doing anything that makes it so effective.  It is not exactly know whether the decision to develop the film’s opening like this was ultimately made by Balderston or Freund, as it appears like this in Balderston’s script, on which the director has supposedly had some influence. 


Other truly memorable scenes can be found when the camera is practically prowling through the empty museum at night. It is obvious that Karl Freund’s background as a cameraman has led to many of the film’s creative decisions and as a result, “The Mummy” is clearly the most visual and poetic of all the classic monster movies, and also the least horrific one. At its heart, “The Mummy” is a romantic love story. A story about eternal suffering and the liberation from it, and only certain elements classify the film as a real horror movie.  

Ultimately it is Boris Karloff’s dignified portrayal of Im-Ho-Tep/Ardath Bey that will catch your attention. Very different for the part of the shambling creature he has become so famous for, his performance in “The Mummy” is as subtle as it is deep. His mannerisms and his sonorous voice truly make you believe that he is man who has crossed time and worlds. There is not the slightest hint of agitation in his play, making Im-Ho-Tep a calculating antagonist who is a menace to anyone, without displaying any open hostility. The make-up he is wearing in this film is just as stunning as the one in “Frankenstein”, and although mostly overlooked, it is the make-up of the un-mummified Karloff that is the most remarkable. Look out for the highly effective scenes when we get to study Boris Karloff’s face in an extreme close-up while he is using his telepathic powers to kill people. It is a truly haunting image that has been sticking in my mind ever since I first saw this film many, many years ago. The dramatic shadows in the shot make him look extremely haggard and yet, the fire in is eyes is immense, showing us his uncanny power while he is practically doing nothing. 

 The Mummy's Hand: Would-be archaeologist Steve Banning is stranded in Egypt with his friend Babe Jenson. In a bazaar Steve finds a broken vase, which he believes holds a map to the lost tomb of the Princess Ananka, and spends the last of their money to buy it. They then meet the stage magician Solvani in a bar and convince him to fund an expedition. But the expedition is opposed by museum curator Professor Andoheb, who is really a priest of the cult of Karnak, who tries to convince them the vase is worthless, while telling Solvani's daughter that they are fraudsters. But the expedition goes ahead and they uncover the tomb of the mummy Kharis. Kharis was Ananka's secret lover and had his tongue torn and was buried alive when he was discovered with her. Andoheb takes the step of raising Kharis with the sacred tana leaves and sending him to kill the interlopers. 

The Mummy's Hand was the first of four sequels Universal made to their classic The Mummy (1932). It is interestingly when one considers the clichés of the mummy movie that became a staple of the Universal sequels and other later imitators - the slowly shuffling, bandage-enwrapped title figure, tana leaves, reincarnated princesses, mummification as punishment for forbidden love, Ancient Egyptian cults - it is here, rather than The Mummy, that they began. The Mummy is an often subtle romantic film about possession and doesn't really feature any stumbling title figure. Interestingly it was the sequels rather than the original that created the template for the genre cliches. And it is this story, The Mummy's Hand, that the rest of the sequels take themselves from - Kharis for example does not appear in The Mummy and The Mummy's character of Imhotep does not appear in any of the other Universal sequels. 

The subsequent sequels are dull and formulaic, just more of the conveyer belt classic monster sequels that Universal churned out during the 1940s. But The Mummy's Hand is modestly effective, if never particularly great. The elements of the mummy genre pulp in the flashbacks to Ancient Egypt - forbidden love, ritual ceremonies, the mummy's tongue being torn out - are wielded into quite an effectively fervid atmosphere. The film also makes good use of the California Egyptian locations. The scenes leading up to the expedition have a likable snappiness to them - Wallace Ford's comedy relief is irritating, but George Zucco maintains a smoothly sinister presence. Best of all is Cecil Kellaway (here billed as Cecil Kelloway)'s rolypoly stage magician, he having some charming moments pulling tricks while drunk. Peggy Moran's peppery determination also registers well. The mummy when risen (played by former stuntman and serial and B Western star Tom Tyler) also maintains a quite sinister effect, where Tyler has been shot in sinister closeup with blacked-out eyes. Indeed the character of the mummy maintains much more threat in these scenes than the stumbling creature in all the other sequels put together. Combined, all of this gives the film a snappiness and appeal that the sequels lack.  
  
The Mummy's Tomb: It is thirty years after the Banning expedition to Egypt to find the tomb of Princess Ananka. Mehemet Bey, a disciple of the cult of Akran, travels to the town of Mapleton with the mummy of Kharis to exact revenge on the aging Stephen Banning and his family. While there, Bey becomes obsessed with Isobel Evans, the fiancee of Banning's son John, and determines that she will be his immortal bride. The Mummy's Tomb was the third of Universal's Mummy films. Like all the films that would follow it (see below), it is a direct sequel to The Mummy's Hand (1940) rather than the original The Mummy (1932). It also introduces Lon Chaney Jr in the part of the mummy Kharis, a role he would also play in the two subsequent films. 

Every Universal Mummy films from The Mummy's Hand onwards was thoroughly routine, but this is the dreariest of them all. The plot is the most routine and least standout of the series. Sadly for the film the most exciting it ever gets is during the footage that has been taken direct from The Mummy's Hand. There is a good 10-15 minutes of this material - although in a film like this, which is only 71 minutes long, this amounts to nearly a quarter of the total running time. The darkly handsome Turhan Bey has a certain presence as the high priest - the one feature of this entry is that it has no reincarnations of Princess Ananka, rather Bey just gets horny and decides to make the heroine his immortal bride. Chaney's Kharis is a dull shuffler without threat. The film becomes moderately exciting at the climax with Kharis is pursued through a graveyard and into an antebellum mansion where the villagers then burn the whole house down. The film was made during the War and amusingly has the hero doing his patriotic duty and going off to enlist for the War effort and about to marry the heroine before he leaves.  

The Mummy’s Ghost: Yousef Bay, an acolyte of the cult of Akran, is sent to the USA to bring back the mummy of Kharis's beloved Princess Ananka. In Mapleton, Egyptologist Professor Matthew Norman succeeds in reviving and Kharis with the burning of tana leaves but is then killed by him. As the police begin a manhunt to stop Kharis, Yousef Bay and Kharis break into the museum and conduct a ceremony to raise Ananka. But instead this causes Ananka's spirit to inhabit the body of Amina Mansori. They now set out to kidnap Amina and taken her back to Egypt. 

This was the fourth and second to last of Universal's Mummy films.  Throughout the 1940s Universal put all the famous monsters they had created throughout the last decade - Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man and the Mummy - through sequels, team-ups and eventually meetings with Abbott and Costello. All of these are routine and formulaic. And by the time of The Mummy's Ghost, the Mummy series had been reduced to a series of limited plot devices - Egyptian cults, tana leaves, Kharis revived, Princess Ananka's resurrection/reincarnation, Kharis killing all in his way - which Ghost does  nothing except shuffle around like a well-worn deck of cards. It is routinely handled on all levels. As the high priest John Carradine has a certain effectively sinister and swarthy presence. And the ending with Kharis and Ananka sinking into the bayou quicksands has a certain tragic sadness to it.  

The Mummy's Curse: This was the fourth and final of Universal's Mummy films. Like Universal's Frankenstein series, the Mummy films had quickly become trapped in a series of repetitive plot moves - Egyptian cultists revive Kharis, Kharis hunts for Ananka's modern day reincarnation, kills everybody in the way, Kharis is dispatched by the boyfriend of Ananka's modern day reincarnation. The Mummy's Curse at least starts out quite promisingly. It aims for a flavour of Lousiana - one inhabited by Blacks, Cajuns and Asians (it was quite unusual to see minorities represented on screen at all during that time period). And even if the bayous are all studio sets and the Cajun accents atrocious, there's an interesting sense of verisimilitude created. It's a film that's almost on the verge of being interesting. As is the case with the scenes of Virginia Christine's revived amnesiac princess, the film could have been quite ethereally mysterious but alas has befallen a pedestrian director. The cliché elements eventually take over and routinenness dominates. There are some bizarre continuity lapses - despite being set 25 years after the previous entry, The Mummy's Ghost (1944), the period is still the 1940s.