The Mummy

The Universal brand has a long association with monster movies, dating back to the days of Lugosi (Dracula), Chaney (The Wolf Man) and Karloff (Frankenstein). 1932's The Mummy cast Karloff as Im-ho-tep (alias Ardath Bay), an ancient Egyptian prince brought back to life. Im-ho-tep's story was an across-the-ages romantic thriller as he pursued his eternal love Princess Anck-es-en-Amon by the vehicle of reincarnation. Though the first film is a classic with memorably creepy moments and makeups, modern audiences (and the modern studios) have different expectations when it comes to genre films. So when it came to exploiting the Mummy property, Universal gambled on writer-director Stephen Sommers to make 1999's The Mummy a fresh and appealing action-horror film.

The gamble paid off. Using the Indiana Jones franchise as a model, Sommers reconstructed The Mummy as an unpretentious pulp adventure built atop the original film's dark romance. In the film's prologue, we learn of the unfortunate fate of two lovers circa 1290 B.C. Pharoah Seti I's high priest Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) pursues nookie with the Pharoah's mistress Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez). Narration informs us that Imhotep's untimely death brought with it certain compensations, making him "an unholy flesh-eater with the strength of ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility." Or as Imhotep is fond of putting it, "Death is only the beginning."

Cut to 1923 Hamunaptra, where Foreign Legionnaire Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) inadvertantly stirs Imhotep. Later hooking up with Cairo Museum of Antiquities Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz, doing her best sexy librarian) and her wastrel brother Jonathan (John Hannah, fine comic relief), Rick agrees to lead an expedition back to Hamunaptra. The expedition becomes a race with another team of treasure hunters, and the combined zeal of all involved results in all manner of supernatural hell to break loose, from killer scarabs (they really know how to get under your skin) to a return engagement of the 10 Plagues of Egypt, unleashed by the freed Imhotep. In their new task of sending Imhotep back to the sand, the heroes get an invaluable assist from Ardeth Bay (silky-smooth Oded Fehr) and the rest of the Medjai, the Pharoah's legacy of sacred bodyguards.

Sommers' guiding principle was to make his Mummy not "a guy wrapped in bandages." Special effects and big action sequences being a big part of the equation, this Mummy is a long way from the restrained elegance of the Karloff film, but it's darn entertaining nonetheless, and though Imhotep is clearly a villain of great ambition, he's also unconventional in that his primary motivation is true love. That The Mummy works as well as it does is largely due to Fraser, who sets the tone with his unique style of goofy bravado. Jerry Goldsmith's epic scoring is also key, as is impressive effects work by the team at ILM. The 1999 CGI from this film holds up better than one might expect, with textured armies of soldier mummies and priest mummies providing a spot of Harryhausen-esque wonderment.

Sommers and production designer Allan Cameron makes great use of the period, one pretty much unexploited in action cinema.  (Peter Canavese)