Dir. Karl Freund (1932)
The resurrected Imhotep searches Cairo for a woman he believes is his princess.
It's always been funny to me that Old Hollywood used so many actors with a British accent despite making films that were supposed to take place in America, but this one is actually fitting. Telling the story of a group of Egyptologists from the British Museum who unearth a mummy's tomb and awaken the curse within, The Mummy follows Imhotep as he's looking for love in all the wrong places, despite being dead for several thousand years. Playing with camera angles, creating horror tropes that have lasted for decades, and showing off some incredible effects and makeup work for the time in which it was created, Karl Freund's classic film provided the avenue for Boris Karloff to play the second of his famous Universal Monsters roles and gave the world a new villain to be afraid of.
No, not her.
Inspired by the alleged curse that accompanied the opening of King Tut's tomb in 1925, The Mummy deals with themes of reincarnation and the occult in an era where these types of things often didn't show up on film. The film favors a much kinder perception of the British Museum than actually existed, though to be fair that was public opinion at the time. Graverobbers though they were, they did provide an in-depth view of history to the Western world that would perhaps have not been possible were it not for their "discoveries." Probably didn't have to take everything back to England with them, but c'est la vie. Featuring several shots of actual Egyptian archaeological finds and some excellent set design, it's the first Universal horror film that was a completely original property and it's a well done film that feels like an upgrade in "quality" compared to some of the films of its era.
It's also dreadfully slow. Sure, that's a bit of a product of its time, as most films of the day tended to be on the sluggish side, but it's definitely a bit of a slog to get through. The actors are on point, however, most notably Karloff as Ardeth Bay/Imhotep and Zita Johann as his love interest Helen, as is the classic score that would've fit with just about any film from the era. The costuming is great, with half of the cast portraying the stuffy British look of the historians and Karloff a realistic Egyptian (and a realistic Mummy as well, I suppose). The direction, likewise, contains a lot of tropes that have become genre staples: the camera panning from the protagonist and the villain and back, creeping scares in the corners of the screen, flashback sequences serving as exposition to move the plot along. It's easy to trace the origins of many of horror's tricks of the trade all the way back to its original entries, and despite the relative lack of mummy-featured horror films, The Mummy contains just as many of these clichés as any other Universal horror.
Despite being incredibly well received at its release, The Mummy is perhaps the most boring of all of the Universal Monster movies and also the most shallow. There's very little to get from this one. It doesn't have the psychosexual appeal of Dracula, nor does it have the science fiction/hubris of man/mob mentality lesson learned from Frankenstein. It doesn't even appeal to our love of animals like The Wolfman. Instead it is a novel film, though not a particularly interesting one. There's always something charming about an old black and white movie, and that's certainly true with this film as well. Unfortunately, it doesn't have quite the impact of its contemporaries, even though some of the tricks used within remain in the genre to this day.
Who this movie is for: Universal Monster fans, Historical horror lovers, Graverobbers
Bottom line: The Mummy is quite possibly the most boring of the OG Universal Monsters line, but it's a well done film with some great performances and some master (for the era) effects and makeup work. It's a piece of horror history that isn't particularly fun to revisit, though you will notice some echoes of modern horror within at times. Karloff is a legend, and I can certainly appreciate his turn as the ancient Imhotep, but the rest of the film is fairly ho-hum unless you particularly enjoy the old black and white Universals. This one isn't streaming anywhere, so you'll have to have one of the Universal releases of the film to watch it (or rent it from Amazon like a pleb). All that said, those Universal Monster releases are fire, so if you're a fan of old horror, they're well worth picking up.
