Mummy Dearest

I just watched way too many Mummy movies

Remember when I watched all of the Friday the 13th movies and asked if anyone had any suggestions for other horror series to cover? Well subscriber Ross Lawhead of

Ross’s Substack

suggested I tackle Mummy movies. This comes on the heels of news that Lee Cronin (director of Evil Dead Rise) has wrapped filming of his upcoming reboot of Universal’s classic The Mummy. This is officially the third reboot of the franchise (fourth if you count the Hammer series) that began all the way back in 1932. I figured that would make for the perfect opportunity to watch every entry in both the Universal and Hammer series and give my thoughts on each of them. Without further ado, here are all of the entries in this sometimes forgotten classic horror franchise.

The Original Universal Series

The Mummy (1932) directed by Karl Freund

The first film in the series may not have the same reputation as Dracula or Frankenstein from the year before, but it’s still a strong addition to Universal’s classic monster movies. It’s a bit slower paced than those two films, but it still has a lot of heart and a typically great performance from Boris Karloff as the titular villain. The story revolves around the discovery of an ancient Egyptian mummy of a high priest named Imhotep (Karloff). He was mummified alive for the sacrilegious crime of attempting to resurrect his dead lover, Princess Anck-es-en-Amon. Imhotep is resurrected in 1921 when the “Scroll of Thoth” is translated by one of the archaeologists. He then goes on to integrate himself into modern Egyptian society over the next ten years under the alias Ardath Bey. The rest of the movie follows Imhotep as he tries to once again resurrect his lost love before ultimately believing a young woman named Helen Grosvenor (played by Zita Johann) is the reincarnation of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon.

It’s a solid film that eschews more traditional gothic horror elements in favor of a more complex narrative and a much more humanized monster. Karloff steals the show as the sympathetic yet fearsome Imhotep. The physical acting that made him a star in Frankenstein is once again on display, but he’s afforded a chance to deliver some memorable dialogue in this film as well. Strong first entry in this series!

The Mummy’s Hand (1940) directed by Christy Cabanne

The Mummy’s Hand takes the series in a much more traditional horror direction for both better and worse. The classic movie depiction of mummies as shambling mute corpses wrapped in bandages originated in this film. Gone is Karloff’s contemplative Imhotep. In his place is Tom Tyler’s Kharis. Kharis’s backstory is almost identical to that of Imhotep’s, but this time he’s resurrected intentionally by the villainous High Priest Andoheb (played by George Zucco). The more traditional Universal horror template works well for this entry, and I might have liked it just as much as the first one if not for the excessive use of Wallace Ford for comic relief. He undercuts so many potentially scary moments with painfully unfunny jokes. I know that Universal loved doing this with their horror films in the 1940s, but this feels particularly egregious to me. Despite that annoyance, this is still a solid entry in the series worth watching.

The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) directed by Harold Young

Uh oh. This one does not get off to a great start. This film is only sixty minutes long, and it spends the first twelve minutes reusing footage from the previous film to recap what had happened previously. Kharis is once again the Mummy in this movie, but this time he’s played by Lon Chaney, Jr. If you’ve listened to my podcast Taste the Blood of Dracula, then you know thoughts on Chaney. He’s magnificent as Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man and the various crossover movies featuring him, but Universal insisted on having him play virtually every classic monster in their stable during the 1940s. That included Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and now the Mummy. He’s perfectly fine as Kharis, but he isn’t asked to do much save for shamble around and strangle people. This particular entry in the series is set thirty years after the previous film, and it takes place in Massachusetts. Strange setting for a mummy movie! Despite the list of negatives I’ve already compiled for this movie, it actually has a fairly interesting plot. The heroes of the previous film reprise their roles in this film with a heavy dose of old age makeup. Kharis is being used by a new villainous priest (played by Turhan Bey) to hunt down and kill those from the previous film at the behest High Priest Andoheb (played again by George Zucco). Much to my surprise, that’s exactly what Kharis does! Wallace Ford returns for this film, but there is no comic relief to be found. He’s just brutally murdered. It’s a surprisingly dark film all things considered. I just wish so much of the runtime hadn’t been wasted by recapping the previous film.

The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) directed by Reginald Le Borg

Good news! This one doesn’t open with a recap of the previous film by reusing footage. It’s just recapped verbally by characters in the film. I guess that’s progress. High Priest Andoheb (played by Zucco again) is back and picking out a new minion to do his dirty work. That minion this time around is Yousef Bey (played by John Carradine in some egregious brown face makeup). This one once again takes place in Massachusetts, and Lon Chaney, Jr. is back as Kharis. I think his makeup has gotten worse in this one, and his targets are much less interesting. It’s basically a retread of the previous film. There are a few decent moments, but the formula is starting to wear thin at this point. It at least has a shockingly bleak ending for one of these films to give it something to differentiate itself from the others.

The Mummy’s Curse (1944) directed by Leslie Goodwins

Sheesh. Universal cranked this one out less than six months after The Mummy’s Ghost. This one is set in the same swamp where the previous film ended, so they missed a golden opportunity to call this one The Mummy’s Swamp. Also, this film is seemingly set in Louisiana despite the previous one being explicitly set in Massachusetts. Did Kharis somehow make it all the way from Massachusetts to Louisiana on foot in the previous movie? I’m not sure how I missed that. There’s also a huge castle here somehow. Nothing in this movie makes any sense. This movie also recycles footage from both The Mummy and The Mummy’s Hand when retelling the story of Kharis despite The Mummy being about Imhotep and The Mummy’s Hand featuring a different actor playing Kharis. I should point out that this is the third consecutive film where Lon Chaney, Jr. plays Kharis. Kudos to him for sticking with it. We also get a female mummy (kinda) in this one played by Virginia Christine, so I guess that’s something. The franchise had really run out of steam by this point, and that is further reflected by this being the last movie in the original series.

The Hammer Series

The Mummy (1959) directed by Terence Fisher

We are so back. If you’re not already familiar with Hammer, they were a production company that made a name for themselves by taking horror properties made famous by Universal and adapting them into more mature film series with Technicolor blood and boobs. They started this trend with The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 and Horror of Dracula in 1958, and they followed that up with The Mummy in 1959. All three films were directed by Terence Fisher and starred the iconic duo of Christopher Lee (in the role of the monster) and Peter Cushing (in the role of the lead human protagonist/antagonist). Despite the title making this seem like a remake of the 1932 original, this version of The Mummy is really an amalgamation of all of the Universal films. Peter Cushing plays an archaeologist named John Bannon (the name of the lead protagonist from The Mummy’s Tomb). The titular Mummy is Kharis (same as the final four Universal films) and is played by Christopher Lee. The Egyptian priest antagonist is named Mehemet Bey (same as The Mummy’s Tomb) and played by George Pastell. His motivation in the film is vengeance upon those who desecrated sacred sites in Egypt. Pretty compelling motive if you ask me. There is also the trope of a woman in modern times whom Kharis believes to be his reincarnated love (both played by Yvonne Furneaux). It’s honestly everything I want from a reboot of the franchise. It takes all of the best parts of the original series and synthesizes a new film with superior production values. My only real criticism is a common one from this time: all of the lead Egyptian characters are played by white men in brown face makeup. That certainly hasn’t aged well, and it is much more obvious in color than it is in the black and white originals. If you can get past that, you’ll be treated to a very entertaining horror film with some top notch performances and set pieces (the tongue removal scene being a standout).

Christopher Lee is the standout for me as is often the case in Hammer films. Standing at 6’5” tall, he cuts such a imposing figure as the unstoppable undead Kharis. But he also has the acting chops to portray the living Kharis as a charismatic and powerful figure in flashbacks. Count Dracula is his most famous role (with good reason), but his performance as Kharis deserves more attention. I only wish he had a little more agency in his undead form.

The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964) directed by Michael Carreras

How do you improve upon a movie starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing that was directed by Terence Fisher? You don’t. This one is a dud. There is just nothing of interest happening in this film. It takes thirty-one minutes for the sarcophagus to be opened to reveal the Mummy for the first time (this one is named Ra-Antef and is played by Dickie Owen), and he doesn’t show up as a reanimated corpse until there are under thirty minutes left in the film. Good lord. The only thing this one has going for it is some pretty cool set design. Other than that, it’s a total dud.

The Mummy’s Shroud (1967) directed by John Gilling

This one is somewhat difficult to find, which leads me to believe Hammer doesn’t want people to see it. Probably a great sign. It opens with a pretty intense action sequence set in Ancient Egypt. It’s a pretty welcome opening for one of these films. This one also devotes more time to the archaeological work of uncovering the mummified remains of Pharaoh Kah-To-Bey and his manservant Prem. That takes up the majority of the first thirty-five minutes of the film. It is Prem who is ultimately resurrected as the titular Mummy (played by Eddie Powell) who begins killing people. The kills and gore are also a step up in this one. Maybe it’s the history nerd in me (or that it came on the heels of a movie I really disliked), but I had a pretty fun time with this one. It’s no classic, but it kept me interested throughout and had some fun moments.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971) directed by Seth Holt

We’ve arrived at the final entry in the Hammer series. Strangely enough, this one is apparently a loose adaptation of the novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars by Bram Stoker. Anyone know if he has ever written anything else? This one gets off to a really strong start with some dream sequences/flashbacks to Ancient Egypt that cover all kinds of macabre imagery depicting murder, vicious jackals, and a severed hand crawling on its own. This one is really going for the horror right off the bat, and I’m here for it. One thing that I noticed pretty quickly is that this film is set in contemporary times. While the previous films in the Hammer series were set in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, this one is set squarely in the early-1970s. The star of this film is Valerie Leon who plays the dual roles of Queen Tera and Margaret Fuchs. Yes, this is another movie making use of the “reincarnated Egyptian woman” trope; however, it is apparently adapted from the book that created the trope in the first place. Who knew Stoker had such an impact on more than one classic monster? As the film progresses, we learn that Margaret was born at the exact moment that her father discovered the tomb of Queen Tera. When Queen Tera’s sarcophagus is opened, she still appears young and beautiful with blood still pumping from a wound. Spooky. There is a strong emphasis throughout the film on more supernatural horror that you would come to expect from haunted house and demon possession movies. One scene set in a mental institution involving a snake figurine is an especially effective example of this. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Richard Donner had seen this film prior to directing The Omen. While this film lacks a traditional mummy wrapped in bandages and lumbering about, it makes up for it with excellent performances, a tight script, and plenty of blood and buxom beauties that Hammer has become famous (or infamous) for. This is easily the best sequel of the series, and I would put it on par with the best of the Universal movies as well.

The Second Universal Series

The Mummy (1999) directed by Stephen Sommers

This is the one you’ve been waiting on, isn’t it? I saw this one on the big screen back in 1999 when it came out, and it made me a fan of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz for life. It’s a fairly faithful remake of the original 1932 film, but it eschews slowly paced horror in favor of a more action-adventure style. The titular Mummy this time around is Imhotep (played by Arnold Vosloo) just like in the Karloff original. Much like previous films, he was mummified alive. This time it’s because he was having an affair with the Pharaoh’s mistress Anck-su-namun (played by Patricia Velásquez) that leads to him assassinating the Pharaoh. He has his tongue cut out, his conscious body wrapped up completely in bandages, and placed in a sarcophagus with hundreds of flesh eating beetles. Having seen Patricia Velásquez in this movie, it was totally worth it.

What was I talking about again? Oh right. The movie. The main plot of the film is that an expedition team led by Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) accidentally awaken Imhotep who proceeds to go looking for victims to consume and absorb their body parts to reconstitute his own body. He’s basically Frank from Hellraiser. From there, it turns into an Indiana Jones style adventure movie. It had been a while since I had watched this one, but it really holds up quite well. The CGI still looks pretty good, but the characters are what make this film continue to resonate. This is Fraser and Weisz at the tops of their respective games. Kevin J. O'Connor as the duplicitous Beni is also a standout. Vosloo’s Imhotep mostly just vacillates between stoic and angry, but it makes for a menacing villain. Part of me wishes the filmmakers had gone for a more mature tone, but the PG-13 nature of the film makes it a perfect entry point for young audiences just beginning to dip their toes in the horror genre.

The Mummy Returns (2001) directed by Stephen Sommers

Sommers followed up The Mummy just two years later with The Mummy Returns, and he brought back all of the core cast along with the addition of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in his big screen debut. How could it be anything other than a triumphant success? Here’s how: make no meaningful changes to the story, include some of the worst CGI to ever appear in a major motion picture, and add an annoying kid to the mix. I know that makes it sound like I hated this movie, but I really didn’t. There are still plenty of fun action sequences, some spooky supernatural stuff, and Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz doing Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz things. It’s just that none of those things seem as fresh or original, and they aren’t done in very visually interesting ways. The basic premise this time around is there was an ancient warlord known as the Scorpion King (played by Johnson) who commanded the supernatural armies of the god Anubis. If someone were to track down and kill the nigh immortal Scorpion King today, they would gain control of these armies and be able to rule the world. The bad guys (led by Patricia Velásquez as a reincarnated Anck-su-namun) resurrect Imhotep (again played by Arnold Vosloo) so that they have someone big and bad enough to take down the Scorpion King. Fraser and Weisz (and their young son played by Freddie Boath) are the only ones capable of stopping them. You get it. It’s pretty simple stuff. As I had mentioned, it’s entertaining enough to keep me invested. But for whatever reason, the CGI in this one is significantly worse than in the previous film despite having a larger budget. Maybe it has more to do with how the scenes are shot and/or lit, but it can be distracting. The most egregious example is when the Scorpion King is finally revealed in his modern form. Spoiler culture didn’t really exist back in 2001 the way it does now, so I had no idea what I was in for when I saw this in the theater.

Big yikes. There are other scenes involving a CGI Imhotep that also look terrible, but that’s the one everyone remembers most.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) directed by Rob Cohen

Waiting seven years to make the third film in a trilogy with a new director is an interesting choice. Having that film set in China instead of Egypt is a bold swing. Making that third film without Rachel Weisz? That is unconscionable. Maybe the inclusion of Jet Li and Michelle Yeo can save the film? No. No, it cannot. This movie is awful. It’s just very dull throughout. The saving grace should be the action sequences, but they all devolve into shaky cam disasters where it becomes difficult to discern what is even happening. The only real positives are some Brendan Fraser one-liners and some Yetis that show up. I think Yetis are neat. Ultimately, this unnecessary sequel spelled the end of Universal’s rebooted series. There is a series of Scorpion King spinoff movies, but those aren’t technically Mummy movies and won’t be covered here.

The Dark Universe

The Mummy (2017) directed by Alex Kurtzman

Before talking about Universal’s 2017 reboot of The Mummy, I need to talk a little bit about the Dark Universe. In theory, the Dark Universe was to be Universal’s answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Interconnected cinematic universes were all the rage in the 2010s thanks to the massive box office success of The Avengers (2012). Universal explored what character rights they held that could be turned into its own series of films, and they settled on their classic monsters. Dracula Untold (2014) was originally going to be repurposed as the first film in this new series, but that was effectively scrapped once it underperformed at the box office. Universal instead focused its attention on The Mummy as the official first film in the Dark Universe, and they pulled out all of the stops to market it. The film was given a $195 million budget, and Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella were announced as the lead actors. To go along with the announcement of this film and its stars, Universal also announced that Russell Crowe would be Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Johnny Depp would be the Invisible Man, and Javier Bardem would be Frankenstein’s monster in the Dark Universe and would eventually get their own movies.

Universal obviously had a lot riding on The Mummy, so how did it do? I’ll answer my own question with a question: did any of those other movies get made? Spoiler alert: they did not. I had never seen this movie until now, so let’s see why that is!

Hoo boy. To give you an idea of what kind of movie we’re dealing with here, it opens with the Knights Templar burying someone in England that is discovered in modern day by Russell Crowe (who seemingly works for the government) as he tells a rendition of the typical Mummy story except this time the cursed Egyptian is a woman named Ahmanet (played by Sofia Boutella) who we are told made a pact with the Egyptian god of death, Set. Set is not the Egyptian god of death. He’s the god of foreigners, violence, storms, chaos, and deserts. Anubis is the god typically associated with death and the underworld. This easily fact-checked mistake is repeated numerous times throughout the film. Not off to a great start. The movie then moves to Iraq where Tom Cruise plays a retired American soldier who now steals priceless artifacts to sell on the black market, and he finds an Egyptian tomb? In Iraq? Other characters comment on how that’s strange, and I guess that’s supposed to be a good enough explanation somehow. I thought we would eventually get an actual explanation, but nope! This movie is baffling.

Things gets really messy really fast after that. Tom Cruise and his pal (Jake Johnson) both get cursed. There’s a plane crash that should have killed everyone, but Tom Cruise miraculously survives. Jake Johnson starts appearing to him in more and more advanced stages of decay like Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf in London. Sofia Boutella starts sucking people dry to reconstitute herself like Arnold Vosloo did as Imhotep in the 1999 movie. Russell Crowe shows up like he’s Nick Fury except he runs an organization called Prodigium instead of SHIELD. Also, he’s Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and has a little fight sequence with Tom Cruise. Did I mention we also see a bunch of jars containing teases for other movies like the hand of the Gill-man from Creature from the Black Lagoon and a vampire’s skull? Because that happens too. I would like to reiterate once more that this movie is a mess. It has no idea what it wants to be. There are far too many fingers in way too many pots. It seems obvious that Universal was much more interested in creating an interconnected cinematic universe than creating a coherent film, and that ended up killing both the movie and the Dark Universe at once.

I will give credit where credit is due: it’s never boring! There are things constantly happening even if they make little to no sense. There are some decent effects as well. I’m also happy whenever a movie has Javier Botet in it playing a creepy monster even if it’s only for a few moments. I love that strangely proportioned man. But simply not being boring isn’t the same as being good. The movie is still a mess that smothered the Dark Universe in its crib. My hope is that Lee Cronin has better success with his reboot next year.

Anyway, time for some rankings!

1. The Mummy (1959)

2. Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)

3. The Mummy (1999)

4. The Mummy (1932)

5. The Mummy’s Hand (1940)

6. The Mummy’s Shroud (1967)

7. The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)

8. The Mummy Returns (2001)

9. The Mummy (2017)

10. The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)

11. The Mummy’s Curse (1944)

12. The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)

13. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)