#198: The Mummy (1932)
Universal’s classic monster movie is mostly just a gift-wrapped Dracula
This review was originally posted to Twitter on December 26, 2019.
Initial release: December 22, 1932
Director: Karl Freund
Universal Studios has five iconic movie monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Fishman, the Wolfman, and the Mummy. Funny enough, the popular image of the mummy as a horror movie monster stems from later films in the Universal canon; Karl Freund’s 1932 film, titled simply The Mummy, is altogether a different animal.
In 1921, the British Museum’s annual Egypt expedition happens upon the forgotten tomb of Imhotep, an ancient high priest executed for sacrilege, and a cursed scroll that gives the mummified Imhotep life. He wakes up and walks off with the scroll, driving a professor’s assistant mad. Eleven years later, in 1932, a mysterious Egyptian local directs that year’s expedition to the location of another forgotten tomb, that of a priestess of Isis, proving to be one of the biggest finds in archeological history yet. But it seems the local has a vested interest in this particular find…
Universal made money hand over fist with their horror movies, and would come to define horror cinema of the 1930s. Their monsters became the face of Halloween for decades. But somehow, The Mummy doesn’t quite hold up as well as Dracula and Frankenstein. There’s a lot in this film that makes it basically just Dracula with an Egyptian skin on. Imhotep fixates on a beautiful woman, and it’s up to her boyfriend and a knowledgeable older man to save her soul. (Played by the same guys who played a boyfriend and occultist in Dracula!) That I think is the film’s biggest flaw. While by 1930s standards the film pushes the envelope in ways that Universal’s previous films hadn’t, the plot is more or less a rehash of Dracula while using elements of an old Arthur Conan Doyle story and the legend of Cagliostro.
Boris Karloff is as menacing as ever; he’s tall and imposing, and his lined, corpse-like face is unsettling. He’s not the shambling monster wrapped in toilet paper you’re familiar with, arms stretched out; he’s a sinister, humorless magician who swapped his old burial wrappings for clothes. Helen isn’t nearly as helpless as her forebears, either; she’s smart and funny and unconventional, and ultimately it’s she who saves herself from Imhotep, not her friends. It’s a neat touch that at least differentiates this film from Dracula.
Most of the movie is a lot of talking; aside from some cool effects such as the scene where a flashback is depicted through a mystical pool, the film is a bit short on special effects too. Only the intro is really much of a scare, promising a better film that doesn’t come.
It’s worth seeing this film at least once so you can say you’ve seen a piece of horror history, however small it is (unlike Dracula and Frankenstein, there is little in the way of a definite literary background for the mummy as an iconic movie monster.) But once is enough.
