Tonight’s movie is the original Mummy from 1932. Not to be confused with the now, more famous 90’s remake. That was a very loose remake, though not as loose as Alex Kurtzman’s debacle from 2017. The original Mummy was created to follow on from the success of Dracula and Frankenstein. Like those films it became a franchise with multiple films to it, though none were direct sequels. The movie is directed by Karl Freund, mostly known as a cinematographer. His credits as a cinematographer includes Metropolis, Dracula. Key Largo and the I Love Lucy TV series. His cinematographer here is Charles Stumar, who would later work on “Werewolf of London“. Playing the titular Mummy is of course Boris Karloff, already big enough a name to be credited simply as “Karloff”.
In 1921, A “Sir Joseph Whemple” (Arthur Byron) led archaeological expedition uncovers the Mummy of Imhotep, an Egyptian high priest. Buried with him is a casket with a curse on it. When Whemlpe’s assistant opens the casket, he finds an ancient scroll within and begins to read it. As he does so the Mummy comes to life, takes the scroll and leaves, driving the assistant insane. Years later another expedition led by Whemple’s son (David Manners) is guided by a mysterious Egyptian “Ardath Bey” (Karloff) to uncover the tomb of princess Ankh-es-en-Amon. Bey, who is really Imhotep seeks to resurrect his ancient lover, but finds that she has actually been re-incarnated as a woman named “Helen Grosvenor” (Zita Johann). He now plans to abduct and sacrifice her to free her soul to be re-animated in her old body.
Reunited Across Time
On the surface this could be seen as a bit of a Dracula rip off, yet Imhotep’s obsession over Helen is not by coincidence. The idea that Helen is a re-incarnation of Imhotep’s long dead lover was at the time unique to The Mummy. Now of course, ever since 1992’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” this has become a recurring theme for Dracula too. I think it’s safe to say Coppola had seen The Mummy, so this was probably where he got the idea from. Yes that means Coppola turned Dracula into a knock off of a knock off of Dracula! Still, it worked well, so the idea was good. It works here as well in it’s original form.
The romantic element does add a nice bit of tragedy to the story. Indeed this is more of a Gothic horror than a monster movie. This gives both Johann and Karloff a chance to really shine. Indeed, you could argue this was Karloff’s best performance. The man was actually a very capable actor, it’s just when you are typecast as monsters you don’t get many chances to show it. The rest of the cast are solid too, though the plot doesn’t ask that much from them. This is a short film (73 mins), so the main story speeds through pretty quickly. A good part of the run time is taken up with the backstory, leaving less time for the main plot. Apparently the original version was longer, but that (Now lost) footage was mostly additional flashback material.
The Modern Lens
As tends to be the case with the classic Universal horror, the movie really makes the black and white sing. With a gifted cinematographer in the directors chair you’d expect no less. The use of hard contrast and clever lighting make every scene stand out. The flashback scenes look great too, even if we have to watch them through a weird TV screen. The sad thing here is the effect is actually really clever work from director Karl Freund and cinematographer Charles Stumar. TV’s were experimental in 1932, viewers at the time wouldn’t have thought “TV” whenever Imhotep uses his magic pool. The intention was to show a somewhat degraded image, to make it dream like. Unfortunately to me it just looks like Karloff is watching the Telly. If they had just skipped the black border, it would have aged better.
Some of the other effects show their age, but really most of it holds up. Not bad for a 93 year old movie. This movie looks better than some movies half that age. The recycled music and silence doesn’t grate too much here either (Compared to Frankenstein or Dracula), though using the exact same Swan Lake opening as they did with Dracula robs the movie of some originality. One year later and we’d start to see custom scores made for movies like this. Overall, while the movie still looks good, the plot feels a bit unbalanced. It is more concerned with the backstory, than the main story. Still, this is a strong 6/10. Worth a watch for any fan of horror or black and white movies in general.
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