Directed by Karl Freund
Starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward van Sloan and Arthur Byron
No Encino Man in sight, kids. (/obligatory Brendan Fraser joke)
One year in to the great Universal horror movie project, literary monsters were already pretty much a craze. People couldn't get enough of Dracula and Frankenstein the previous year. Off moderate investments, Universal was raking it in off the backs of characters that were created something like 870 years ago. There are some things that never change regardless of what era we're talking about, and just like today when Paranormal Activity comes along and we get something like 1,481 found footage films within the next few years, Universal kept cranking out horror movies. With the two main eventers out of the way, they had to go scrounging for some other stuff. Undead vampires and scientifically-created monstrosities are hard to beat, but they tried by introducing mummies into the lexicon.
Unlike the last two flicks that I reviewed here on the ol' blog, this one was NOT based on a play. Instead, it was a totally original creation of screenwriter John L. Balderston, with cues taken from the opening of King Tut's tomb in 1922 and basically nothing else save for a few VERY loose pulls from an Arthur Conan Doyle story. This time around, the material wasn't QUITE as strong as the stuff they had with the stage plays. What this movie did have, though, was Karloff.
Ah, yes, Karloff. The man who was so important in 1932 that they didn't even need to give him a first name on the poster. Seriously. Christ himself could have come down from the heavens and implanted his likeness on that poster, and Karloff would have still gotten top billing over him. After playing Frankenstein, Boris Karloff was like Jesus and John Lennon's collective fame combined, which would also ironically not be the only time that those two would be mentioned in the same breath together. Wait, what? All bad jokes aside, Karloff's star was riding high at this point, and this was his movie, baby. He owns it, he's onscreen a lot, he gets a lot of DIALOGUE in a very refreshing turn, and by all accounts this was where the dude truly cemented himself as one of horror's all-time best leading guys.
In The Mummy, Karloff is your title character. The plot, as it is, is given to us essentially within the first five minutes, as a team of archaeologists is in some indeterminate area of Egypt doing the stuff that archaeologists do. There's lots of dirt, maps, and years being tossed around in the conversation, so you know it's important. The body of Egyptian priest Imhotep is soon unearthed, and in one of the true "derp" moments in all of horror history, is immediately resurrected when the main characters read from an ancient magical scroll.
Flash forward 10 years to the present day of 1932, where the main plot of the film unspools. Something that I wish to comment on, at this point, is the subject of the horror movie romance. A lot of folks who aren't into this stuff would be surprised by this, but romance is actually a pretty big part of horror history. King Kong, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the masterpiece that is The Return of Swamp Thing...the whole "monster in unrequited love with a woman" is one of my favorite tropes in this genre. That's our story here, as Imhotep is now wandering around in Egypt under the assumed name of Ardath Bey to find his reincarnated long lost love. Truly a realistic goal that anyone should aspire to.
Fortunately, this means that we get plenty of Karloff in this movie. Whenever Ardath Bey is on screen, this movie is greatness. Yeah, he gets to talk, unlike Frankenstein's monster. But he's also very good at displaying emotion. The whole movie hinges on audiences buying Imhotep's desire to find his bride, so Karloff nailing this character like he did was an absolute must.
The subject of his affection: Helen Grosvenor, a young woman who bears a striking resemblance to his former bride Anck-es-en-Amon (forgive me if I'm wrong there; as of this writing, I just watched this movie a week ago and I'm not operating with Wikipedia benefits this time). Zita Johann got the call to play Helen, and actually has fantastic chemistry with Karloff in their few scenes together. Gotta say that I much prefer her to Fay Wray when it came to "romantic damsels in distress" from this period of horror history. Thus, the whole tragic love plot of The Mummy is one that works very well, with the threat coming in the form of Imhotep/Ardath Bey's resurrection method. How, you ask? He has to kidnap Helen, kill her, mummify her and resurrect her with his dead wife's reincarnated soul. Gruesome stuff, I must say.
What this movie DOESN'T deliver on as much as the previous Universal Monster epics was a well-rounded supporting cast. The two main archaeologists are a couple of Keystone cops, and the heroine's good guy love interest, while he's a likable enough dude, isn't terribly interesting. Whenever the movie has that "thrill of the chase" thing going on with the heroes, it loses a bit of steam. Kind of like The Big Bang Theory whenever it's focused on anyone other than Sheldon. Alas, there's no R.N. Renfield complete with amazingly creeply laugh equivalent in this film.
All things considered, though, The Mummy is still an effective, emotional little horror film. Actually, "little" would be a pretty big misnomer, since this was another monster hit for Universal Studios in 1932. The role that they were on with horror movies at this time was unlike anything that had ever been seen in the movie business at this point, and the public simply couldn't get enough gross-looking tragic monsters, unexpected romance and atmospheric settings. That's something about this movie that I forgot to mention - the atmosphere is again off the charts, and the production designers on these films were John Matrix-esque commandos when it came to making these movies look ominous and uninviting.
Rating time: I'll give this flick *** out of ****. As sure as his name is Boris Karloff, this one is a Thriller.
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