I have a series of DVD collections for the various Universal Monsters, and the Mummy series is somewhat interesting. Aside from the first with Boris Karloff, the movies all have a certain formula where a priest of an ancient order revives the mummy to do evil deeds. The mummy then slowly stalks and kills various supporting characters, usually until someone remembers he’s flammable. I’ll actually make note that the cast from the second movie in the series, the first to go the “dark priest controlling the mummy,” reappears as noticeably older characters in the third and most of them are then killed off.
But that’s Universal. How did Hammer Films, the British movie studio that specialized in Gothic horror, handle the concept of an undead Egyptian?
At the end of the nineteenth century, a family of archaeologists are searching Egypt for the lost tomb of a princess. The youngest, John Banning (Peter Cushing), can’t go to the dig after a broken leg, but his uncle and father can. After ignoring a warning from a local named Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), the brothers find Princess Ananka’s tomb. John’s father also finds the Scroll of Life, and after reading it aloud, sees something that puts him in a catatonic state.
Three years later, John is back in England in his palatial estates with his beautiful wife Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux), and Bey is nearby with his own tool: the mummy Kharis, a priest condemned to eternal life for loving the off-limits Ananka. Kharis is supposed to be the guardian of Ananka’s tomb for all eternity, and as such, as far as Bey is concerned, all of the Bannings must die. John’s father, confined to a nursing home, is easy. But John? Well, if he can convince the local police to help, he might have a chance.
I rather liked this. It’s not as good as the Karloff version, but it’s worth a good look. Cushing brings in a gentlemen’s demeanor, suggesting an upper class man looking with an education, the sort that really suggests the audience should take what he knows seriously. He even gets something of an action scene the first time the mummy attacks him, shooting the monster twice with a rifle to no effect, vaulting over a desk, and then doing a flying jump to stab Kharis with a spear, again to no effect. As for his longtime friend and partner Christopher Lee, his imposing size is rather impressive, but his character had his tongue removed in ancient Egypt, so we don’t get to hear anything of Lee’s deep, scary voice. Would I want to hear this mummy talk? Probably not, but it does seem like something of a waste to put Lee in a role where his mouth appears to be sewn shut.
In fact, I will even give the movie some points when Bey, the villain, makes some comments about Englishmen looting Egypt of its treasures, comments that reminded me a bit of Black Panther‘s Killmonger’s own thoughts on what was in the British Museum. Lines like that may be undermined by the fact that Bey is already a murderer whose first target was a mostly-bedridden old man, and the time period for the movie may not have had the same sort of reaction as today, but it was a bit noteworthy.
Ultimately, this was a nice little movie about a nearly unkillable foreign monster wandering the English countryside, killing people as directed. It’s probably not the best of the Lee-Curshing Hammer movies, but it is a perfectly fine one that gave me a good impression of what those two got done while working for the studio that made both men famous.
Grade: B
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