Famous Monsters of Filmland: The Mummy (Dir Karl Freund, 1h 13m, 1932)

 

So far in our journey through the crypts of the Universal Monster family, we've encountered characters that are practically recognisable to any budding horror fan-Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster have popped up everywhere from impressively big budget adaptions of the novels (Coppola's 1992 adaption of Dracula and Branagh's 1994 adaption of Frankenstein) to the enjoyably kistch The Monster Squad and the overblown but glorious Van Helsing. Imhotep, the titular Mummy, is not so lucky-sometimes, he appears alongside his more famous friends in the overly campy end of the Universal filmography and beyond. Sometimes he gets his own trilogy-the gloriously self-aware Stephen Sommers trilogy that remains beloved by certain demographics, in which Imhotep is played by Arnold Vosloo, and brought to live by then nascent CGI. Sometimes, he's the kickstarter (albeit in a role-reversed form, and played by a woman), to a film series that never was, in the downright dire The Mummy (2017), that remains the only film in the now abandoned Dark Universe Cinematic Universe. 

The year is 1924, and Howard Carter is in New York on a globe-trotting lecture tour-two years before, he's made the find of the century, in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, in the form of the tomb of the boy-pharoah, Tutankhamun. It has made him one of the most famous archeologists in the world, but with it, the opening of the tomb has, some whisper, inflicted a terrible curse upon the expedition, its financial backer, Earl Carnarvon dying in Cario within months (despite the fact that the Earl had suffered from underlying health issues for years) of the tomb being opened. Carter's lecture tour kicks off Tutmania, in which the long-deceased boy-king becomes the subject of Tin Pan Alley songs, Ancient Egypt becomes the setting for lurid romance novels, and the revival in Egyptian art and motifs being used on Western furniture, clothing and jewelry fuels the Art Deco movement. This even makes it to cinema, with Cecil B DeMille's colossal The Ten Commandments, and the equally massive Austrian epic, The Moon of Israel (both 1924) both inspired by the growing craze.

Jump forward another seven years, and Universal are looking for their next hit. Dracula and Frankenstein have been, pardon the expression, monster hits, and Carl Laemmle Jr and Universal are on the hunt for the next. Inspired by the discovery and the curse, so Laemmle Jr hits upon the idea of an Egypt-set film, setting Western script-writer Richard Schayer to work finding a suitable novel to adapt. Here, Schayer comes upon a problem-there aren't any, although the finished script for what eventually becomes The Mummy bears a strong resemblance to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short short "The Ring of Thoth". Instead, Schayer and the prolific novellist and screenwriter Nina Wilcox Putnam turn to the figure of occultist Alessandro Cagliostro, constructing the story of an immortal magician in San Francisco.

Interesting though Cagliostro is, he's not Egyptian and isn't in Egypt. So Laemmle Jr turns back to-you guessed it-the now semi-omnipresent John L. Balderston, Balderston, having adapted both Dracula and Frankenstein has one other advantage over the duo-not only did he cover the opening of the tomb for the now defunct New York World, but, astonishingly, he's the first man to see the boy-king face-to-face in 3,000 years. Relocating the story back to Egypt, using real-life architect Imhotep as the basis for his antagonist, and paring down the plot to focus upon the vengeful mummy hunting for his reincarnated beloved, aiming to bring her back with the (fictional, but impressive sounding) Scroll of Thoth, so Balderston renames the film simply The Mummy.

Attached to direct is a figure already known to us, the cinematographer Karl Freund, (who basically directed Dracula), and as the titular Mummy, of course, is Boris Karloff, this time, pride of place in the film's promotional material (on now incredibly rare and absolutely exquiste lithographed posters) as, simply, KARLOFF. Horror cinema's new icon has arrived. Against him, the film pits Zita Johann, in the dual roles of the half-Eyptian socialite, Helen, and as Imhotep's beloved, Princess Ankh-esen-amun, David Manners (Dracula's Jonathan Harker) as Frank Whemple, who stands between Ardeth Bay and Helen, another Dracula alumni, Edward Van Sloan, as the Egyptologist, Dr Muller, and Arthur Byron as the Carnarvon-esque figure of Frank's father, Sir Joseph.

Karloff, though, rules this picture. We begin in 1921, with the elder Whemple, and his assistant, Norton, who have uncovered the mummy and a mysterious box-Karloff spends much of the scene simply lying in the coffin, the concern of the newly arriving Muller growing as he regales Sir Joseph and Norton that their find was buried without his organs being removed-horrifyingly, thus, alive, and that the box they have found with him is cursed. What happens next is as inevitable as the great horrror trope that it masterfully codified-as Sir Joseph and Dr Muller reconvene outside, so Norton gives in to temptation, opens the box and reads from the Scroll of Thoth. The camera pans over to the figure of Karloff, beneath eight hours of makeup, linen bandages, and clay in his hair, as the hapless assistant reads, and his eyes begin to open. Like few other actors-perhaps only Andy Serkis, and the great Doug Jones come close-Karloff disappears into the otherworldly-he moves and looks like a man newly returned to life after milennia in a sarcophagus, and what is about to happen will essentially cement this newest role into the horror canon.

The camera pans down, as his hands begin to unclench, his arms begin to relax, and the camera pans once more from Norton to the scroll he's translated as a hand, withered, and still covered in gravedirt, extends onto screen. Norton becomes aware of his companion as Imhotep unhurriedly picks up the scroll, turns, and screams-only to break out into utterly mad laughter as, unseen, camera tracking along his grave-dirted footprints, the Mummy disappears. It's a scene that horror returns to time and again-the idea of something being brought back to life through human ignorance-or just idiocy, wreaking utter havoc, and then making its escape. The 1999 Sommers film turns this into a nearly seven minute sequence in which their Imhotep's pure power is shown, from colossal swarms of locusts to flesh-eating scarabs to the impressive visual effects that brings their half-built Imhotep to life, but the 1932 movie's lingering horror, its slowly growing suspense, has this flashy spectacle beat. Norton goes mad, the Mummy disappears, and the film jumps forward to 1932.

It is here that Karloff truly steals the show, not as a monster, but as a man. Ardeth Bay may be one of the few times that Karloff appears in a Universal film without (heavy) makeup, but it is he that effortlessly drives the film, the eccentric historian, his towering, skinny frame and stooped appearance, together with cane, slowly giving way to the sinister Imhotep in all but name, a masterfully sinister appearance, the camera often holding on his face as his powers are used, Karloff's shadowed eyes slowly lighting up to reveal his striking and penetrating gaze-if nothing else, the fact that Karloff is able to balance three entirely different characters, even if these are essentially the same man in different eras of his life, reminds you that, even without makeup and special effects, Boris Karloff was a towering figure in early cinema, and iconic in his own right without the trappings of the monster.

His performance(s) in this film are as mesmerisng as they are horrifying-we see him present the discovery of the tomb of his beloved Ankh-esen-amun to Frank and his father, before disappearing once they have found the treasures wihin. He then reappears, and unable to raise her from the dead, soon turns to find the figure of Helen, who bears, of course, a striking resemblance to his lost love, and spends the second half of the film getting closer to her, including killing Sir Joseph and mindcontrolling Helen via secret powers, before revealling exactly how they are connected, in an impressively done flashback sequence that, sadly, was cut for time to remove the lives Helen had lived between Ankh-esen-amun and the present day, revealling that she must die before the Egyptian princess can live again, to which the Gods themselves prove to be Imhotep's undoing.

The problem is, around the superb performance from Karloff, the res tof the film is a little, dare one say it, passé-or rather, given the de-facto director, the writer, and two of the main stars of Dracula (1931) are in your film, the film's main story beat begin to feel very familar once the film steps beyond its opening setpiece. There is the death of a supporting character, a temptation of our heroine in a society event, and that she is immediately taken with this man, but is also attracted to our hero. A servant is controlled by the villain, and soon the heroine falls under our mesmeric villain's power. Even the shot where Dracula uses his powers is essentially recreated, albeit in a more technically impressive way, for The Mummy. If the film does improve the Dracula formula, it is in its finale, where far from the helpless Mina, Helen is an active participant in her own rescue and escape, calling upon the Goddess Isis to protect her from the Mummy, which leads to his downfall and destruction.

There is also, undeniably, compared to the films that proceeded it, an uncomfortable sense of datedness; the film's depiction of modern Egypt, of its overly superstitious and backward Arab population, of the shadow of what Egypt once was long diminished. In modern hindsight, there's something primitive and othering about the depiction of the Egytian populace, something even more modern films set in the country (see for example, Raiders of the Lost Ark, that largely copied the superstition and subjugation of the day labourers under the control of Westerners unaware of what they were uncovering), still struggle with. Compared to the other two films, it is also one that feels overawed by its setting, and restrained by its budget-we don't see the grandeur of Egypt, only its remnants.

Yet, despite being a comparatively slight film compared to the cinematic golliaths of 1931's duo, The Mummy is still an important film in understanding the growth of horror in the 1930s-it still features one of the great Boris Karloff's best peformances, juggling the titular Mummy, the secretive and sinister Ardeth Bay, and the Imhotep of Ancient Egypt, it remains a fascinating and atmospheric, if somewhat dated and wildly inaccurate depiction of a horror story entirely set in another country, as well as a masterful refraction of both the 1920s Egyptian Craze and the excavation that inspired it, and the plot of this film. Whilst not as innovative, or cinematically vital as the films that proceeded it, The Mummy remains an important piece of the history of the Universal Monster Movies.

Rating: Highly Recommended.

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