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| Colorful, beautifully painted poster for Karl Freund's The Mummy |
The original Mummy movie from Universal Studios and Austrian-Hungarian director Karl Freund (Dracula (1931), cinematographer) is an atmospheric, creepy and a bit mystic movie.
A mummy tomb is opened by busy, British archaeologists, and an ancient mummy priest 'disappears', just as a formidable, Egyptian figure arrives, and a local beauty, Helen Grosvenor, begins to experience passions of an extraordinary kind!
Reincarnation and occult beliefs are a corner stone of Mummy, which originally included scenes of the female lead Grosvenor's incarnations in other ages, in which she gets killed. These scenes are, unfortunately, lost, as they were cut out before the film's release. They would be very interesting to see in The Mummy, which runs a little short as it is (at 73 minutes.) The film's reincarnations plot-line also seems a little confusing as it is now.
Hungarian-born Broadway actress Zita Johann (The Sin of Nora Morann (1933)) is intense as Grosvenor, probably because of her 'spirit of the theater'-approach to acting (a technique where she saw her work as sacred and in which she had to let herself 'die' to leave room for her characters); but also due to her personal, strong beliefs in the occult, and reincarnation in particular. (She has also claimed to have achieved levitation at at least one incident!)
Boris Karloff (Frankenstein (1931)), of course, portrays the mummy, - advertised in posters at the time as merely 'Karloff the Uncanny' (see poster above). His performance is down-played but very eerie, a blend of Karloff's ghoulish qualities as an actor and the great make-up effects by Jack Pierce (The Raven (1935)), which Karloff had an awful time getting on, and especially off, as the process was excruciatingly painful:
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| Boris Karloff in the first scene as the mummy in his sarcophagus in Karl Freund's The Mummy |
In fact, we never see the mummy in this the original film walking around with his arms stretched out and mummy wrappings hanging from him; that only happens in the sequels. In Mummy, the title (romantic) heavy is never shown much, and yet when he is, the effects are impressive and would become iconic:
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| Iconic Boris Karloff-image from Karl Freund's The Mummy |
Also impressive and goosebumps-inducing is the SPOILER stop-motion-death of the mummy in the end, reminiscent of the end of The Wolf Man (1941), which was also achieved by make-up artist Pierce.
The details:
Apart from atmospheric, high quality cinematography, - guaranteed by director Freund, who was mainly a fine cinematographer and was hired just two days before production! - two great performances and iconic, scary effects, Mummy also has a few issues:
The film has no score for long patches that go by in almost complete silence, and they tend to feel slow. The action of the film gets going surprisingly fast, as the mummy is revived within the first about 10 minutes, but then later on, there are slow patches, and some of the scenes do feel dated.
Despite these impediments, The Mummy is still an incredibly handsome, well-made film very worth watching.
After the successful Mummy action-comedy-adventure trilogy by Stephen Sommers, Universal has announced a remake of the original 1932 film, but no particulars are out on that yet.
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| Another irresistible poster for Karl Freund's The Mummy |
Watch the great, re-release trailer here
Budget: 0.196 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty but reportedly a big hit
What do you think of The Mummy and its sequels and spin-offs?
Who should portray the mummy in a new version of the film?
