THE MUMMY (1959) I already used the review title I wanted to use! Dammit! I already said "A little dry, but wraps up nicely" to describe the 1999 film, and it doesn't even really describe that movie at all! It describes this one much more accurately. Hammer's The Mummy doesn't appear to have any basis in the 1932 Universal film, and starts anew with a different (if, occasionally, strikingly similar) mummy story. Christopher Lee gets to play the Strong Silent Type yet again here, though he does get lines in a flashback to ancient Egypt. Peter Cushing plays John Banning, the son of an eminent archaeologist (Felix Aylmer). Dad discovers and penetrates (or, depending on your point of view, defiles) the tomb of an ancient, mummified Egyptian princess. But something happens to him in there, and nobody believes him when he mentions a SECOND mummy. Years later, when they're all supposedly safe back in England, the high priest of what's left of this corner of ancient Egyptian religion (George Pastell) sics that second mummy (Lee) on all three men who defiled the tomb. I was on the fence about this movie for a while, because it takes a while to get going, but it sure moves once it does. The "mummy romance" angle is played very slightly and without pretensions of being, well, romantic, so I even liked that aspect. Good dialogue, exciting scenes...what more can you ask for? You've gotta love how unabashedly this movie gives us its mad Arab, passionately imploring the archaeologist infidels not to defile the tomb lest grave consequences haunt them. One almost expects him to lament the ensuing destruction, but no, that would be SO please-don't-offend-anybody-1990's, so he really gets into it, he wants the unbelievers to pay. It's amusing to note in the early, Egypt-set scenes, that Cushing is held as something of a, uh, "sarcophagus brat", who's riding on his father's coattails and isn't pulling his own weight (due to an injured leg). I get the impression that this role might have been written for a younger man (Cushing was about 45 during filming). It's a pretty physical role for him, though, requiring all sorts of mummy-fighting. Lee has a great screen presence, even under the bandages and makeup, as the mummy; he may not get to speak in these scenes, but he comes across much better than in The Curse Of Frankenstein, due in no small part to him being powerful instead of, well, pathetic. In a flashback to ancient Egypt, he's less impressive, mostly because the makeup and wig make him look kind of silly at best, and like a very tall and spectacularly unattractive woman at worst. This flashback is otherwise pretty cool, though, with Cushing narrating the whole thing as the ritual and practice (however fictional) of mummification is outlined. The Mummy has a pretty good sense of humor, with some amusingly portentous lines like "It's no good shouting or banging on the door, we won't hear you!", bwa ha ha. My favorite scene is definitely a reasonable intelligent "debate" about the ethics of archaeology between Cushing and Pastell, with Cushing suddenly, hilariously, turning into a complete asshole to provoke the guy into revealing something. This movie may be talky, and this is its talkiest scene, but I loved every second of it. There's some real nonsense in the plot, like how the mummy seems to understand modern English, and just how Lee's mummy comes to be is a head-scratcher at best. And it's all kinda slow until the setting gets to England. But I really liked The Mummy, and it makes me want to revisit the admittedly different 1932 film. (I'm saying that about a lot of older movies lately...I sure haven't seen many of them in the last couple of years) Also known as Terror Of The Mummy; written and directed by the great Hammer team of Sangster and Fisher. BACK TO THE M's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE