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The Mummy

Started by Christian, November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM

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Christian

I'm very anxious to see this movie because I've seen the 1999's version of The Mummy. I enjoyed that one and I think I'll enjoy this one too. But this seem more scarier than the new version.

BoyScoutKevin

Yes, if one enjoyed the 199's version of "The Mummy." one ought to enjoy this one. Not the first full length feature. That would be "Lord John in New York" (1915), or the first feature with sound. That would be the Disney short "Egyptian
Melodies" (1931), but the first full length feature with sound. And since that time, there has never been anything better with a mummy in it. 67 years later, still contains one of the best lines ever uttered in a horror film. When asked, where the missing mummy went, Ralph Norton (Bramwell Fletcher), the soon to be very crazy assistant, replies: "He
went for a little walk." ROTFL. Enjoy.

Paul Westbrook

Boris Karloff's THE MUMMY(1931), was a classic of it's genre. Many a scene evokes terror, and dread. When Karloff first appears as the bandage-clad Im-ho-tep,it is truly a chilling moment, in screen history. Although, he is still best remembered, as the Frankenstein Monster, in James Whale's 1931 version, this movie also established Karloff, as the undisputed KING OF TERROR. I strongly recommend this film, for those fans, who simply want to be scared. Also, see FRANKENSTEIN(1931). Neither film will disappoint you.

Georgiann

Not sure why this is included on a bad movie site, this is simply a classic.  The most atmospheric of the mummy movies, with a real feeling of decay and dread.  

Karlofffan

This movie is great!  Very creepy and atmospheric.  It really is a scary movie.

Swamprat

BAD? Once upon a time there was a particular type of movie that was quite popular in Hollywood...It was called the HORROR FILM. Alas...this art is all but dead. Most everyone, if they've been in the military in particular, know that the most dangerous weapon on earth is the human mind. Going one step deeper into that eternal truth is the fact that, though dangerous, it's also very easily jammed. A jammed weapon triggers major panic. In cinamatic terms...screwing with the audiances head can scare the hell outta em quicker than any special effect or graphic whack-n-hack editing can. But...this is America dammit! We don't have to think and most us ain't gonna! Why pay top dollar to a writer or a director with real talent in telling a scary story, when we can just throw in some chopped meat and canned screams and get an audiance to shell out $8.50 a head. Real terror can only be experianced IN THE MIND. You either live through a terrifing moment or ordeal, or somebody with talent places the thought of terror in your brain so realisticly that you're fooled. He destorts the reality so well that the mind is ambushed and WHAM!...the  weapon is jammed...PANIC! If he's good, this guy can keep us going for at least the length of a feature film. The Boris Karloff version of the Mummy is a geniune Horror film...one of "Hollywood's" best. Pay attention...and it's scary as hell...if you're looking for those special effects and gore that have been passed off as horror over the past four decades...forget it. Boris Karloff was a very good actor...Jamie Lee Curtis runs around with a bloody butcher knife with bouncing breasts. The Mummy is an other worldly force, a phenomenom, an unexplainable voyeur from deep within the human-supernatural psyche. An idiot in a hockey mask running around with a chainsaw is either an idiot with a chainsaw or a Canadian...or both. All the 1930 horror classics were excellent films...most were very intelligent films...both in craft and writing. The Ghost-Horror story is the oldest form of story telling, and the stories are best heard sitting in the dark with a story teller who knows how to twist and ambush the human mind. The makers of most of these Universal made Horror films understood that. Mood, atmosphere, suspense, surprise...the Mummy delivers it all. The remake owed more to Indiana Jones and Halloween#57 than it did to Karloff. It was a fun movie...but it sure as hell wasn't scary. Why the average American audiance prefers the cheap, cookie cutter imitations of horror films has always eluded me. Are we too lazy to let our brains actually be drawn into this alternate universe? We prefer to just stare at it and laugh or gasp on cue? Watching a Whack-n-hack "horror" movie reminds me of watching reruns of I Love Lucy. Watching George Lucas type effects overpower the whole storyline makes me sit and wonder what the next Star Wars film is going to be like. HEY! I just paid $8.50 to get in here...ain't I supposed to be getting the s**t scared outta me?  Watch the original Mummy...then read a good book on Egyptian Occultism...you'll lay awake for hours nervously keeping an eye on every shadow in the room. Now that's worth $8.50.

tessai

What is "The mummy" doing on this website .How the heck did it end up in the same place with "Attack of the crabmonsters" and "The bloody blender".This is a classic work of art and it does not deserve such treatment.
I mean yeah write something abot the reamakes with Brendan Frazier and i won't mind but here i must protest.

Corey

One of the best old horror movies I've seen/own. Although the two remakes (three if you count Scorpion King) had more action, NOTHING can take the place of Karloff's glowing eyes during the close ups. A perfect 10.

Myron

The 1932 version was my favorite Karloff movie. The  movie is a total classic Your Website is a classic too. Thanks I am really enjoying it.

Yronimos

I don't mind seeing this movie on a bad movie site - it's not perfect (a bit slower-paced and more cerebral than more well-known - and arguably more effective - horror movies of that era), and I suspect it must have been shot on a relatively low budget.  But the things that were done with what these movie makers had to work with! 

Compare the review of this film with some of the truly abysmal bad horror films reviewed on this site - the review's author, I think, plays fair with this movie and gives it at least some of the respect it deserves.

Poor Boris Karloff is one of the best-known horror icons of all time, and for a good reason - this movie would simply not have been the same without him.  Karloff had a strange magnetism that most actors could only dream of, raising the quality of almost any movie or TV show he appeared in merely by being there and being Karloff - I don't know how he did it, but he made it look easy.  At the same time, I have no doubt that Karloff worked hard in everything he did, and that professionalism seems to have rubbed off on the cast and crew around him.  Horror fans are sympathetic to The Mummy, and I think that is in no small part because Boris Karloff's portrayal of the movie's "monster" so effectively commands our sympathies for the character, the way poor hear-broken Im-Ho-Tep was wronged by the gods who cursed him, and, by extension, the movie around this character.  Karloff seems to help lead the cast and crew around him into giving the whole production a level of dignity, class, respect, and professionalism that the movie would perhaps otherwise not really deserve.  For example, imagine this movie (or, for that matter, Frankenstein!) starring poor Bela Lagosi instead, and I suspect that nobody would have had a problem with a review on a bad movie site.

That's not to say that Boris Karloff was the only thing that went right in this movie, though.  The scene where the mummy comes back to life and "takes a little walk", while that poor archaeologist goes mad - that's pure gold!  Apart from Karloff himself, that one little scene is possibly one of the most powerful and best-remembered scenes from this movie.  And, I think, it's one of the scariest and most effective scenes from any mummy movie before or since.

And the movie's whole atmosphere somehow works fantastically well, though it's incredibly subtle for a movie for that era.  I don't know how, but the whole movie looks and feels other-worldly... somehow, the film evokes a weird sense that time and space have broken down, without relying on a single special effect I can point at to do so.  (Strangely, I would go as far as to say that the weird atmosphere is perhaps more Lovecraftian than any true Lovecraftian movie ever made!)  Some, but not all, of this weirness was surely accomplished through Boris Karloff's presence alone, but I can't give all the credit to Karloff alone.  Now, I want to watch this film again to see if I can put my finger on why else it works as well as it did... was it the lighting and use of shadows?  The incidental music and the way that music was used?  Other visual elements, like make-up and set design?  I can compare the way atmosphere in this film was achieved with the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The Haunting of Hill House, or Alien or The Exorcist, but I understand how the creepy atmosphere was achieved in those other films - bizarre and distorted sets the example of Caligari and Alien, freakish camera angles in the example of The Haunting of Hill House, and cold temperatures to make the actors as physically uncomfortable as possible in the others - but atmosphere in The Mummy is a trick I don't understand yet.

But, ask a horror fan to list his/her favorite horror movies, and this movie isn't likely to be on that list, even when that list is limited only to favorite horror movies from the 1930's.  Sadly, I think that some horror fans would go so far as to say that this film is slow-paced and atmospheric to the point of being almost boring or forgettable, in spite of its good points.  It's unfortunate, but this film doesn't quite hit enough of the right nerves for many horror fans to consider this to be a great horror film - nor does it hit enough of the right nerves for even me to consider it beyond the reach of a bad movie site.

Again, though, I must point out that I think the review's author clearly respects the movie for what it is and does, and, I think, the author is at least as fond of The Mummy as we are.  This "bad movie" is one of the Good Guys, and I'm glad to see it reviewed here - this "bad movie" does enough right, that it can still quietly reach out through the decades to grab us and hold us in its cold, unearthly clutches in a way that truly awful or mediocre movies never will.

Look upon this "bad movie", horror movie makers, and tremble!  Horror movie makers seem to forget that even a low-budget horror film without a real monster can still capture its audience's attention, imagination, and respect, and all without relying on any of the obvious gimmicks of the horror-movie-maker's trade.  This film is an example of what the low-end of horror film making should be, but never is.  Horror fans will stand up for The Mummy in ways that they never would for a bigger-budgeted or more visceral horror film.

CPETER13

I think it is obvious that, despite this site's name, the reviews cover the good, the bad, and the fugly.  This is a good movie, there is no doubt about it.  But is it great?  Not really.  

Firt of all, it is a fairly thinly-disguised remake of "Dracula"--a man returns from the dead and desires a mate, killing those who stand between them.   A foreign doctor is the ony thing standing between the victim and the stalker.  And of course, you have David Manners and Edward Van Sloan in the smae roles theyn played in the Lugosi movie.  Special note must be made of Manners, who single-handedly makes any scene he is in less interesting and less dynamic--the human equivalent of library paste.

It is atmospheric and beautifully shot, but why do the scenes of ancient egypt seem so much more vital than the ones filmed in the movie's present?  

SPOILER ALERT:  The deus ex machina ending is interesting but a total cheat.  If she can save herself with the help of the gods, who needed the heroes to begin with?

I agree that this was not the movie for lugosi, as the other poster suggested.  But not because of any lack of talent, but simply because he was too robust looking and there is no way you can deal with a hungarian accent in place of an egyptian one.  Which is naother problem--should a 3000yo mummy have an english accent?

Thee Dr.

Hmmm...out of all the films I've seen on this site...I think this is the only one I've seen so far that I disagree with it's inclusion-but nontheless, an excellent review as always.

zelmo73

While this is definitely not a bad movie by any means, it has certainly influenced countless bad movies since its release. All of the bad movies that we have ever watched have all had their roots in the great movies of Hollywood and Europe. I applaud Andrew for including the classics on this website, if only to showcase where a lot of the crap movies got their inspiration.
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