It’s a piece of Hollywood folklore that would
appear to have
been in place much longer, but – apart from a few gag-oriented
shorts made
during the silent era – the mummy wasn’t part of the horror
pantheon until Karl
Freund unleashed The Mummy in 1932. Legend
has it that, cinematographer-turned-director Freund made the
film in response
to Tod Browning’s Dracula, which he had photographed in 1931. Freund, a major figure in
the days of German
expressionist cinema, was said to have been dissatisfied with
the staid
approach Browning took to the material, and so he approached The
Mummy as a
sort of thinly veiled remake designed to “school” the other
director on how it
should have been done. Whether
this is
really true is a matter of speculation, but there’s no denying a
certain
structural similarity between the two films, as an undead being
works his magic
on a damsel in distress, while an elder savant figure looks to
destroy the
creature before he accomplishes his goal.
Many viewers have complained that the film is slow and
lacking in
incident, and on the face of it this is true enough – it is
really more of a
tone poem, and whether one appreciates it depends on whether
they respond to
the film’s peculiar atmosphere.
Even so,
the opening of the picture, with Boris Karloff’s titular
character stirring to
life and shambling off into the night, leaving young
archaeologist Bramwell
Fletcher in a state of abject hysteria, is justly celebrated –
it also happens
to be the only sequence in the film where Karloff is presented
in the iconic
makeup of a full blown reanimated mummy.
For the rest of the film, he adopts the guise of wizened
Egyptian
scholar Ardath Bey, complete with fez and parchment-like skin.
When Universal decided to
revisit the
property in 1940, with The Mummy’s Hand, they introduced the
character of
Kharis, the mummy, an unstoppable force who would come back for
a series of
progressively weaker sequels. The
character
– slightly rechristened as Klaris – would return to face his
mightiest foes in the inevitable Abbott and Costello Meet the
Mummy (1955).
When the time came for Hammer Films to make
their version of
The Mummy, they were only able to do so by virtue of a new
production deal with
Universal-International Pictures.
The
company sensibly decided to reunite much of the same team which
had been
responsible for The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula
(1958), including
director Terence Fisher, cinematographer Jack Asher, screen
writer Jimmy
Sangster, and stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. By this stage in the game,
the crew had
become very familiar with each other and their working methods,
and The Mummy
finds them honing their craft to an even greater degree.
Sangster always maintained that he never saw
any of the
Universal horror films, and while he may have been truthful in
this, he did
have access to the scripts of the old mummy series when he was
preparing this
screenplay. This is
borne out by the
repetition of various character names and incidents that had
been peppered
throughout the franchise, and it has the unwitting effect of
making The Mummy
into something of a “greatest hits” package of mummy films of
the past. Truth be told,
if the film has a major
deficit, it is in the screenplay.
Sangster is not able to bring anything resembling the
fresh perspective
that had made his Frankenstein and Dracula screenplays so
successful, and it
has been accurately noted by some critics that it relies,
instead, on a series
of murder scenes which make it into something of a precursor to
the stalk and slash
films of the 1970s onwards. Sangster
also
displays a certain laziness, in using the name of an Egyptian
city ( Karnak )
as the name of the God to whom Kharis is a high priest.
On the upside, the film is beautifully
realized by Terence
Fisher. By this time, he
had developed a
real flair for the Gothic, and working in harmony with
cinematographer Asher,
he creates some of the most memorable images in his entire
filmography. The film
has been criticized for its patently
phony exterior sets, but in fact most of these sets suit the
dreamlike,
unrealistic atmosphere on display.
Only
a clumsy Egyptian flashback scene feels like a misstep, and the
remainder of
the film is smooth in its execution. The
scenes of Kharis in the swamp don’t approach any kind of
realism, but they
clearly don’t aspire to, either.
Asher
utilizes lighting which makes his approach on the initial
Frankenstein Dracula
pictures look positively staid – vivid highlights of red, green
and blue
spotlighting help to emphasize the theatrical nature of the
proceedings, and
the end result was praised by none other than star Christopher
Lee (in an
interview included on the CD release of Franz Weizenstein’s
score for the film)
as “the best looking film Hammer ever made.”
The cast performs beautifully. Lee gives one of his most
affecting
performances as the mummy. A
lesser
actor would have simply soldiered through the makeup and made no
real attempt
at building character, but Lee does not resort to such tactics. His gift for mime comes
through frequently,
and he makes the character come to life with genuine pathos
instead of coming
off as a mere killing machine. Peter
Cushing
is saddled with a less fully realized character than usual, but
he
manages to convey a certain sadness and melancholy of his own. The scene in which he goes
out of his way to
antagonize the sinister Mehemet Bey (an equally splendid George
Pastell)
includes some choice dialogue, which the actor clearly relishes. Interestingly, whereas
Kharis had been
depicted as having paralysis on the left side of his body in the
Universal
film, thus requiring Tom Tyler (in The Mummy’s Hand) and Lon
Chaney, Jr (in the
subsequent straight horror outings) to drag a leg and keep an
arm motionless,
here Kharis is presented as limber and fast moving, while
Cushing is saddled
with a lame leg. This
has the effect of
making Cushing’s hero figure somewhat ineffectual against
Kharis, thus upping
the suspense angle considerably during their confrontation
scenes.
Beautiful Yvonne
Furneaux (later to work with
such major filmmakers as Federico Fellini and Roman Polanski)
may not have
taken the project very seriously (she reportedly loved Cushing
but had no
appreciation of Fisher’s talents) but she still gives a strong
performance in
an admittedly one dimensional role, as Cushing’s doting wife –
who also happens
to be the reincarnation of Kharis’ beloved Princess Ananka (this
reincarnation
business was a trope in the mummy series, and would later spill
into various
Dracula adaptations, ranging from the Dan Curtis telefilm of
1973 to the recent
Dario Argento version of 2012).
Felix
Aylmer (Cushing’s costar in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet), Raymond
Huntley (once
famous for playing Dracula on stage), Michael Ripper (making one
of his first
Hammer Gothic appearances, and soon to become a staple) and the
aforementioned
Pastell also shine in their supporting roles
With its lush cinematography, gorgeous score
and fine
acting, The Mummy found favor at the box office – thus setting
off an
inevitable chain of follow ups (not really sequels) of its own. Michael Carreras graduated
from producing the
first film to producing, writing and directing the first follow
up, The Curse
of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964). Granted,
Carreras
had a tough act to follow – but the end result is one of
Hammer’s
least successful Gothic horrors, and arguably the worst horror
effort of their
golden period.
The story deals with an American showman
(Fred Clark) who
finances an expedition to discover the mummy of Ra-Anted; when
the mummy is
uncovered, the showman takes it on the road for the benefit of
curious
yokels. Things get messy
when the
creature comes to life and goes on a rampage.Carreras clearly took his inspiration from
King Kong (1933),
with Clark subbing for Robert
Armstrong’s Carl
Denham. Alas, despite
impressive
production values and beautiful widescreen cinematography
courtesy of the great
Otto Heller (Peeping Tom), the film lumbers as slowly as its
bandaged
protagonist. Clark
is a hoot as the prototypical “Ugly American,” and he manages to
work in a bit
of humanity to the role where he is able.
Terence Howard is also effective as the suave nobleman
with a mysterious
secret, while George Pastell reprises his role as the mummy’s
“guardian,”
albeit in a more sympathetic vein this time.
Michael Ripper is squandered in a blink and you’ll miss
it appearance,
however, and Ronald Howard (TV’s Sherlock Holmes) and Jeanne
Roland make for a
dull romantic couple. The
mummy is
played under wraps by Dickie Owen, but he is given scant
opportunity to function
as anything more than a brute.The film performed reasonably well when
released as part of
double bill with Terence Fisher’s vastly superior The Gorgon,
and Hammer
revisited the material yet again with The Mummy’s Shroud (1966).
Here, another crass businessman (John
Phillips) bankrolls an
expedition, this time headed by distinguished archaeologist Sir
Basil Walden
(Andre Morell). The tomb
of Kah-to-bey
is unearthed, thus unleashing the fury of guardian mummy Prem;
gradually the
members of the expedition fall victim to the curse of the
mummy’s tomb.The film was written and directed by the
talented John
Gilling, who had just completed two very fine Cornwall-set
Gothics for the
studio: The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile. Inspiration was running dry
by the time this
one rolled along, and Gilling would later dismiss it as a bit of
hackwork for a
paycheck. Truth be told,
he handles the
material with considerable flair.
The
issue, however, is that the film suffers from the same slightly
flea-bitten
look which was beginning to affect Hammer’s product around this
time. Producer Anthony
Nelson Keys had hit upon the
idea of filming two films back to back on the same sets, with
the same
personnel, but while this idea was cost effective, it started to
take a toll on
the quality of Hammer’s product.
Thus,
The Mummy’s Shroud shared much of the same cramped sets that
were utilized by
Frankenstein Created Woman, and both films have a rather flat,
ugly look to
them, especially when compared to the product Hammer had been
releasing before. As with the films that preceded it, The
Mummy’s Shroud is
essentially structured as a series of elaborate revenge-murder
scenes. Gilling tackles
these setpiece with
tremendous verve, however, resulting in a few nicely timed
shocks. The scene of a
character having his head
crushed like a ripe melon by the mummy is suggested rather than
shown, but the
choice camera angles and sound effects give it an appropriately
icky
quality. Alas, the film
is again
burderned with another awful Egyptian flashback scene – this one
actually
commences the action, and it could be that the film’s lousy
reputation is due
to this; by starting the film off on such a bad note, it may
have lost some of
its audience before it had much of a chance to win them over.
It would take Hammer several years to revisit
the mummy
subgenre, and when they did, it would prove to be one of their
most bedeviled
projects. Blood from the
Mummy’s Tomb
(1971), adapted by screenwriter Christopher Wicking from Bram
Stoker’s novel
The Jewel of Seven Stars, is one of the most willfully unusual
titles in the
history of Hammer horror. Wicking’s
fragmented
approach to storytelling was popular for a time during the late
60s
and early 70s, and he would write some of the more inventive and
unusual horror
films of the period for Hammer (Demons of the Mind) and AIP
(Scream and Scream Again). Blood
from
the Mummy’s Tomb sees him working from the Val Lewton approach
to horror, with
ample suggestion and nothing in the way of a bandaged, shambling
monster. In its place,
we have statuesque Valerie Leon
as the demonic Queen Tera, who is reincarnated into the form of
naïve Margaret
Fuchs. She is the
daughter of obsessed
archeaologist Professor Julian Fuchs (Andrew Keir), whose
research into Tera
has put them both in considerable danger.
Stoker’s story would later be adapted as an
episode of Tales
of Mystery and Imagination, with Isobel Black in the central
role, and it would
again be adapted for the big budget but rather dreary Charlton
Heston vehicle,
The Awakening (1980). Blood,
for all its
faults, remains the best version of the story.
It was directed by the brilliant Seth Holt, who had
previously directed
two of Hammer’s finest films: Taste of Fear (1960) and The Nanny
(1965). Holt had
established himself as a major
talent as a film editor, and he would find himself at the helm
of a series of
beautifully accomplished films – however, he was also an
alcoholic, and his
problems with this disease prevented him from directing more
than a handful of
pictures, as well as some episodes of episodic television. Blood would become his
final film – and one
he didn’t even have the advantage of completing. Several weeks into
production, Holt
died. He was only 47
years old. Executive
producer Michael Carreras was put
in the difficult position of trying to salvage the film. He toyed with the idea of
scrapping the
material and starting afresh, and he approached Hammer stalwart
Don Sharp with
this idea. Sharp balked,
however, and
Carreras realized that it would be more cost-efficient to
soldier on and
complete the picture himself. He
was
reportedly horrified by what Holt shot, however, as it was done
in a very
strange, elliptical manner.
He
would
later say that he figured Holt had a plan in mind, but he had
not shared this
plan with anybody else; it therefore fell to him to make some
sense of the
material. He fired
Holt’s favored
editor, and resumed production with himself installed as the new
director. Final credit
would go to Holt alone, however,
though there’s little question that the end result bears only
scant resemblance
to what he would have assembled, had he been able to complete
it. Carreras deserves
credit for making something
workable out of the material, but it has to be said that his
talent as a
director was considerably less than Holt’s.
Thus, for every moody, beautifully realized sequence,
there’s another far
clunkier and less elegant scene to slog through. The end result is uneven,
with at least one
sequence (the death of a major character in a car crash) coming
off as utterly
laughable because of how poorly it is staged (this sequence,
incidentally, was
not shot by Holt).
Leon
dominates the film. Though
dubbed by
another actress, she brings a truly ethereal presence to her
role. Her transition
from normal young woman to
wanton and vile monster is successfully managed – and sexist as
it may sound,
she certainly does fill out his various eye catching outfits
(skin watchers
need to bear in mind, however, that she refused to do nudity –
so that’s a body
double when she gets out of bed in the nude).
Andrew Keir (Quatermass and the Pit), a powerful and
compelling actor,
is cast in an unusually weak and powerless role – reminding one
of how Andre
Morell fared in The Mummy’s Shroud.
Fuchs is sidelined with a stroke early on and spends much
of the action
staring wildly from his bed. It
is well
known by now that Peter Cushing had been cast in this role, and
stills exist
showing him acting with Leon
for one day. Sadly, his
beloved wife
Helen became desperately ill, and Cushing bailed to be with her
– she would die
soon after. For once,
this was a mummy
film that truly did appear to be cursed.
Whether Cushing would have fared any better in the role
is open to
speculation, but one cannot complain about Keir’s performance –
it’s just not
that dynamic of a part to begin with.
James Villiers (The Nanny) is superbly sinister as
Corbeck, a member of
Fuchs’ team who has gone off the deep end of the occult. Villiers plays the role
with a touch of camp
villainy, but he definitely makes a tremendous impression and
steals many of
his scenes. Aubrey
Morris (A Clockwork
Orange) also adds to the camp factor with his bizarre but
memorable portrayal
of a family GP with a penchant for wearing dark glasses.
Though understandably uneven, Blood from the
Mummy’s Tomb
remains one of the company’s most successfully offbeat offerings
of the
period. In lieu of buxom
vampires and
heaping helpings of nudity, it offers up a moody and elliptical
approach to a
familiar type of subject matter.
It
would become the final mummy adventure for the company, and all
things
considered, it made for a good stopping point.
The mummy would inevitably rise again under
the auspices of
other production companies – the blood and guts fueled 80s would
see Dawn of
the Mummy, for example, while the current propensity for
overdone CGI
and mindless thrills would be reflected in Stephen Sommers’
mummy films for
Universal – but Hammer’s contributions remain noteworthy, with
their 1959
original comparing well to the 1932 classic that started it all.
