The Mummy (1932 film)
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| The Mummy | |
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| Directed by | Karl Freund |
| Produced by | Carl Laemmle Jr. |
| Written by | John L. Balderston |
| Starring | Boris Karloff Zita Johann David Manners Edward van Sloan |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 22, 1932 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 73 min |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | The Mummy's Hand (1940) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Mummy is a 1932 horror film from Universal Pictures directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff as a revived ancient Egyptian priest. The movie also features Zita Johann, David Manners and Edward van Sloan.
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[edit] Cast
- Boris Karloff as Im-ho-tep, alias Ardath Bey
- Zita Johann as Helen Grosvenor/Princess Anck-es-en-Amon
- David Manners as Frank Whemple
- Arthur Byron as Sir Joseph Whemple
- Edward Van Sloan as Dr. Muller
- Bramwell Fletcher as Ralph Norton
- Noble Johnson as The Nubian
- Kathryn Byron as Frau Muller
- Leonard Mudie as Professor Pearson
- James Crane as The Pharaoh
[edit] Production
The Mummy very closely parallels the studio's classic from the year before, Dracula. Karl Freund, cinematographer for Dracula (and I Love Lucy twenty years later), was the director of The Mummy and scenes very much resemble each other. Some cast members of Dracula, such as David Manners and Edward Van Sloan, appear in similar roles. Some critics have called The Mummy an instant remake of Dracula, produced so the studio could cash in.
The Mummy was not based on an earlier novel or play, but those familiar with the lesser known works of Arthur Conan Doyle may notice some striking similarities between the film and Doyle's short story "The Ring Of Thoth" (to be found in "The Captain Of The Polestar"). If there is any debt on the part of the film's writers, it has never been acknowledged.
The film used names for the mummy and his wife from history and from word play. The name "Ardath Bey" is a pig Latin rendering of Karloff's often-mimicked pronunciation of his own first name and also an anagram of "death by Ra". Imhotep, the mummy's real name, was the first famous Egyptian architect, living in the Old Kingdom, while Ankhesenamun was screen.
Boris Karloff was billed as KARLOFF on film posters, dropping his first name for several years during this period when his career was at its height before reverting back to both names by the time Son of Frankenstein (1939) was produced.
[edit] Sequels and remakes
Unlike Frankenstein and Dracula, and other, later Universal horror films, this film had no sequels, but rather was semi-remade in the 1940's b-film The Mummy's Hand (1940), and its sequels, The Mummy's Tomb (1942), The Mummy's Ghost (1944), The Mummy's Curse (1944), which were later spoofed in 1950's Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
In the late 1950s British Hammer Film Productions took up the Mummy theme, beginning with The Mummy (1959), which, rather than being a remake of the 1932 Karloff film, is based on Universal's The Mummy's Hand (1940) and The Mummy's Tomb (1942). Hammer's follow-ups -- The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), The Mummy's Shroud (1966) and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971) -- are unrelated to the earlier film or to each other.
The 1999 film The Mummy also suggests that it is a remake of the 1932 movie, and may be considered as such in that its titular character is Imhotep, resurrected from the dead by the Scroll of Thoth and out to find the present-day embodiment of the soul of his beloved Anck-su-namun, but develops there from a different story line, in common with most postmodern remakes of classic horror and science-fiction films. It spawned a sequel in 2001, The Mummy Returns, and a spin-off of that sequel, The Scorpion King, in 2002. A third sequel, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, is planned for 2008.
[edit] See also
- The Mummy (1959 film)
- The Mummy (1999 film)
- Boris Karloff filmography
[edit] External links
- The Mummy at the Internet Movie Database
- The Mummy at the All Movie Guide
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