Thrice Told Tales Halloween Edition: The Mummy

Ideally for Thrice Told tales, there are three adaptations of a story, a novel, or a piece of history. Sometimes, it’s an original film that’s remade twice.

There are more than three Mummy films.

According to Grok, there are over thirty films about mummies or that feature mummies as major plot devices, including (of course) luchadora films such as The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy. Scooby Doo in “Where’s My Mummy?” (2005) is also, of course, part of that list.

If we try to limit things to “serious” Mummy films? We start with a silent film from 1911, The Mummy and make our way to the 1980 mummy film, The Awakening, starring Chuck Heston and based on a Bram Stoker novel.

Fortunately, there is a better option for narrowing our options down. Universal made three movies titled The Mummy. The first was released in 1932, the second in 1999, and the third in 2017. While they share a title and a studio, I’d argue that each is an example of a different genre.

The Mummy (1932) - Genre: Horror

This Mummy was made back when Universal flew an airplane around the world in their logo. The year before this was made, the sixth-highest-grossing film from Universal was Dracula. The #1 film of the year before was Frankenstein, another Universal film. So Universal’s president at the time, Carl Laemmle Jr., decided to make more horror films, because he liked money.

The first idea was to make a film about Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, an occultist who claimed to have lived for centuries. His name was really Giuseppe Balsamo, and he was a con man. He sold the idea of his immortality, and that idea was the basis of this film.

Then another layer was added. Tukankhamun’s tomb was discovered in 1922, and all things Egypt were the rage. Combine the two ideas in a studio’s mind, add a horror element, and we have in this film – the story of an immortal mummy.

The film opens in Egypt in the 1920s. Archaeologists have discovered an ancient tomb, the burial place of Imhotep, a high priest who appears to have been mummified and buried alive with an inscription that marks him as cursed. Another relic is the Scroll of Thoth, which is a spell to bring the dead back to life.

An Egyptologist, Dr Sid Muller, takes the curse seriously and urges the archaeologists to be careful. But so that the rest of the plot can happen, no one listens to his advice. (Muller is played by Edward Van Sloan, who played Professor Van Helsing in Dracula and Dr. Waldman in Frankenstein previously.)

You may not be surprised to learn that the scroll is read and Imhotep is brought back to life as a living mummy, but many in the audience back in the day were. The moment when Boris Karloff, the Mummy, opens his eyes while wrapped and in his sarcophagus is iconic and still creepy.

Ten years later, Imhotep is no longer wrapped in bandaids and has taken the identity of an Egyptian historian, Ardath Bey. He goes to the archaeologists who discovered his tomb (well, not the one who saw Imhotep come to life, was driven mad, and interned in an insane asylum where he soon died), and tells them he may have the location of another tomb, that of the Princess Ankh-es-en-Amon. The archaeologists do find the tomb and donate all the items found in the tomb – including the body of the princess – to the Cairo Museum.

Ardath/Imhotep meets Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), whom he believes is the reincarnation of the princess. A flashback to ancient Egypt shows us that Imhotep was a high priest who, against the laws of the time, had an affair with the princess. It was because of this crime that he was buried alive.

He believes that if he kills Helen, mummifies her, and brings her back to life, he can live eternally with his princess. But Helen’s true love, archaeologist Frank Whemple (David Manners), finds out about Imhotep’s dastardly plan and wants to come to her rescue.

Will he come in time?

The Mummy wasn’t as successful as Frankenstein or Dracula, but it did make money. Like Frankenstein and Dracula, it made a cultural impact that continues to this day. (On the other hand, few remember the Best Picture winners of 1931 and 1932, Cimarron and Grand Hotel, respectively.)

Universal made five sequels to The Mummy:

The Mummy’s Hand (1940)

The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)

The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)

The Mummy’s Curse (1944)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Karloff was only in the first film. In later films, the Mummy was played by Tom Tyler, Lon Chaney Jr., and Eddie Parker. And though Frankenstein’s monster met the Wolfman, and they both met Dracula, none of them ever crossed paths with the Mummy in this era of Universal history.

The Mummy (1999) - Genre: Adventure

When Universal hired writer/director Stephen Sommers to remake The Mummy, he didn’t just look to that film for inspiration. He also considered Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). That film and its sequels were adventure films, but they also had elements of the supernatural and horror. Sommers wanted to capture the same sensibility.

This version opens with a flashback: Thebes in 1290 B.C. Again high priest Imhotep is having an affair, but this time with Pharaoh’s mistress. The two kill the Pharaoh when he discovers them together. Pharaoh’s bodyguards pursue them, the mistress commits suicide, Imhotep is cursed and buried alive with flesh-eating scarab beetles.

The film moves to Egypt in 1926. Librarian and aspiring Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) teams up with American adventurer, treasure hunter, and grave robber Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) to find the treasures of a Pharaoh's tomb. A group of Americans is also hunting for the tomb. They all come upon the tomb of Imhotep in the hidden City of the Dead, where Evelyn opens the Book of the Dead using a key that her brother has stolen and reads it aloud, quite accidentally bringing Imhotep back to life. And all hell breaks loose.

This mummy has powers that mummies in the black-and-white film era could only dream of. He can summon flesh-eating scarabs. He is able to take needed body parts from others for his own body (incidentally, and to his own satisfaction, killing each in horrifying fashion). He can create giant sandstorms and direct them.

In this film, Imhotep doesn’t think Evelyn is the reincarnated love of his life, but the High Priest believes he can use her as a human sacrifice to bring his lost love back to life. Can Rick arrive in time to stop him?

This film does have some plot points that correspond to the original film, and there are even some repeated lines of dialogue, but it’s a bigger film in many ways. The original had a running time of an hour and 13 minutes. This film is two hours and five minutes long. Its predecessor had limited settings and was rather claustrophobic at times. This film has big action set pieces at sea and in the desert. It has a lot of humor, while the original has a somber tone throughout.

And it worked. The film was a big hit. It led to several sequels:

The Mummy Returns (2001)

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

A prequel, The Scorpion King (2002), spawned three pretty bad direct-to-video sequels of its own.

The Mummy (2017) - Genre: Superhero Origin Story

A few years ago, there was one great dream of all film studios: to create (and profit from) a cinematic universe, all because of Marvel. Starting with Iron Man in 2008 through Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), anything with the Marvel label brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Other cinematic universes originated around the same time. The world of Harry Potter expanded into the world of Fantastic Beasts. Star Wars has sequels and prequels and multiple television series. DC Comics tried to expand its universe without much success.

The executives at Universal looked into their history and hoped to launch “The Dark Universe,” bringing all their classic monsters back for a new kind of superhero team. This film was an attempt to make that happen, and they went all out.

They hired the biggest, most bankable movie star to launch this effort: Tom Cruise.

This film opens (again) in ancient Egypt, but it doesn’t feature the High Priest Imhotep. Instead we have Princess Ahmanet as next in line to inherit her father, Pharaoh’s, throne. When his wife bears his son to inherit instead, Ahmanet aims to murder the baby boy who would take her place, along with the rest of the family. She is caught and mummified alive. Her sarcophagus is taken to another country far away and buried.

In Iraq, U. S. Army Sergeant Nick Morton (Cruise) finds the Princess’s tomb. And he, as one does, accidentally brings her back to life. The army tries to bring the body to England, but the Princess Mummy causes the plane to crash on the journey. Somehow, Morton, who was on the plane, survives the crash without a scratch.

So, Morton is brought to the Prodigium, a secret society devoted to the purpose of hunting down supernatural threats. The organization is led by Dr. Henry Jekyll.

Yes, that Dr. Henry Jekyll.

And the film is set in 2017.

They never explain how this character, who debuted in the 1886 novel, is a contemporary character played by Russell Crowe.

Obviously, the Prodigium is meant to be the equivalent of the top-secret organization Shield in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the goal was to make an Avengers Team out of the Universal Monsters, because in this film, Cruise/Morton battles a Mummy/Egyptian God whom he only defeats by becoming a Mummy/Egyptian God himself.

So, obviously, the goal was to make a Super Monster Team, starting with the Mummy and Jekyll and Hyde. They would presumably be joined by Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula and the Wolf Man, and, who knows, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, maybe?

But this film — which was truly abysmal (15% at Rotten Tomatoes) — lost the studio a load of money, and the Dark Universe as a combined monster force was dead.

Universal is still making remakes of their classic monsters (the rather woke, feminist The Invisible Man from 2020 is actually pretty good), but the idea of monster team-ups was dead.

At least they got The Mummy right two times out of the three.