Plenty of critics have covered the fine cinematography of The Mummy, with its links to German Expressionism via director Karl Freund. Freund’s credits as a cinematographer include Metropolis. Later in life, he perfected the three-camera coverage used to shoot I Love Lucy, and virtually every sit-com afterword. An accomplished guy.And there’s no denying that The Mummy looks killer. Just a few years after the advent of talkies, The Mummy stands in a privileged place. The camera movement is as deliberate and stately as Boris Karloff in the titular role, and visually The Mummy seems as beautifully luxuriant as the best of the silent pictures. At the same time, unlike, say, Universal’s 1931 Dracula, it’s fully conversant as a talkie.
But I’m here to talk about The Mummy’s place as a horror story, and as one of the great classic monster movies put together by Universal Pictures. The Mummy, in 1932, follows right after Dracula and Frankenstein, both of which were released in 1931 – a bumper crop year for monster flicks. But more than its distinguished predecessors, The Mummy gives the best interplay of sympathy and revulsion. And that's what gives the old Universal monster movies their tragic dignity.
In contrast, horror movies today can’t seem to make that interplay work – nor do they try. There are are earlier examples, but ever since Jaws (1975) and Halloween (1978), the monster, whether it be beast or alien or serial killer, has tended to be a shark in spirit. Killing is just its function, and sympathy is out of the question. There are a few glorious exceptions – like Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), and An American Werewolf in London (1981) – but even these exceptions seem to prove the rule. The Fly is a remake, and An American Werewolf in London is a throwback to a classic monster of old. Post-Jaws, it seems that our feelings about the monster have become pretty straightforward. In Aliens, when Ripley suggests nuking the alien hive from orbit, no one in the audience has mixed feelings about it. The correct response is “Fuck yeah!” – and only the bad guy thinks otherwise.
In the wake of Jaws, even the great more-or-less human monsters of the 80’s franchises, e.g. Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, become relentless machines. As with Michael Myers, who, we are assured by his shrink, is pure EVIL, killing is more than what they do – it defines what they are. Sure, they get backstories full of tragedy and loss, there’s the occasional smattering of psychobabble, and Freddy cracks jokes, but no one can sympathize with them – and empathy is an absurdity. The heroine of Friday the 13th Part 2 expressed pity for Jason, but you better believe it was before she met him. Rarely do we get that heady mix of the old movies – pity and fear, sympathy and revulsion, horror and sorrow – all in the same moment.And with that sympathy-revulsion balance in mind, one can see the Universal monsters as a series of experiments in the allocation of that balance. I don’t mean to say that only Universal movies showed that balance – old horror movies in general are more likely to have room for complicated feelings about the monster. Nor do I mean to say that Universal, or studios in general, were running a conscious experiment. Like the brainless but purposeful starfish, studios lack centralized nervous systems.
And yet I have to narrow the field down somehow. I’ll list a few of the Universal monsters here in roughly the order of least to most sympathetic – although in doing so I know I open myself up to nitpicking.
Isn't that cool? After all these years, you know who they are.
Dracula
Dr. Jack Griffin, the Invisible Man
Imhotep the Mummy
Larry Talbot, the Wolf Man
The Creature from the Black Lagoon (aka the Gill-Man)
Frankenstein's Monster
As characters, it’s Imhotep and Larry Talbot who interest me the most. While Count Dracula and the Invisible Man are too vicious to enlist our sympathies, and the Creature and Frankenstein’s Monster are pitiable victims, the Mummy and the Wolf Man provide something rare and rich. We feel damn sorry for them, but there’s something else too.
Because make no mistake, Imhotep is a monster.
Because make no mistake, Imhotep is a monster.
In Imhotep, I would argue that the balance is most perfect, and so vital that you can’t say Imhotep is 50% sympathetic, and 50% evil – Imhotep is 100% sympathetic, and 100% evil.Imhotep, freed by unwitting archeologists after thousands of years of imprisonment, sets about immediately looking for Anck-es-en-Amon, the woman he loved. He searches single-mindedly for her tomb, so that he can resurrect her from the dead – the blasphemous crime that got him cursed and buried alive in the first place. So much for the system’s attempt at rehabilitation.
But he finds that her soul is now in a new body, reincarnated as Helen (Zita Johann), a half-Egyptian, half-English lady, who all her life has for some reason longed for the Egypt of old.
Despite her strange nostalgia for a civilization 2000 years dead, Helen’s a living woman – with a real life in the present. Imhotep, never one to sweat the details, is ready to start up right where they left off, even though Helen can’t remember who he is. Completely obsessed, he’s willing to kill Helen in a lovely old ritual, so that he can use his dark magic to make her like him – in “the great night of terror and triumph.” From there, I suppose, Imhotep imagines that they will ride off into the Egyptian sunset as Mr. and Mrs. Mummy. To put it mildly, he’s a hopeless romantic.
Yes, the second half of the movie leaves me a little cold. But the first half is pretty damn near perfect. Much of the movie's greatness comes from the way John Balderston’s script builds on, and transforms, the story of Dracula. No surprise – Balderston worked on the script for Dracula. But to understand how Balderston’s transformation makes a better Dracula story than the 1931 Dracula, we have to take a step back and look at the original novel.
In Bram Stoker’s novel, Transylvania might as well be the ends of the earth. We forget that to the original reading audience of Victorian Brits, Eastern Europe was distant, dark, primitive, and strange – the kind of place to encounter a truly ancient and frightening evil. To Americans, for whom all of Europe seems rooted in history, and all firmly in the category of “the West,” it’s easy to forget how the Brits saw themselves vis-à-vis the peasants of Transylvania, which to Brits might as well have been a different planet. Bram Stoker’s reading audience saw themselves as the most modern of people, and so the clash between Western European heroes and an Eastern European prince of the undead has the weight of West vs. East, New vs. Old, Rational vs. Supernatural.
But some of these themes get watered down if you’re not a Brit living in 1897, the year Dracula was published. Even by 1932, the world was a much smaller place – the Great War had been fought, and the airplane had been invented. Eastern Europe was a little less distant, a little more modern, and a lot less exotic. The Mummy preserves and heightens the themes of the original Dracula by moving the action deeper into the East, into a place far more mysterious and ancient than Transylvania. In the last decade, Howard Carter’s excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb had created an international sensation. “The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb” was a bit more than the stuff of fringe speculation – the New York Times published multiple stories about the purported curse, and everyone knew about the untimely deaths of those connected to Howard Carter’s expedition. These events, as much as the marvelous treasures retrieved from Tutankhamen’s tomb, lent Pharaonic Egypt a romantic and seriously sinister air. Egypt, in short, was hot, and the perfect setting for the update to the Dracula story.
And then there’s Helen, the Mummy’s love interest/victim, and a hell of an improvement over Stoker’s Mina Murray, or the incomparably bland Mina from the 1931 Dracula. We pass over the strangeness of a 1932 movie with a character of mixed ethnicity as the leading lady - ideas of race as filtered through a 1932 movie are way beyond the scope of this blog. To return. Helen. Within a minute of being introduced to Helen, we hear her shrink refer to her as his most interesting patient. Just like that, we learn she’s in therapy, and thankfully the tantalizing hint is allowed to stand on its own without a lame scene in the shrink’s office, or a ponderous reason as to why Helen sees a shrink in the first place. Without a therapy scene, the character is so strongly drawn that we get a good idea of what she might say on the shrink’s couch. Helen is caught between worlds – with an English father and an Egyptian mother, she has a deep dislike for modern Egypt, and wishes dreamily that she could live in the ancient past. By making the heroine a woman of mixed race who longs for a civilization that ended 2000 years ago, the themes of Old vs. New and East vs. West are forcefully embodied in a key character, and Helen’s plight parallels Imhotep’s own emotional paralysis. But the differences between Helen and Imhotep are ultimately more important than the similarities. By the end of the movie, Helen, unlike Imhotep, learns that she has to move on.
Interestingly enough, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, takes its emotional heart not from Bram Stoker’s novel, but from The Mummy. The 1992 film has a kind of love story between Mina Murray and the Count, with a reincarnation backstory. This plot element has no place at all in the original novel. These additions, which drive the Coppola film, are taken from The Mummy. So The Mummy, which can be seen as an adaptation of the Dracula story set further East, is in turn pillaged freely by the 1992 Dracula update, despite the Coppola movie’s claim (in its title) to be a more faithful rendition of the original Stoker novel.
Horror is an incestuous genre.
And without the love story, the monster story falls flat. I’m not a big fan of the 1931 Dracula, which has its moments but also has long stretches of nothing special. As for the novel, I can't argue with its influence. Nor can I deny that there are a few truly spectacular moments. But I do find it an interminable read.
On the other hand, The Mummy I’ve seen at least a dozen times. Imhotep is as evil as the Count – of that there’s no doubt. His attempted resurrection of his love in ancient Egypt caused the deaths of dozens of others – because those involved in digging his tomb were executed as a precaution, and those who executed the diggers also had to be executed – but Imhotep recounts these events without so much as a twinge of guilt. Obsessed with resurrecting Anck-es-en-Amon, Imhotep accepts any collateral damage without pause. He casually kills a museum guard, and the mere sight of him is enough to send a young archeologist to the madhouse for life. But Imhotep keeps lurching along, and by his manner we know that guilt is not part of his psychological makeup.
So why do I feel sorry for the guy? Many great ghost stories revolve around the idea of a ghost being essentially stuck – stuck in a place, and stuck to a moment of suffering long after the moment is over. Ghost stories often start with a tragedy so painful that moving on becomes impossible. The Mummy has flesh, but he’s as stuck as any ghost – literally stuck in a place, for thousands of years, as he was buried alive in a tomb and hidden in the desert. Stuck in his body, too: Karloff’s performance and Jack Pierce’s magnificent make up job combine to create a man who’s been on this earth way too long. While Anck-es-en-Amon has passed into a fresh new body for the new era, Imhotep is still lugging around the same sad shell, a frightening yet oddly touching combination of powerful and fragile. And of course, Imhotep is stuck emotionally, for there is no way to move on from his love for Anck-es-en-Amon.
What an incredible story! The strength of fantasy is its ability to use magic and myth to illuminate psychological states, or truths about the human condition. The Mummy captures the pain and soul-warping effects of grief and lost love.
Imhotep’s emotion has ossified into something deeply unhealthy, and yet the emotion in question is love. As a man trapped by his own love, Imhotep gets some beautiful lines. When talking to Helen, we get an idea for why they fell in love back in ancient Egypt: “Anck-es-en-Amon, my love has lasted longer than the temples of our gods. No man ever suffered as I did for you.” In that statement, you have everything you need to know about Imhotep. A poetic instinct, fierce loyalty, and fidelity. Yet he uses her old name, as if the past few millennia haven’t happened at all, or at any rate don’t matter. And Imhotep finishes on a note of self-absorption, and more than a little menace. The beautiful poetic statement about his love’s endurance is followed hard with the statement about his suffering, and the implication is pretty damn clear: Not only are we meant for each other, but Baby, you owe me big-time.
Never mind that the Anck-es-en-Amon of old, if she was worthy of such devotion, would never have asked Imhotep to endure that awful curse for her sake. Bringing her back from the dead, Imhotep’s original crime, was not her idea. Causing the deaths of so many – not her idea. Enduring the millennia in the tomb – during which, I've always imagined, Imhotep might have been somehow conscious – was not her idea. But for a man in love, it was the only option. I did it for you, is what Imhotep says to her in so many ways, again and again. Seeing her face again has been the only thought that sustained him for thousands of years, but his love makes few considerations for what is right or what is good. Helen feels strangely drawn to him, and his suffering would move a stone to sorrow, but in the end the only sane choice is to reject the poor bastard.
The predicament is powerful. Imhotep is evil, but you can’t say he has no heart. It’s that combination that ties me in knots every time I see the movie: the soul of a killer, and the soul of poet, and they’re the same old soul, lumbering on in one frail body. It’s characters like Imhotep who showcase the Chinese belief that a person has multiple souls – some good and some evil, some animal and some sublime, and from their interaction comes the human personality. Imhotep has, in a word, vitality, and in this movie above all others Boris Karloff gets to show off his astounding skills as an actor.
As a final note, I have to geek out about the moment when Imhotep first wakes. It’s one of my favorite moments in horror. Jack Pierce’s makeup job gives Karloff’s face an unforgettable network of wrinkles, as if he’s been aging continuously for 3700 years. The makeup and wrapping job took hours, but the filmmakers had the good sense to keep the walking offscreen, and it’s the only time in the movie that we see Karloff in the linen wrappings we now associate with mummy flicks. While an oblivious young archeologist goes about his business, Imhotep’s eyes slowly open. In black and white, the wrinkles of Imhotep’s face turn into something like a topographical map of canyons and ravines, and the effect is astonishing. The gleam in Karloff’s dark, half-open eyes is just the reflection of simple light – without CGI embellishment – but in its subtle intensity it contains the contradictions of Imhotep himself. Pain, ancient weariness, determination that outlasts death, love and obsession – there’s room for all of them in that uncanny vitality peering out from the desiccated face. These complexities make us sympathize with Imhotep, without ever losing our sense that no matter what kind of man he was all those millennia ago in Egypt, by now he is deeply and irredeemably evil.
What character these days is so alive?
Interestingly enough, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, takes its emotional heart not from Bram Stoker’s novel, but from The Mummy. The 1992 film has a kind of love story between Mina Murray and the Count, with a reincarnation backstory. This plot element has no place at all in the original novel. These additions, which drive the Coppola film, are taken from The Mummy. So The Mummy, which can be seen as an adaptation of the Dracula story set further East, is in turn pillaged freely by the 1992 Dracula update, despite the Coppola movie’s claim (in its title) to be a more faithful rendition of the original Stoker novel.
Horror is an incestuous genre.
And without the love story, the monster story falls flat. I’m not a big fan of the 1931 Dracula, which has its moments but also has long stretches of nothing special. As for the novel, I can't argue with its influence. Nor can I deny that there are a few truly spectacular moments. But I do find it an interminable read.
On the other hand, The Mummy I’ve seen at least a dozen times. Imhotep is as evil as the Count – of that there’s no doubt. His attempted resurrection of his love in ancient Egypt caused the deaths of dozens of others – because those involved in digging his tomb were executed as a precaution, and those who executed the diggers also had to be executed – but Imhotep recounts these events without so much as a twinge of guilt. Obsessed with resurrecting Anck-es-en-Amon, Imhotep accepts any collateral damage without pause. He casually kills a museum guard, and the mere sight of him is enough to send a young archeologist to the madhouse for life. But Imhotep keeps lurching along, and by his manner we know that guilt is not part of his psychological makeup.
So why do I feel sorry for the guy? Many great ghost stories revolve around the idea of a ghost being essentially stuck – stuck in a place, and stuck to a moment of suffering long after the moment is over. Ghost stories often start with a tragedy so painful that moving on becomes impossible. The Mummy has flesh, but he’s as stuck as any ghost – literally stuck in a place, for thousands of years, as he was buried alive in a tomb and hidden in the desert. Stuck in his body, too: Karloff’s performance and Jack Pierce’s magnificent make up job combine to create a man who’s been on this earth way too long. While Anck-es-en-Amon has passed into a fresh new body for the new era, Imhotep is still lugging around the same sad shell, a frightening yet oddly touching combination of powerful and fragile. And of course, Imhotep is stuck emotionally, for there is no way to move on from his love for Anck-es-en-Amon.What an incredible story! The strength of fantasy is its ability to use magic and myth to illuminate psychological states, or truths about the human condition. The Mummy captures the pain and soul-warping effects of grief and lost love.
Imhotep’s emotion has ossified into something deeply unhealthy, and yet the emotion in question is love. As a man trapped by his own love, Imhotep gets some beautiful lines. When talking to Helen, we get an idea for why they fell in love back in ancient Egypt: “Anck-es-en-Amon, my love has lasted longer than the temples of our gods. No man ever suffered as I did for you.” In that statement, you have everything you need to know about Imhotep. A poetic instinct, fierce loyalty, and fidelity. Yet he uses her old name, as if the past few millennia haven’t happened at all, or at any rate don’t matter. And Imhotep finishes on a note of self-absorption, and more than a little menace. The beautiful poetic statement about his love’s endurance is followed hard with the statement about his suffering, and the implication is pretty damn clear: Not only are we meant for each other, but Baby, you owe me big-time.
Never mind that the Anck-es-en-Amon of old, if she was worthy of such devotion, would never have asked Imhotep to endure that awful curse for her sake. Bringing her back from the dead, Imhotep’s original crime, was not her idea. Causing the deaths of so many – not her idea. Enduring the millennia in the tomb – during which, I've always imagined, Imhotep might have been somehow conscious – was not her idea. But for a man in love, it was the only option. I did it for you, is what Imhotep says to her in so many ways, again and again. Seeing her face again has been the only thought that sustained him for thousands of years, but his love makes few considerations for what is right or what is good. Helen feels strangely drawn to him, and his suffering would move a stone to sorrow, but in the end the only sane choice is to reject the poor bastard.
The predicament is powerful. Imhotep is evil, but you can’t say he has no heart. It’s that combination that ties me in knots every time I see the movie: the soul of a killer, and the soul of poet, and they’re the same old soul, lumbering on in one frail body. It’s characters like Imhotep who showcase the Chinese belief that a person has multiple souls – some good and some evil, some animal and some sublime, and from their interaction comes the human personality. Imhotep has, in a word, vitality, and in this movie above all others Boris Karloff gets to show off his astounding skills as an actor.
As a final note, I have to geek out about the moment when Imhotep first wakes. It’s one of my favorite moments in horror. Jack Pierce’s makeup job gives Karloff’s face an unforgettable network of wrinkles, as if he’s been aging continuously for 3700 years. The makeup and wrapping job took hours, but the filmmakers had the good sense to keep the walking offscreen, and it’s the only time in the movie that we see Karloff in the linen wrappings we now associate with mummy flicks. While an oblivious young archeologist goes about his business, Imhotep’s eyes slowly open. In black and white, the wrinkles of Imhotep’s face turn into something like a topographical map of canyons and ravines, and the effect is astonishing. The gleam in Karloff’s dark, half-open eyes is just the reflection of simple light – without CGI embellishment – but in its subtle intensity it contains the contradictions of Imhotep himself. Pain, ancient weariness, determination that outlasts death, love and obsession – there’s room for all of them in that uncanny vitality peering out from the desiccated face. These complexities make us sympathize with Imhotep, without ever losing our sense that no matter what kind of man he was all those millennia ago in Egypt, by now he is deeply and irredeemably evil.
What character these days is so alive?
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