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The Mummy (1932): Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, and Edward Van Sloan. Directed by Karl Freund, Screenplay by John L. Balderston, based on a story by Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer.

“The Mummy” is one classic monster that I don’t think all the sequels and remakes have done justice to. The 1999 Stephen Sommers film came closer than the others (I hate to say), at least elevating the “monster” from a shuffling, bandaged zombie, but all the silly adventure and CGI frankly gets in the way, for me anyway.

With the success of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein”, both based on literary properties, Universal went with a more original idea for their third monster outing. They contracted John Balderston, half of the team who’d written the “Dracula” stage play upon which the Bela Lugosi film was based, to work on an idea, originally titled “Cagliostro”, about a French mystic who keeps himself alive for 3000 years. Universal wanted to tweak things slightly to try and cash in on the stories of the curse of King Tut’s tomb that were going around, thus, “The Mummy” was born. It would star Boris Karloff, who, from “Frankenstein” and subsequent thrillers (”The Old Dark House” and “The Mask of Fu Manchu”), had become important enough to deserve one-name billing: “Karloff”.

What Karloff continued to explore in this Carl Laemmle Jr production, was the sympathetic monster, for the true core of the story is forbidden lost love that crosses the centuries. The iconic Mummy, one arm strapped to his chest, the other outstretched, appears, only very briefly, inanimate, at the beginning of the film, then, only as a frightening off-screen presence as it disappears into the desert night, yet that is the image that’s remembered by people when they think of the film. It was director Karl Freund’s decision to not go all-out with the monster in this film, instead, leaving the horror to the imagination and nightmares in the shadows. Freund, who’d lensed Todd Browning’s “Dracula”, now let loose in his first stint as director, rather than D.O.P., making, possibly, the most expressionistic horror film yet made. The camera moves a lot more in this film, and it gives a sense of ungency and travel that’s missing from Browning’s film.

Karloff’s performance, as Imhotep, a.k.a., Ardath Bey, is brooding, yet sympathetic. You can see that Karloff is working from within the character, with his tragic misdirected determination where he could, just as easily, have done a standard villain interpretation. It’s almost like he’s ignoring the script and the inevitable outcome of the story which lends an additional layer of sympathy to the character. Karloff doesn’t play the villain as a villain, but as a hero. It was a risky choice, but it paid off and many feel, myself included, that this was Karloff’s finest role.

Of “The Mummy”, film historian William K. Everson wrote that it was “the closest that Hollywood ever came to creating a poem out of horror.”

Get it at Amazon:
The Mummy - The Legacy Collection (The Mummy/Mummy’s Hand/Mummy’s Tomb/Mummy’s Ghost/Mummy’s Curse)

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