Weirdhouse Cinema: The Mummy (1932)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we're going to be talking about the 1932 universal monster movie,
The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund, starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johan,
and David manners and Edward van Sloan, the original mummy,
the original universal mummy, um, a movie that I would

(00:39):
have sworn I had seen before, but after going back
and watching it for this week, it felt so fresh
to me. I wonder if I've ever actually seen the
whole thing. I think maybe I had not, maybe I'd
only seen like the first 10 minutes or something. because
it was like a whole new experience, and I was
very pleasantly surprised. Yeah, same.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I don't think this is a film I'd ever watched
all the way through. In general, the Mummy movies are
not universal horror films that I've seen a lot of.
I'm very familiar with some of the images from them,
but it's not like the Frankenstein films or... the creature
films where I've definitely spent some time in those franchises.

(01:21):
But I've always been a fan of mummy movies in general. Actually,
on my desk here, one second. I actually have this
little guy. It's a little mummy dude, and his face
spins around and makes a scary face. I have no
idea where this came from. Probably a Happy Meal or something,
and probably not a Happy Meal I ever ate. Somehow
it came into my possession, and I've just held on

(01:42):
to him as a little... little mascot for the table here.
So I love mummy movies. We've never done a mummy
movie up until this point on Weird House Cinema. And
so I kind of anguish back and forth, like which
one should we do? And just reading them, you know,
different receptions to different films. And not everyone is like 100%
on board with the first mummy movie for reasons we'll

(02:03):
probably get into, but I'm really glad we picked this one.
You know, I ultimately decided let's just go back to
the original. Let's just go back to 1932. and watch it,
the original Universal Mummy film.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
This is usually considered the third of the big Universal
monster movies in chronological order. It's not the third, like,
Universal horror movie made. There were others in between. But
the order of the big ones is the Todd Browning Dracula.
It's 1931, I think. Yeah, 31. And then the James
Whale Frankenstein. So Dracula, Frankenstein, and then Mummy comes third.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah. Then comes Mummy. And, you know, if you're
going to compare the Mummy... to dracula and frankenstein which
we will do i mean you i can see you
can definitely make an argument for saying that it is
the weaker of the three um but we're also dealing
with some very strong films here you know real trendsetters
that stand out in the 1930s and still stand out
today like these are films with serious legacy behind them.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
I will say it in some ways uh is behind
the other two, but I think it transcends the original
Dracula in some, uh, cinematography elements. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
It is a gorgeous film.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah. Uh, so, uh, things, wait, well, I should probably
say this at the top. Also, if I sound weird today,
I've been sick the past few days. So I, I
don't know how much that's affecting my voice, but I,
I did want to explain that I have not been
affected by a mummy's curse, just regular virus as far
as I know. Um, uh, but yeah, uh, putting that aside,
I wanted to, kick things off just talking about some

(03:36):
of the things that really struck me about the original
mummy on this viewing. One was I was surprised at
the characterization of the monster itself. So I wanted to
talk about the distinction between the mummy as zombie versus
the speaking mummy character. So sometimes in horror movies, a

(04:00):
reanimated mummy is is presented as like a shambling, decayed
type of undead creature. Though I think usually much more
powerful than your typical zombie. You might think of a
mummy as a super zombie. So it's a zombie wrapped
in bandages with incredible strength, often surrounded by an aura

(04:23):
of malicious magic that somehow works its evil will. Other times,
the mummy does not remain in this shriveled undead form,
but it takes on a new appearance and it regains
something of its voice and personality. It sort of becomes

(04:44):
or partially becomes again the person that the mummy was
in life. And this film is very much in the
latter category. The mummy only appears as a mummy, meaning
withered and wrapped in bandages, and in shots at the
very beginning and the very ending of the film. And
the mummy character, Imhotep, is better thought of as a

(05:08):
kind of sophisticated otherworldly sorcerer who is totally in command
during dialogue scenes with the protagonists. He's very calm. He's
very in control. He's very threatening. But he does not
threaten the characters by wandering up and strangling them like
some of these zombie mummies do. He threatens with manipulation,

(05:30):
with illusions and curses. And by having mastery of this
long dormant strain of powerful magic, a kind of magic
that is interesting in the way it's presented in the movie,
because it's like something that used to be a more
common part of this world, but it has gone away.
It has gone and been hidden. And now it is

(05:51):
being used once again, like a revival.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
And so I'm really glad the movie goes this route.
There are mummy movies more in the first category, the
mummy as zombie that I like and are entertaining. I
haven't seen it in a while, but I remember really
liking the 1959 hammer mummy, which is directed by Terrence Fisher.
That one's got Christopher Lee as the mummy chorus and
Peter Cushing is the hero. And in that movie, Christopher

(06:18):
Lee's mummy is more in the zombie mode. He's a silent,
shambling machine of terror and revenge. But I really like
that in this movie, the mummy is this urbane and
interesting articulate villain.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, I think it's so fascinating that so much in
the mummy franchise and the mummy subgenre to follow this
film is based on what is mostly implied and only
partially shown in the first 10 minutes of this film.
And there's probably something to be said about how much
better these 10 minutes are than many a whole mummy

(06:56):
movie out there in the world, you know? But yeah,
this is, for the most part, the mummy character, Imhotep,
that we get in this film. Yeah, to your point,
he is a sorcerer. And the thing he is wrapped
in is various arcane magical properties that, as he points out,

(07:17):
make him impervious sometimes. to our protagonists. At one point
he's like, you know that you cannot harm me. You know,
I am, you know, I walk protected ground because of
the ancient magic that I invoke.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
I really love that scene you're talking about. I love the,
I love the restraint in it. Like there's, it's this
moment of impasse between our villain and our heroes where
the villain knows that he could kill them and he
knows that they cannot harm him. and he's not a
nice guy. He's not, you know, he's not like being merciful,

(07:51):
but he is showing a kind of restraint. He's like,
I'm about to walk away from this conversation, but you
know that I can kill you and you can't kill me. Um,
so you, you, you need to think about this and
then give me what I want. Uh, so yeah, interesting
to think about what that, what that restraint means in
the moment for that character. Yeah. Another thread that I

(08:12):
want to open up here is the idea of the
mummy as Dracula in Egypt. Uh, I don't want to
diminish it by saying this because I really liked the
mummy and I think there's a lot of originality in it,
but I think it's quite obvious that this movie was
based on the underlying machinery of Dracula, the Todd Browning, Dracula,

(08:33):
the situation, uh, the plot mechanics, the set of characters,
and even some, uh, cinematography choices overlap significantly. Uh, they
even have some actors play the same roles in the story.
Like for, uh, the main example I'm thinking of is
the Edward Van Sloan character. So in these two movies,

(08:54):
Edward Van Sloan plays Van Helsing. He plays Van Helsing
and Dracula. And then he basically plays Van Helsing again
in the mummy, but he's got a different name. He's Dr. Mu, uh,
Mueller here. In both cases, he is an elderly professor
who has intimate familiarity with the occult. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Very much the same sort of character. And then the
basic central plot, like some sort of an exotic and
charismatic foreigner has cast his spell over the female love
interest of the picture. Some basic elements are in play.
And as we'll discuss, part of this is that Universal's

(09:34):
coming off of the success of Dracula and Frankenstein. And
they're like, let's do another. Let's do one that taps into,
you know, Egyptomania and things that have been happening in
the world concerning ancient Egypt. And then, like, basically the
conversation is like, oh, okay, what book do you want
to base it on?

Speaker 3 (09:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Find me one.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Begins.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
And so eventually they, they just kind of have to
build out a fresh plot and it makes sense that
they would draw from what worked in Dracula.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Right. So the mummy I think has, has clear inputs
from Dracula also from Frankenstein and then from other sources
that we can talk about in a bit. Uh, but, uh,
another thing that I thought was interesting is, um, It's
not just the plot contents and the characters that are similar.
There are these similar shots and stylistic choices. One I

(10:25):
was really thinking about was that both Dracula and the
mummy use these iconic close-ups of the fiend's face in
shadow mostly, but with just the eyes illuminated, with the
eyes kind of glowing. So Rob, I've got pictures in
the outline for you to look at here of both
these shots. You remember in Dracula, there's that closeup of

(10:47):
Bela Lugosi where it looks like they're shining a bright
light into his eyes through like holes in a cutout
or something. It's just his eyes that are glowing. I
think the mummy version of this shot is a much
more refined version of the effect. It looks cool in Dracula,
but in the mummy, this shot is just gorgeous. It's

(11:09):
like this soft shadow all around the rest of the face.
And the eyes have this subtle glowing effect where even
though the film is in black and white, somehow the
eyes look yellow. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
The effect is perfected in The Mummy. And it makes sense.
Karl Freund, as we'll discuss, worked on both films, but
he directed The Mummy. And so this was his baby.
This was his first directorial credit for a feature film.
He really wanted it to go well. And so, of course,
he's going to pull out some of the same tricks again.

(11:41):
but he's going to take them to the next level
and beyond.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Another thing I was thinking, so you were pointing out
the similarity with Dracula of like, you know, uh, an
other figure, a figure considered exotic by the characters or
by the audience sort of comes into, comes into the story.
But another way that I think you could think of
it like Dracula, uh, is that Dracula has this dynamic
of the new world goes into the old world, and

(12:07):
then the old world comes into the new world. And
I think you could say the same thing is implied
by the story of the mummy.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, very much so. And really becomes even more heightened
and focused because of our relationship with ancient Egypt and
this ongoing fascination that the modern world, whenever the modern
world is, has with ancient Egypt.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
There's another really interesting thing I noticed about the mummy.
And this is that there are elements of feedback on
to the sort of meta lore of Dracula. So despite
the fact that the mummy is in some ways, clearly
a retread of Dracula, it brings in novel elements that

(12:52):
end up becoming part of how people understand Dracula, like
later versions of Dracula. I think most notably the reincarnated
lover plot. So this shows up in later tellings of
the Dracula story, very notably in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula
adaptation in 1992 with Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder. So

(13:15):
in this version of Dracula, you get this misty theatrical
prologue establishing Dracula's backstory as a 15th century Romanian prince
who is fighting a war against the Ottoman Empire. And
in this opening, uh, Dracula's beloved Elizabeth dies by suicide
when she receives false news that Dracula has died in battle.

(13:39):
And then when he gets back from, from the war, uh,
he learns of her death and Dracula is so overwhelmed
with grief and rage that he curses God and is
transformed into a vampire. And then in the main part
of the story, uh, When Dracula travels to England, he
encounters Mina Murray, the fiance of Jonathan Harker, and he

(14:00):
discovers that she is somehow the reincarnation of Elisabetta, his
great love. Winona Ryder plays both characters. So in the
midst of all the vampire hunting and biting and stuff
in the middle of the movie, there is also this
tragic love story. Dracula wants Mina to come away with

(14:20):
him and love him once again. feels conflicted. She feels
a powerful attraction to the count and sort of half
knows him, but also because he's in demonic form, their
love is cursed. And their love, if consummated, would mean
Mina's destruction. To be with him, she has to become

(14:42):
a vampire too, giving up her life and her immortal soul.
It's very interesting and in some ways now core part
of the Dracula story, despite the fact that this plot
is nowhere to be found in the original Dracula novel.
It's not there in Bram Stoker, and it is not
present in the 1931 Universal Dracula with Bela Lugosi. In

(15:04):
both of these, Dracula's interest in Mina is 100% predatory.
There's no love. There may be a kind of threatening
sexual interest, but there's no mutual love between them at all,
and there's no backstory between them. That's right.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
This idea, this reincarnation theme, I think doesn't get introduced
to Dracula storytelling until 1974. If I'm to understand correctly,
the Jack Palance Dracula film, in which Jack Palance plays Dracula, this,
I think, is the first film to reintroduce explore this
concept and incidentally this this adaptation of dracula was written

(15:42):
by richard.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Matheson yeah i i was reading around and i came
across the same claim it seems like people are saying
that's the first direct dracula adaptation that has this storyline
though it does show up in earlier uh vampire storytelling
like apparently it's a plot in uh dark shadows and
And even if you'll recall, uh, in, uh, in Blackula, the,

(16:06):
the reincarnated lover, uh, which comes earlier, that's 1972 though. Again,
Blackula is not a direct adaptation of Dracula, kind of
a riff on it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
But you're right. It just becomes kind of the established
lore of Dracula and Dracula like stories, like even in
Dungeons and Dragons, uh, Strahd, the, the first vampire, uh,
in the Ravenloft settings, um, That's a part of his
story as well. This idea of a lost love and
reincarnation and always looking for her, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
So it'd be, it's, it is so, uh, attractive as
part of the story. It becomes a core Drac lore,
even though it is not in the novel and not
in the first big movie adaptation. However, it is a
plot element in the mummy. This reincarnated lover thing is
that the main motivation of the villain is So here

(16:56):
we've got Dracula in Egypt. The Dracula character is Imhotep.
And instead of simply drinking blood, what he wants is love.
His primary motivation is the resurrection or the sort of
magical instantiation of his lover from thousands of years before,
the princess Anxanaman, a character who has seemingly been reincarnated

(17:22):
in the modern day as the movie's female lead. Helen Grosvenor,
played by Zita Johan. So, this reincarnated lover subplot shows
up here in The Mummy, which is borrowing a lot
from Dracula, and then later becomes a common and even
expected feature of retellings of Dracula itself. Such an interesting

(17:46):
circle of storytelling. There's one more thing I want to
talk about quickly before we move on here, and that
is sort of the emotional characterization or salience of the
different universal monsters. Uh, basically I want to talk about
the fact that Dracula is hot and Imhotep is cold,
which is ironic given that they're, uh, given that their

(18:10):
motivations are kind of the opposite of what you would
expect based on those, uh, those affective alignments. Like Bela
Lugosi's Dracula is, is suave, and there is clearly an
element of sexuality about him. He seems to have flaming passions,
like we see him become angry, and he is quickly

(18:31):
able to suppress it, but there are these flashes of
anger in him. Imhotep, on the other hand, is cold intellectualism.
He is a strategic, cerebral villain with a tightly controlled,
unemotional affect. And yet, Imhotep's primary motivation is romantic love,

(18:53):
even though it is like filtered through like twisted and
ruthless means. But the main thing he wants is, is
romantic love. He wants his lover back. Whereas Dracula is merely,
you know, a cold and opportunistic predator. And so I
think it's just kind of interesting that you're getting the
opposite of what you might expect here. Like it reminds

(19:14):
me of, uh, similarly contradictory characters like the Batman villain Mr. Freeze,
whose personality is icy intellectualism, but his primary motivation is love.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, especially the version of Mr. Freeze that we got
in the old Batman animated series. That one absolutely defined
these qualities.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
I'm not thinking about the Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, I guess I don't remember that one well enough.
I think they at least entertained some of that, right?
They still had the, like, frozen wife subplot, but maybe
not as icily realized.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, it's more the characterization that's different. He's just using
a lot of puns. He's a silly man.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Now, coming back to the comparison to Frankenstein, I'll also
point out that The Mummy also kind of forecasts what
we're going to get in 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, with
a not-altogether-human or not-altogether-living villain plotting to obtain not a
mere human love interest, but someone who is of his
own kind, an Eve to his Adam. Uh, this is

(20:16):
of course something that wasn't really, it's not utilized in
the original Frankenstein film. It is in the Frankenstein novel,
but it doesn't get wrapped into cinematic portrayals until bride
and 35.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah. Though, though I would make a pretty big distinction
there also, because while the creature in Frankenstein and in
bride of Frankenstein is, um, frightening and disgusting. He's also pitiable.
Like he's sympathetic. Whereas Imhotep is on the whole, not
a sympathetic character. Like his, he, he is ruthless and

(20:50):
cold and, and just a merciless killer.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
All right.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
Uh, just a few quick notes about the importance of
this film in overall mummy fiction. Uh, this is coming from, uh,
one of my favorite texts on Egyptomania. It's the book
Egyptomania history of fascination, obsession, and fantasy, uh, by Ronald H. Fritz,
or Fritz, I'm not sure how to pronounce that offhand, F-R-I-T-Z-E.
You can look up this book and get it in

(21:16):
all formats.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
It's a great read.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
But the author here points out that mummy fiction as
a whole has a larger cinematic footprint than a literary one. Still,
the genre does begin well before the 1930s in the
writings of authors like Jane Webb Loudon, Edgar Allan Poe,
Graham Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Outside of Stoker's treatment, however,

(21:39):
mummies tend to be less evil in these treatments and
more ambivalent in their general demeanor. And if you want
to look up any of these stories, like the Conan
Doyle story is The Ring of Thoth from 1890. There's
Lot No. 249 from 1892. This is the one that
was realized in Tales from the Dark Side, the movie,

(22:01):
to some extent, which does have a pretty frightening mummy
in it at one point. And then Stoker's version is
The Jewel of the Seven Stars from 1903.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Never read any of those, though I have seen The
Tales from the Dark Side. I'd imagine that is pretty
significantly altered in the adaptation. I believe so, yes.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
And the author here does single out The Mummy, or
A Tale of the 22nd Century, by Jane C. Loudon
from 1827. is perhaps the earliest known long work concerning
a reanimated mummy. And other examples include Theophile Gartner's The
Mummy's Foot and Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 story Some Words

(22:45):
with a Mummy.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
What are the words? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
I haven't read that one, but one wonders. 1932's The Mummy, however,
he stresses, pushes things in a more sinister direction, and
that ultimately tends to stick But we also, even though
you cannot overstate the importance of 32's The Mummy in
the history of mummy movies, like it is in many

(23:10):
ways right to say it is the first, but it
is not technically the first mummy movie. That would seemingly
be 1911's The Mummy, in which a scientist revives an
ancient Egyptian mummy with electricity and then falls in love
with her. I believe this is a lost film, though.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Oh, OK. Oh, man, they were throwing love in there
that early. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I mean, you know, ancient Egyptian royalty. There's a lot
of complex things going on in our fascination with ancient
Egypt and in our Egyptomania. You know, there's fear, there's longing,
there's exoticism, there's all sorts of stuff going on. So
quick stats on this film, though. This is our sixth

(23:53):
film of the 1930s featured on Weird House Cinema. Again,
it is our first mummy movie. And as far as
universal horror films go, we have previously covered Dracula in
the form of the original Dracula. We've covered Frankenstein and
we've covered the Wolfman, though technically we got the Wolfman
in on a Frankenstein film. So we didn't cover the
original Wolfman. Oh, is that Frankenstein meets the Wolfman? Yes.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
The meeting.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
And yeah, let's see. I didn't put together an elevator
pitch for this one. I don't know. It's kind of
impossible with a film like this because this this film
is kind of the trendsetter. I guess you could you
could try and say something like Dracula, but make it
ancient Egypt. But again, as we've been saying, that doesn't
truly do full justice to the film here.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah. Forever love.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
All right. If you would like to watch or rewatch
1932's The Mummy, it is widely available on numerous Universal
discs and box sets. There have been so many different, like,
Universal Monsters box sets and collectible editions. And I don't
even know which version I rented. I rented a Blu-ray
of this film from Videodrome here in Atlanta, the city's primary,

(25:07):
if not only, video rental store. And then after I
was done, I had to return it before I ended
up getting a late fee. And then I realized it
was on Peacock, which I currently have a sub to.
So I ended up watching it again on Peacock. As always,
see it in as great of quality as possible. See
it on the big screen if you have a chance to.
I have not had that opportunity. But the film looks amazing. So,

(25:30):
you know, you want to do it justice.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
I watched it on disc on my Universal Classic Monsters
Essential Collection. That's an older box set at this point,
but it's still pretty great. That one's got a lot
of good commentary tracks and extras. Did not have time
to get into the extras for this week's movie, but
I'm sure they're good. They always are.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I got into the extras a little bit on mine,
but some of them, there was some unexpected Scorpion King
in there. Because the thing about these films is these
are such well-known and historic films that I mean, for
the most part, the well has been drained in terms
of content. A lot of great things have been revealed
and discussed about them. And so most of the great

(26:14):
bits of extras have already been recorded, already put out
on disc. But some of them came out when they
were promoting the blockbuster Mummy film and its sequels. And
so some of them are a little focused on that
and talking about how how this film feature or how
rather how the Brendan Fraser Mummy films fit into the
legacy of the original Mummy films.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Isn't it funny that in an indirect way, the Scorpion
King is a spinoff of the movie we're talking about today?

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, in a very weird way. And, you know, I
want to be careful here. I have not watched the
first Brendan Fraser Mummy film in quite a while. But
I remember it as being a lot of fun. I'm
very cautious about how some of the numerous computer effects
will hold up. But I remember enjoying it, and I

(27:01):
remember that it did invoke some of the vibes that
we have in this film. Though, of course, with globetrotting
blockbuster fanfare.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
I think it's a lot more... rousing action-adventure than it
is emphasizing the horror. But there are some horror elements
still there. It's been a while, but it's a genre hopper. Yeah,
for sure.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
All right, let's talk about the people who made this film,
The Mummy, 1932, starting at the top with its director,
Karl Freund. who lived 1890 through 1969. Legendary Austrian-Hungarian-born cinematographer
and director, two-time Oscar winner and four-time nominee. Much, again,
of the visual splendor of 31's Dracula is often attributed

(27:56):
to Freund, and he may have directed some scenes in
it as well. He was reportedly a very strong presence
on that set and was reportedly quite the domineering force
on The Mummy as well, demanding long hours, and approaching
everything with a mechanical precision that didn't set well with
its actors for the most part. Uh, it reminds me

(28:17):
a little bit of some of our discussions about Lucio Fulci,
you know, um, you know, without the maggot fans, uh,
but with live lions instead. And, uh, you know, and
I guess in general, perhaps fewer worker protections in place.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
Not an actor's director, I guess is the way of
saying it.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah. Or the stories you read about Kubrick, you know,
can be tough on the actors.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah. So this guy, Froond, was undoubtedly a cinematography pioneer,
a master of lighting in the black and white medium
of film. He also founded the Photo Research Corporation. And
he's best remembered today for his work on Dracula. His
later work as a cinematographer on the TV series I
Love Lucy. It's easy to lose track of the fact,

(29:02):
like I haven't really watched I Love Lucy in forever,
but you know, black and white series that apparently if
you go back and really look at the cinematography and
its use of black and white, like it looks really good,
you know, especially for a TV sitcom.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
I wouldn't have guessed that, but okay. Yeah, yeah, me either.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
But this was his first full-length feature film as a director.
And that was 32. And his final full length film
would be 1935's Mad Love, which we've talked about on
the show before. After this, he ends up pivoting back
to focus on cinematography. And, you know, so all told, he.

(29:40):
only ever did eight full-length films. And in addition to
Mad Love and The Mummy, we might mention The Countess
of Monte Cristo as another. That one stars Fay Wray.
So as with Dracula and Mad Love, you know, I
think there's just no denying the absolute mastery of the
black and white medium here, the perfectionism of the effects

(30:00):
and the shots. There's just some amazing sequences here. I
think one of the things that really struck me about
The Mummy is, on the whole, this is not a
film that ever attempts to do anything that it cannot
pull off technically to a high degree of perfection. And
that's one of the reasons it holds up so well.
If you're looking to watch an old film where goofy

(30:23):
things happen because you're holding the effects up to a
modern blockbuster sort of standard. This is not the film
for you because it shows restraint and it clearly makes
the choice. If we can't show this in a way
that we're 100% happy with, we're not going to show it.
We're going to let the audience imagine it instead.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
That's right. Yeah, I think all of the effects look good.
I can't recall a shot that is weak.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, the only thing at all that made me giggle
in this, aside from a few bits of outdated dialogue,
would be a sarcophagus lid. And it may say more
about me than about the film. Ultimately, I'm not criticizing
the film.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
We'll get back to it. All right, the screenplay here.
So again, like we mentioned earlier, this was the case
where they wanted to make a mummy film that was
a universal horror follow-up to Dracula and Frankenstein. But there
was no ideal work of literature that they were basing
it on. They were like, let's do an Egypt movie.

(31:27):
Let's do a mummy movie. Go find something for us
to base the film on. And so that's why it's
a little more convoluted regarding who wrote this.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
The main credit goes to John L. Balderston, 1889 through 1954,
American playwright and screenwriter. He previously worked on screenplays for
31's Dracula. and Frankenstein, and he'd go on to work
on Bride in 35, Mad Love in 35, Dracula's Daughter
in 36, and would ultimately work on 1944's Gaslight, and

(32:01):
then much later in his life and career, he worked
on Red Planet Mars in 52, and that starred Peter Graves.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Yeah, so like you were saying, the script went through
many incarnations, like I think it was adapted from an
earlier script about a magician of some kind.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, that was, I believe, a... I don't even think
it was a full script, but it was like a
nine-page story treatment for a film they were imagining called Cagliostro,
about an ancient magician still living in the modern world,
to be played by Boris Karloff, and I think involve reincarnation.
And then, like, this is, I think, as close as
they came to literature they wanted to adapt into their

(32:41):
mummy film.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
So, I'm not sure if what I'm about to say
is regarding... Balderson's final shooting script, or if it's an
earlier version, but in my box set, uh, there's a
booklet that comes with it and it includes a photo,
like an archival photo of a letter from a guy
named Jason S. Joy, who was at the time head

(33:03):
of the studio relations committee. Uh, it'll become clear what
that is in just a minute, uh, to the producer,
Carl Limley jr. From July, 1932, uh, And this letter
includes a short list of things that need to be
removed from the script in order to make it acceptable
to the censors. It is mostly directives to remove potentially

(33:25):
blasphemous phrases like for God's sake and good God. How
could you? But Joy also says, quote, I'm sure you
will want to guard against the element of gruesomeness. in
the scenes in the embalming room at the museum where
they are preparing to kill Helen. Ooh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
I mean, it's still a gruesome scene. It's interesting to
think about all this because, as is often pointed out,
this is technically a pre-code film. But that doesn't mean
there were no censors. There were censors.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
When the code was actually in effect, there were, like, stages.
So people often say pre-code to mean films from before, like, 1934.
And my understanding is 1934 is when the code got
real teeth. But there were codes before that that were
maybe less rigorously enforced or were more kind of a

(34:19):
patchwork of state regulations. And so, yeah. So this would
be called pre-code because it's before 1934, but there were
still censorship issues and attempts by the studios to get
around them or sort of pre-censor themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, yeah. But you can certainly get a little bit
of the pre-code vibe from things in this film. Like,
for instance, there's plenty of creepiness that remains. There's some
bits of language that feel a bit racy for the time. Like,
there's a line about making love to a stranger, which,
I mean, I'm no expert, but it sounds like the

(34:58):
kind of thing that wouldn't have flown, like, certainly 10
years later. there's a bit of gore in here.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Oh that's true i think the line about making love
means maybe that meant something a little bit different at
the time i think maybe that just means like making
moves on me as.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Opposed to yeah that's another way these things often work
is that the way it's stated doesn't really apply to
the way it's stated now.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
But it does sound pretty i don't know like that
scene is pretty forward though.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah because i mean at the end of the day
like people in 1930s were very much like people today.
So it's like they were still as sexual. They were
still as violent. It's just, you know, how many different,
you know, how many different screens are we using to
filter things, really?

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Yeah. But you're correct that there is some gore and
some gruesomeness. I mean, the embalming scene, I was thinking
actually of the embalming scene of Boris Karloff is pretty gnarly. Like,
it's scary. Though I guess you don't see, like, blood
and guts in it. It's just very, suggestive of something
deeply horrifying as an idea of being bandaged and buried alive.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, because I don't think he has organs removed. But yeah,
we see the wide eyes of Imhotep as they wrap
him in those bandages to seal him forever in this
tomb while they chisel away the protective hieroglyphics that would
have protected his soul into the afterlife.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, great stuff.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
So in terms of coming back to sort of piecing
together who did what on this, and, you know, I ultimately,
you know, we're not going to get too into that discussion.
But Balderston, I think, is generally attributed with like a
fair amount of the form and function here. And certainly
the Egyptology details, at least that are at least thematically correct.

(36:49):
As the standard statement on a mummy movie is, You're
not going to find a lot of accurate Egyptology here.
This is a work of Egyptomania. It is about fascination
with ancient Egypt and then riding that fascination, turning it
into a spectacle, turning it into horror, turning it into
Western-centric drama. And that's very much what it is here.

(37:09):
But apparently he would really go into research mode on
these sorts of things. And so these details are attributed
to him. He was also pretty well informed about the
events that inspired him. this film, uh, he, uh, like
namely the 1922 opening of Tutankhamen's tomb, which he had
covered as a journalist. So, uh, you know, he, he
knew what he was talking about. He knew what he

(37:30):
was invoking and it wasn't just like, uh, what are
some Egyptian-y words that I can throw into my script?

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Yeah. I guess there were like two different ways you
could look at the script in terms of its accuracy
to Egyptian religion, mythology, and history. You could say, well, it's,
not nearly as good as it could have been, or
you could say it's not nearly as bad as it
could have been. I guess it's both. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Ultimately, you know, taste is going to vary. But, you know,
for my money, I like going into it with low
expectations and finding, like, you know, the invocation of some
of these various deity names, they feel more or less
on point. You know, they seem to have been done
with a certain amount of respect for the subject matter
they were dealing with.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
So we mentioned the Cagliostro connection here. Cagliostro's nine-page story
treatment was from an American novelist, screenwriter, and playwright by
the name of Nino Wilcox Putnam, who lived 1888 through 1962.
No other horror films associated with her. And in fact,
as far as other horror work, I think the main

(38:39):
piece of horror she is attributed as having worked on
is the 1040 income tax form for the IRS. So-
If you are engaging with the 1040 income tax form
for the IRS, you're kind of engaging with the Mummy
franchise in a very limited fashion.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Think on that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
And then there's also a story credit to Richard Shearer,
who lived 1880 through 1956, story editor and screenwriter, who
helped search for something to base a Mummy movie on
for the producers here. He also has no other horror
film credits.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
All right, let's move into the cast, starting, of course,
with the title character, starting with Boris Karloff, who plays Imhotep,
as well as the modern sort of cover for Imhotep,
Ardeth Bay. Karloff, we've talked about Karloff before. He lived
1887 through 1969, legendary British actor, born William Henry Pratt,

(39:36):
better known by his stage name, Boris Karloff, and sometimes
just Karloff. You know, they really, you know, made a
meal out of this name, especially in some of those
early productions.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah. I always hear it in the voice of Martin
Landau as Bela Lugosi in the movie Ed Wood, shouting, Karloff!

Speaker 2 (39:57):
This is actually our fifth Karloff film, with the others
that we've covered on Weird House Cinema being 35's Bride
of Frankenstein, 39's Son of Frankenstein, 63's Black Sabbath, and
67's The Sorcerers.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
We've got the younger Karloff and we've got the older Karloff.
But even at this point, he was already a vet.
He had tons of credits and generally worked a lot.
His film credits go back to 1919 and he'd already
been in more than 80 films by the time of
Frankenstein even in 31. Very interesting character. I don't think

(40:36):
we've really talked about this aspect of him before, but
Karloff was of Anglo-Indian heritage on both his mother and
father's side. His father worked in the Indian civil service,
but Boris was born in England and his parents both
died when he was young and then was raised by
other family members. He kept his South Asian heritage under

(40:57):
wraps due to prejudices of the day, but of course
also leaned into certain aspects of his unique appearance, taking
on this stage name that of course had exotic appeal.
And he played a diverse array of characters throughout his career.
This is often the case, taking whatever kind of work
he could get, especially when he was coming up in
the acting world. But he played his share of the

(41:18):
sort of staple sinister foreigner roles of the day, be
they South Asian, East Asian, Slavic, Arabic, or Mediterranean. And
of course, in this film, 1932's The Mummy, he plays
an ancient Egyptian. Karloff was working a lot at this
point in his career. The Mummy is one of his
10 film credits from 1932. And these roles include the

(41:42):
menacing servant Morgan in James Whale's The Old Dark House,
as well as a mob boss in Howard Hawks' Scarface.
And then he also played Dr. Fu Manchu in The
Mask of Fu Manchu from the same year. The Mask
of Fu Manchu is, of course, a yellow peril film.
and a pretty monstrous example of the various racist and

(42:02):
colonial traits found in many films from this period of time,
which to be clear, you know, includes The Mummy. It's
not as in-your-face as a Fu Manchu film, and everything
is played with considerably more nuance and artistry, but the colonialism,
the Orientalism, the Egyptomania is certainly still there and permeates

(42:24):
the world of 1930s Hollywood cinema. With, you know, At
the same time, you do have certain films, certain performers,
certain talents, such as, say, Anime Wong, Paul Robson, who
are able to subvert the tropes to some extent and
ultimately get to, due to a number of factors, play
more complex, non-white characters when possible in major studio releases.

(42:48):
But this is basically the world of 1930s Hollywood cinema. Now,
Karloff would, of course, return to play Frankenstein's monster. But
he never returns to the Mummy franchise, which didn't pick
up again until 1940 in The Mummy's Hand, in which
the mummy was played by Tom Tyler. And then also

(43:08):
42's The Mummy's Tomb and 44's The Mummy's Ghost and
The Mummy's Curse. These three starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
In the role.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Eder Parker would play the role in 1955's Abbott and
Costello Meet the Mummy. which is generally considered the end
of the old universal mummy movies.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
Now, I haven't seen these later mummy movies, and I think,
have you seen any of them?

Speaker 2 (43:33):
This is another case where I've seen bits and pieces.
I've basically seen the mummy shamble sequences and maybe some trailers,
but for the most part, unexplored territory for me.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
I think, I could be wrong about this, that it's
in the mummy's hand in 1940 that you start to
get this... movie mummy that is more like the shambling zombie,
the bandage-wrapped zombie that does not speak and instead is
more kind of a magical physical threat instead of a

(44:05):
dangerous intellectual villain who you get into a verbal parlay with.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yeah, yeah. Again, it's like the first 10 minutes of
this movie become the thing that suggests the form of
most of the mummy movies to follow, in good ways
and bad ways. Fun note, I just want to throw
this in. 1942's The Mummy's Tomb. I doubt we'll ever
cover this one on the show, so I want to
go and throw this out. This one apparently takes place

(44:30):
30 years after the events of the previous Mummy film,
which was set in contemporary 1940. So that means, to
do the math, The Mummy's Tomb takes place in 1970.
A 42 film that takes place about 30 years in
the future in 1970. A rare example of a film...

(44:51):
Setting itself like three decades in the future with no attempts,
apparently no attempts to futurize the setting in the slightest,
not culturally, not technologically, not politically. To put that in perspective,
82's Blade Runner takes place 37 years in the future.
87's The Running Man is set exactly 30 years in

(45:11):
the future.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Hmm. We've reached the top. Things are going to be
like this from now on.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Yeah, it's like 1940, this is it. We've plateaued as
a culture and as a technological civilization. I mean, probably
as much incompetence as anything, but I still find it amusing.
But to bring it back to Karloff, again, Karloff only
played the mummy once. He only played Frankenstein's monster three times,
each time benefiting from the brilliant but apparently grueling makeup

(45:41):
effects of monster master, Jack P Pierce, a makeup designer
in this film who lived 1889 through 1960.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah. Uh, we've talked about Jack Pierce before, of course,
a huge input on the, uh, the impact of the
universal monster films, having done many of these makeup designs. Um, uh,
so I was reading in that book that came along
with my, my disc set, um, that despite having designed

(46:08):
so many iconic monsters for the big screen, uh, you know, he,
So he designed the Frankenstein's monster in the original James
Whale Frankenstein and all the movies that followed. And in
doing so, I would argue he redefined what Frankenstein's creature
looked like in the popular consciousness, because you know, that
like people didn't have really a picture other than like

(46:31):
what is described in the novel, which is pretty different
than what's on the screen. Um, and so he, uh, so,
you know, he defines the look of the Frankenstein monster.
He does, I think, the Wolfman and many of these
other just really indelible designs. But Pierce himself believed that
his greatest achievement in makeup effects was the mummy. It

(46:53):
was the withered, bandage-wrapped form of Imhotep that we see
in the opening scene of the mummy. Pierce thought that
was his best work. And I agree, it looks amazing.
The grainy texture of it looks so... real. I mean,
I don't know if I would say it looks exactly

(47:15):
like a real mummy if you're comparing it to actual
pictures of mummies, but, uh, it for screen for the cinema,
it looks like a real mummy.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Absolutely. Just an amazing bit of makeup.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
And, uh, so what did Boris Karloff think about these
makeup effects? Uh, apparently getting the mummy makeup applied, but
I think you mentioned this a minute ago, it was
a grueling experience. Uh, so, uh, you know, Pierce would
agonize over this. Like he studied pictures of real mummies,
trying to get everything to look just right. Uh, so
in the end, the mummy makeup for these shots early

(47:50):
in the film, and I think the shot used at
the very end of the film took eight hours to
apply to Karloff, uh, plus another two hours afterwards to remove.
Karloff reportedly told Pierce quote, well, you've done a wonderful job,
but you forgot to give me a fly. Yeah. And
Karloff later said that the makeup process for the mummy

(48:13):
was the most trying ordeal he had ever endured.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah, this is actually one of the cited reasons that
he was such a strong supporter of the Screen Actors
Guild and ended up being, I believe, the ninth member
of SAG. So, you know, he was like, look, this
is too much, you know, and then, you know, because
you have these long makeup applications and as we'll get
into a little bit more, too. long late night shoots
because once they have this applied, it's just like, they

(48:37):
just keep going till, you know, until it's like the
wee hours of the morning. Uh, again, it's like in all, it's,
it's not a, especially this production, not an, an actor
friendly production, not an actor's first production.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Uh, but Karloff would of course continue to work after
this would become a horror legend would, uh, would work
steadily for the remainder of his life. Uh, and I
should point out devoted fan of Mexican cuisine, especially guacamole.
I sent you a newspaper clipping that I found online
from some paper where they were profiling his love of
guacamole and also included presumably his favorite recipe for it,

(49:15):
which I found interesting, includes sherry. I'd never seen a
guac recipe with sherry.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
In it. Guac with sherry in it. Yeah. And lemon
juice instead of lime juice.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Well, you know, sometimes you can't get lime juice, but
I don't know if you, but if you have to
choose between the two, I mean, I don't know. I
kind of want to find, I want to try it out.
If anyone out there has tried out Boris Karloff's guac recipe.
Please write in with your notes.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
I've made guacamole with lemon juice. Works fine. I like it.
I've never made it with sherry. Maybe I'll give it
a go.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
But Karloff's performance in this, man, just absolutely excellent. He
gets to very briefly play that fully linen-wrapped mummy Otherwise,
plays this kind of lich character, an ancient Egyptian sorcerer,
reanimated and passing himself off as a modern Egyptian man,
cursed and pining for an ancient lost love. Just a
mesmerizing performance. And who is his love interest? Well, his

(50:16):
love interest is the contemporary character Helen Grosvenor, but we'll
come to find out that she is a reincarnation of
an ancient woman, an ancient Egyptian priestess by the name
of Ankhesen Amin. And this actress is Zita Yohan, who
lived 1904 through 1993, playing a half-Egyptian character here. And again,

(50:41):
the reincarnation of an ancient priestess. The name Ankh-Essenamen was
actually the name of an 18th dynasty Egyptian queen, but
I think that's maybe the limit of the historical accuracy here.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
Well, much in the same way that Imhotep is actually
a name from ancient Egypt, but doesn't have anything to
do with Yeah, this character in the movie.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Zita was an Austrian-American actress born in what is now Romania,
but she moved with her family to America at the
age of seven. She became involved in theater, debuted on
Broadway in 1924, and would continue to perform on Broadway
into the early 1940s. Her Hollywood career was short-lived, beginning
with 31's The Struggle and ending with 34's Grand Canary.

(51:27):
Eight films in total, including Howard Hawks' Tiger Shark in
1932 and The Sin of Nora Moran in 1933. In 1986,
she did a cameo as a librarian in a very
low-budget horror film called Raiders of the Living Dead that
stars the guy who played Flick in A Christmas Story.

(51:48):
The Mummy is, of course, easily her best-remembered film to date.
Zeta was quite fitting for the themes of this film,
a devoted spiritualist and mystic who would, apparently when she
was doing any kind of performance, she would call upon
the spirits to inspire that performance. And as you might imagine,

(52:08):
certainly clashed with the very technical director of this film,
clashed with Freund quite a bit. At the very least,
her spiritually inspired approach to acting seemed to rub up
against his mechanical perfectionism. And there's a lot said here
about the two just not getting along at all. There

(52:28):
was a deleted scene, one of a few different reincarnation
scenes that he allegedly had her shoot unprotected among live lions. Yeah,
like there are live lions because she's supposed to be
a reincarnation also of a Christian martyr in these deleted sequences.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah, I read about that. So there was supposed to
be a part of the movie that shows all the
other lives she lived throughout the ages. One where she
meets a Saxon warrior, one where she's a martyr, another
where she's a French courtesan or something.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, and these scenes are lost now, apparently. We only
have stills from them. There are some allegations that these
scenes were cut to spite her. I can't see an
alternate cut of the film because it cannot exist since
these scenes are lost, but I feel like I'm happy
with just the Egyptian flashback here. I don't think I
really needed these additional scenes, but, you know, could be wrong.

(53:23):
But another case was that Freund apparently said, I want
to shoot this particular scene semi-nude. And she called his
bluff on this, apparently telling him, hey, I have no
problem with that if you can get it past the censors. And,
of course, he was apparently bluffing. The charge here, this
mostly comes from Zita, and I have no reason to
doubt her on this, is that is that the director

(53:47):
was very protective of the film, this being his first feature.
And he wanted to set her up as a scapegoat
that he could complain about if this film was going
to flop. He could say, oh, well, Zeta was hard
to work with.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
What do you expect?

Speaker 2 (54:01):
And again, by all accounts, Freund was not an actress director.
You know, you have Karloff setting through these long make-up sessions,
and then he would do things like tell Zita that
she couldn't sit down because we don't want to get
any wrinkles in your Egyptian costume, so just stand against
the wall, please, that sort of thing. But I would
say that perhaps Zita's a great actress, and maybe what

(54:24):
she is able to do here at the end of
the day is channel that on-set exhaustion into this performance
of a woman who is torn between two worlds and
two existences, between this this person in the contemporary modern
day and someone who is, uh, you know, an ancient
soul from a different world. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
I think Zita Johan is fantastic in this. There is
a weird captivating element to her performance. She, she brings
an unhinged quality. Uh, like you, you almost wonder at
any moment if she's going to like stop saying her
lines and start doing something else that there's something kind
of like bubbling up out of her personality.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
I think she's great in this. Obviously, she's beautiful. And
late in the film, she's dressed in this supposed to
be like the priestess of ISIS garb. And this is
another case where you see these scenes and you might think, well,
that looks kind of like a revealing outfit for the 1930s.
And one does wonder, like, if this movie had been made,
just say, you know, seven years later, if it would

(55:27):
have been a much more conservative garment that she was wearing.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Probably so, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
So anyway, she's great in this. These are our two
principal characters, but then we have some supporting characters of note.
One of which is the character Frank Wimple. This is
the love interest for Zeta, the contemporary love interest.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
The Jonathan Harker of the movie.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Quite literally, because he played this actor, David Manners, 1900
through 1998, played Jonathan Harker in 31's Dracula. A very
forgettable Jonathan Harker.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
As we discussed. And no offense to David Manners, but
this character is also boring.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yeah, this is a boring character. And it's a shame
because David Manners is obviously a talented actor and a
much more interesting real human being historically than anything we
see in this film. He also co-starred with Karloff and
Lugosi in 34's The Black Cat. He was active on
screen from 29 through 36. And then he left Hollywood.

(56:26):
He returned to the stage, including Broadway. And he also
wrote fiction and philosophical works in the desert. And he
was the longtime partner of playwright Frederick William Mercer. But again,
all of that is far more interesting than anything you
see in this movie.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
He's a standard leading man. He's there to be the
good guy that Zeta, that Helen Grosvenor can go back
to once she has freed herself from the magical clutch
of this ancient sorcerer. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
All right, so that's Wimple the Younger, but we also
have Sir Joseph Wimple, his father, also an archaeologist, played
by Arthur Byron, who lived 1872 through 1943. So yeah,
he's supposed to be one of the original archaeologists on
the 1921 expedition that exhumes the tomb of Imhotep. So

(57:20):
this particular actor, active on film from 29 through 36 years,
often played British characters as well as American, but this
was his only horror film.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
This guy is there to be the voice of responsible
archaeology as it was understood at the time. So you
still might, the modern person will still look at some
of his actions and be like, eh, but he is
supposed to, I think, stand as a contrast to how
people might understand like a looting or treasure hunting mentality. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah. He's he's still absolutely a grave robber for a museum.
But but is in a key scene. He's like, you know, pottery,
pottery fragments far more useful to us than some sort
of flashy tomb.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
So we'll get more into that as we go here.
But yeah, this actor is pretty good in this role.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
At one point, he defends the idea of the the
contents of onks and almonds tomb remaining at the Cairo
Museum when his son is like, we've got to get
this stuff back to Britain, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
it's true.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
So it'll be interesting to get into this in the
plot because, yeah, there are some moments where the film
momentarily feels a little bit more modern in its critique
of what's going on through archaeology in Egypt. Okay, but
then we have Edward Van Sloan, as we mentioned, playing Dr.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Mueller.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Van Sloan lived 1882 through 1964. Again, the man who
played Van Helsing in Dracula. essentially playing a very similar role,
an expert on ancient Egyptian religion, as well as something
of an occultist and true believer himself, which, again, is
also very much in keeping with the idea of a
Van Helsing, I think, this individual who kind of has

(59:04):
a leg in both worlds. He's a reasonable man, but
he knows the dark side. He knows the other side.
He knows about the magical world that came before.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Right. So in Dracula, you might have a character like Dr. Seward,
who I think is a little bit more of a
skeptical scientific mindset. And then his mentor, Van Helsing, comes
in to be like, no, the dark arts are real. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
So Van Sloan, American character actor who also appeared in
31's Frankenstein, 36's Dracula's Daughter, and other products include 32's
Behind the Mask and 39's The Phantom Creeps, active till
about 1950. All right, we also have a doomed assistant
on the archaeological dig, played by Ralph Norton. This is

(59:47):
Bramwell Fletcher. He lived 1904 through 1988. He is not
in the film long, but his performance is very memorable.
This actor was active through 1967, and his other films
include 31, Svengali, and Daughter of the Dragon.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
No offense at all to Bramwell Fletcher, who does fine here,
but this feels like it was written for Dwight Frye.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed this out, because, yeah,
this feels like, can we get him?

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Okay, find someone else. And he does a fine job,
but it's very much the Fritz role.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
Like, you can feel the words on the page thinking
back to the scene in Dracula where they open up
the hole and Renfield is down there grinning and laughing. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
And then we also have a character that is credited
as the Nubian. This is a servant. Like, this is what,
a Wimple servant? I think Sir Joseph's servant.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
He works in the Wimple household, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
And then eventually comes under the spell of Imhotep and
becomes his accomplice in these various crimes. But he is
played by Noble Johnson, who lived 1881 through 1978, African-American
actor and producer who played a lot of non-white characters
in the silent era and then into the age of
talkies as well. As such, he appeared in quite a

(01:01:09):
few horror films and exotic action movies. and also Westerns
later on. Again, he was active until I think like
the 50s as well. His most famous credit is that
of the Skull Island native chief in 1933's King Kong,
but he also appears in 32's The Most Dangerous Game
and Murders in the Rue Morgue. His earlier epics included,

(01:01:31):
let's see, 1924's The Thief of Baghdad, an effects adventure
blockbuster of its day. He was a longtime friend of
Lon Chaney and founder in 1916 of of the Lincoln
Motion Picture Company, which made films with black casts for
black audiences that, you know, especially in the American South,
like would have played exclusively in black theaters. So, you know,

(01:01:55):
a very important historic figure himself. And then finally, just
touching on the music here, this is Heinz Romheld, once
more 1901 through 1985. He also worked on Dracula. And
as with Dracula, What we have here is just basically
a sparse classical needle drop score.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
Let's get some Swan Lake in there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Yeah, just drop some Swan Lake. It's what the people want.
Far more notable, though, in this film, I think, are
the moments where we have no music. Not to say
that the classical needle drop is bad here or anything,
but we end up with these wonderful scenes of silence
that just enhance the creepiness and the tension, much like
in some of the pivotal moments in Dracula.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Totally. Okay, are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Yeah, let's jump into it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
I like that the opening title and credits play as
the camera whirls through this miniature model of the Giza necropolis.
So it's got the pyramids and the Sphinx. That's cool. Yeah,
it's a little flashy. It's a little Vegas.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
And then after the credits, we get some exposition via
a papyrus scroll that is unfurled upon a table. And
it's filled with columns of hieroglyphics and illustrations of Egyptian gods.
And so we see like a big jackal-headed god leading
a human figure by the hand. And a text legend
tells us this is the scroll of Thoth. Herein are

(01:03:29):
set down the magic words by which Isis raised Osiris
from the dead. O Amun-Ra, O God of gods, death
is but the doorway to new life. We live today...
We shall live again. In many forms shall we return,
O mighty one. So after this, the action opens with

(01:03:50):
an establishing shot of these Egyptian temple ruins. They're at
the base of this mighty cliff. I'm not positive, but
this could be a shot of one of the temples
in the Valley of Kings. I think later, or later,
I think they say that this is in or around Thebes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Now, to be clear, any of the actual desert sequences
in this film, these are all shot in California deserts.
Watching the film, though, I'm eating it all up. I'm
just like, yeah, this is Egypt, baby. But in reality,
it's California.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Well, this part looked like a real shot of Egypt
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Yeah, yeah. There are definitely, I think, some establishing shots
sprinkled in that are like actual Egypt, actual Cairo skyline,
that sort of thing. But when you actually have characters
out there in the desert, it's California.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
So a sign tells us that we're arriving at a
field expedition of the British Museum, season 1921. So we're
about to meet some British archaeologists. And the characters that
we're meeting are Sir Joseph Wimple, again, this is Arthur Byron,
and his assistant Ralph Norton, played by Bramwell Fletcher. Again,
this is the Renfield character, though he's going to have

(01:04:54):
a much more limited role in the story than Renfield,
but should have been Dwight Frye, no offense, Bramwell. So
they're reviewing their recent finds, which include a mummy inside
a sarcophagus and a mysteriously sealed box that was buried
alongside it. And Wimple is presented as a very admirable character.

(01:05:16):
He's pure scientific temperament. So he is patiently cataloging broken
pottery fragments for later translation. Meanwhile, Norton is like, I
want to open the box. Give me the mystery box.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
He wants to get like a medal from the British
Museum for, you know, discovering something really exciting. And Wimple explains,
you know, the goal of archaeology is to carefully gather
and organize information from the past so that all of
humanity can learn and benefit from it. It is not
to satisfy their personal curiosity. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
On the whole, pretty reasonable.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
Yeah. Meanwhile, in the background, there is another man at
work here. This is Dr. Mueller, played by Edward Van Sloan. Again,
this is the Van Helsing for the picture. He is
busy examining the mummy they unearthed, which is lying in
an open coffin that's just leaned against the wall. It's
a little bit of a funny choice. Maybe lie that

(01:06:09):
thing flat? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
I don't know, Chris. I think I've seen this still
from the mummy so much throughout my life. Like I
never questioned it. Like I saw, I saw at least
clips of this as a kid or at least stills
on all like old universal trading cards. And I'm like, yeah,
of course, if you open them sarcophagus, that's how you
position the money against the wall, lean it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Up against the wall. So it can be in the
background of the shot over your shoulder while you're doing
something at the desk and that'll play in later. Uh,
but so it's true. I didn't notice anything weird about
this the first time I watched only on rewatch.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
For now because you're absolutely correct.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
Yeah. But Mueller observes some weird things about the body here.
He says, unlike with most mummies, in this case, the
guts and the internal organs have not been removed. The
usual scar left by the embalmer's knife is not present.
Mueller also judges that, quote, the contorted muscles show that
he struggled in the bandages. Uh, and so it seems

(01:07:07):
this mummy was wrapped and buried while still alive. So
I was thinking, I wonder, is that gruesome enough of
an image for Jason S. Joy of the studio relations committee? Uh,
so they learned the mummy's name from inscriptions on the coffin.
He was Imhotep, high priest of the temple of the
sun at Karnak. And Norton says, poor old fellow, what

(01:07:29):
could you have done to make them treat you like that?
Wimple suggests maybe executed for treason. And then Mueller says
sacrilege more likely. And as evidence, he points to a
place where the writing inside the coffin has been chiseled away.
This was the place for sacred spells that protect the
soul in its journey to the underworld. So Mueller says, quote,

(01:07:50):
so Imhotep was sentenced to death not only in this world,
but in the next. And then Norton grinning says, maybe
he got too gay with the Vestal Virgins in the temple.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Different common usage of that word back in the 30s.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
I kind of expect the scholars here to laugh this off,
but instead Mueller says possibly, maybe that's what happened. He
explains that the priestesses of the temple were the daughters
of the reigning pharaohs, the sacred virgins of Isis. Okay, well,
enough messing around. It's time to open the mystery box.

(01:08:28):
Let's open the box. So they go, it's kind of a,
you know, nesting doll. They go through several layers of
opening the box and getting inside. When they finally get
to the innermost box, there is a warning written on
the outside of it. It says, death, eternal punishment for
anyone who opens this casket in the name of Amun-Ra,

(01:08:49):
king of the gods. Now Wimple and Norton move to
open this container, but Mueller objects. He says, how can
you think to do this? You've read the curse. And
Wimple resists. He says, Mueller, I respect your knowledge of
the occult sciences, quote, but I will not permit your
beliefs to interfere with my work. So interesting here, you

(01:09:10):
get a division of three different types of people interacting
with an ancient artifact and an ancient burial. Norton has
more of a treasure hunters mentality. He just wants money
and fame and his curiosity sated. Wimple is a responsible scientist.
He is patient, methodical, and kind of emotionally uninvolved. He

(01:09:31):
just wants to add to the library of accessible human knowledge.
And Mueller is a true believer, kind of a scholar
cleric who studies Egyptian magic, not only because it is
of interest, but because it is real and has power today.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
I like how in this scene Norton argues that the
amount of time the box has been buried would have
removed the power of any curse. Is that how it works?

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Yeah, it's like surely it's worn off. There are expiration
dates on these, which is kind of weird to think
about because I forget which drug it was, but when
we were doing some sort of pharmacology work for one
of our previous Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes, one
of the examples brought up was that if you found
a particular drug um, psychoactive drug in an Egyptian tomb,

(01:10:21):
it would still be active today. So if that's the case,
why not curses?

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
Uh, so Mueller here becomes very somber. He warns his
colleagues once again, and then he throws on his coat
and leaves, leaves the building. Uh, and Wimple follows him outside. He's, uh,
trying to convince him. So he leaves Norton alone and
with the artifacts and the mummy and then outside under
the stars, uh, Wimple tries to convince his old friend

(01:10:47):
to change his mind. He says, you know, this box
might contain the scroll of Thoth from the Holy of
Holies in the heart of the temple. If so, it
would be one of the most extraordinary finds in the
history of archaeology. But Mueller resists. He says, quote, the
gods of Egypt still live in these hills. The ancient
spells are weakened, but some of them are still potent.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
They talk about how, if this is the scroll of thought,
it contains the great spell by which ISIS raised Osiris
from the dead. And Mueller treats this with deadly seriousness.
He begs his friend, he says, bury it where you
found it. Let the old secrets rest. Uh, and then
Wimple says in the interest of science, even if I
believed in the curse, I would go on with my work.

(01:11:34):
And I was like, Whoa, now that is dedication.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
I mean, it, reminds one of, uh, you know, various, uh,
important scientists who worked with dangerous materials, uh, uh, and
in dangerous environments. He's like, yeah, he's like, I, I
would do it. I would, I would sacrifice myself to
enhance our understanding of the path.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53):
Meanwhile, back inside Norton is, uh, diligently tagging pottery shards,
but after a few minutes you could see he's the
kid doing the marshmallow test. This is just not what
he's into. He can't stand the suspense. And he turns
his attention to the box. And this is the part
you were talking about where there's a lot of silence,
no music and no talking, just a man sitting alone

(01:12:16):
in a quiet room with a tempting forbidden artifact nearby.
And the only sounds we hear are these little incidental
sound effects, like setting down a pin and then eventually
opening the box, which he does. Inside is a scroll.
Norton removes it. He's very, he's beaming. He carefully peels

(01:12:36):
off the ribbon that holds it closed and he unfurls
the papyrus on the table. And he starts to read
the hieroglyphics, consulting his notes for translation. As he transcribes
the spell from the scroll of Thoth, he whispers the
words out loud. Uh-oh, that's what you're not supposed to do.
And behind his back, there is the mummy. We see

(01:12:59):
it lying desiccated in its casket. As Norton speaks the
words of the resurrection by Isis, the mummy's ancient eyelids
draw open, revealing white underneath, and the mummy starts to move,
to stir. So Norton is entranced by the scroll, and
he does not notice what's happening behind him. He keeps

(01:13:20):
reading until finally a gnarled hand reaches into frame, a
hand with long, ghastly fingernails and a silver signet ring.
and it grasps the scroll from the table beside him.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
And I think that last detail is key. I feel
like the mummy movies to come after this, you would
expect those mummies to go right for the throat, right?
They're killers, they're monsters. Our mummy here, Imhotep, he's going
for the magical artifact. That is what is on his mind.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
I think Imhotep, he has no problem with killing if
you get in his way, but he's not... gonna waste
his time just like strangling randos who are hanging out
like that yeah why would he bother killing this guy
he just wants the scroll and to leave.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Yeah and then some level he realizes norton is not
a threat yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
Uh so here norton turns and he sees the mummy
though we do not see the mummy in its full
form we we are deprived of that vision we just
see norton reacting And he backs away screaming, he's petrified,
and then he starts to laugh. This long tissue of
mad laughter just getting louder and louder. And as Norton laughs,

(01:14:32):
the camera pans over to the door and all we
see is a trail of bandages slowly dragging out over
the threshold. Wonderful. So Wimple rushes back inside. He finds
his assistant having been driven insane and still laughing. And
Wimple asks him what happened, and Norton says, he went
for a little walk. You should have seen his face.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Just maniacally laughing. He's completely lost it. Very convincing, but again,
very much a Dwight Frye performance here.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
And on the tabletop, it shows us where the scroll
had been. There is nothing but this filthy, moldy print
in the shape of a hand. The scroll is gone.
So whoops. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Again, just such an amazing, uh, first 10 or so
minutes of this picture, the resurrection of him. Hotep is
played with such slow reserve, excelling in what, in what
it shows us to be sure, but then leaving our
imaginations to fill in the rest. Like even the, the, the, uh,
the mummy creeping up, um, here, uh, on the research table,

(01:15:36):
like there are, uh, promotion stills, uh, that, that show
him kind of like looming over Norton shoulder. Um, And
but they decided not to feature it again. One wonders
about the exact decision making here. You know, was it
just was there something about the effect that they didn't
think held up or or they were just sort of

(01:15:58):
leaning back on that old idea that what you're imagining
is going to be more horrific than what is shown.
But however it comes together, it's just absolute perfection. And again,
it implies what we then come to expect in mummy
films moving forward.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
Totally. I think it works better the way it is.
I would guess that that wonderful makeup effect of Karloff
in the mummy wrappings looks better still in close-up than
it does with him moving around.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:30):
Anyway, so the prologue is over. We skip ahead 10
or 11 years later to another British Museum field expedition.
This time it is conducted by Joseph Wimple's adult son, Frank.
A dashing young man in these linen slacks and a
pith helmet. Like his father, he's gone into the field
of archaeology. It's weird. He's like an archaeologist here doing

(01:16:54):
a field expedition, but he doesn't seem to know much
about archaeology or ancient Egypt. He has to have everything
explained to him. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Again, not anyone's favorite part of this film. kind of
a boring character but yeah it's right it's like he
doesn't seem to have a lot of expertise himself um
and maybe in a way that's supposed to be telling
he is very much a you know proper gentleman that's
being brought up in the family business and he has
no clue really how it works yet yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
So frank talks with his and i actually i just
assumed he's an archaeologist but do they ever say that
in the movie i mean i don't know why else
he would be there at the at the museum field expedition.
I don't know. So I just assumed he was supposed
to be, I don't know what he's supposed to be.
He's there doing the expedition with this other guy, a
colleague named Pearson. Um, and they talk about what bad

(01:17:47):
luck they've had in this digging season. Basically they found
nothing of interest. Uh, and Pearson says, you know, hard
work is not enough to make it in this field.
He says, a man needs flair. He needs luck like
your father. He found things. And once 10 years ago,
He found too much. Okay. Um, and Frank says, yes, uh,

(01:18:09):
strange that that student he had working with him went insane. And, uh,
Frank thinks that this was brought on by heat and
the exhaustion of working out under the sun. Uh, Pearson
says he was laughing when your father found him and
he died laughing in a straight jacket. I was like, whoa.
So the laughing never stopped. It just continued.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
I love this detail.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
Just stark raving mad for the rest of his life.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
Anyway, we learn that Wimple Sr. has since sworn off
digging in Egypt, so he does not participate in the
digs anymore. And then suddenly there's a knock at the door.
So Pearson and Frank go to the door. Who could
this be? be? It is Boris Karloff. So here we
get our first vision of Karloff, the way he will

(01:18:56):
look for most of the rest of the film. Here
he is as Imhotep. He is no longer a dehydrated
corpse wrapped in bandages anymore. He's now a living man
dressed in a long simple tunic or robe wearing a
tasseled fez on his head. Nothing about him is overtly
monstrous but he does look strange. They've put on makeup

(01:19:20):
to make his skin look very dry with these wrinkles
in his face converging on his lips. I like this design.
It's it makes it look like there is some withering
power that emanates from his mouth and kind of saps
the flesh all around. And part of this is just
Karloff's face, but it's also partly makeup effects and lighting.

(01:19:42):
His eyebrows are dark and heavy, and under them the
eyes are very recessed and hollow. So Karloff's Imhotep has
this powerful gaze. It really emphasizes the eyes as something that, like,
is lancing us like coming out from kind of a
cave or a hole. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
The overall feeling is, is one of an undead being
with immense power who is choosing to, to sort of
fit in with everyone else and can fit in with
everyone else. So yeah, it doesn't look, it's not just
like old man makeup or anything like that. It is
this kind of subtle withered appearance that is just quite effective.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
So he does not introduce himself. He opens with a question.
He says, you break your season's camp, Professor Pearson. Your
colleagues have returned to London. So it seems like Pearson
and Frank Wimple are left here alone. And they talk
about how the expedition has largely been a failure. And
Karloff offers them help. He says, permit me to present

(01:20:42):
you with the most sensational find since that of Tutankhamen.
and he hands them a broken piece of pottery, telling
them it is part of the funerary equipment of the
princess Anksanaman. He says it was found less than a
hundred yards from where they stand, implying her tomb is
underneath or nearby. If true, this would be an amazing discovery,

(01:21:05):
but they want to know why would he simply give
this information away to men he doesn't know? And Karloff
explains with a little bit of venom in saying this.
He says, We Egyptians are not permitted to dig up
our ancient dead, only foreign museums.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Yeah, this is as close as we get to any
biting anti-colonialism sentiment in this film, or what we would
think of as such today. But given the time, it
feels weirdly daring. Mild by today's standards, but again, for
the time, it feels a little cutting.

Speaker 3 (01:21:39):
I mean, it's very understated, but there is also something
behind it. It kind of hits you. And so they
ask Karloff his name and he tells them he is
Ardath Bey. Just notes on Karloff's performance as this character.
He is cold, observant, intelligent, very conservative with body movements.

(01:22:05):
Like he both speaks and moves very slowly, but with
great confidence and force.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Yeah, yeah. Very much the sense of a man... patiently
executing a plan.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
Yeah. So Ardoth Bay leads the men out into the desert,
and he shows them the site of the hidden tomb.
He points at it with this slender wooden cane, almost
like a magician's staff. And Frank and Pearson call their
workers in, they dig up the site, and it is
indeed the burial place of the princess. They find the
door is still sealed, so no one has set foot

(01:22:38):
inside for 3,700 years. It's like another Tutankhamun's tomb. Then
we get exposition via headlines. Uh, the newspapers tell us
that Sir Joseph Wimple has come back from England to
supervise the transfer of the artifacts, uh, from the tomb

(01:23:00):
to a special exhibit in the Cairo museum. So these
are not being taken back to, to England. They're, they're
staying here in the Cairo museum.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
So all the action in this film takes place is
in Egypt, uh, which I think is, is notable. And
it's one way that's different, uh, from certainly Dracula, where
the action goes back to London. Like here, everything is
in Egypt.

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
So in the museum, late in the evening, we now
find Ardath Bey alone, looming over the glass case that
covers the sarcophagus of Anxanamen. He does not speak, but
he gazes down at her shrouded skeletal body with this
interesting look on his face, kind of a mixture of

(01:23:43):
anger and melancholy.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
I am, uh, I am afraid to, to admit that
I did think that the sarcophagus of Ankes and Amund
looked a little bit like Marge Simpson.

Speaker 3 (01:23:53):
It does.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
But again, that's probably says more about me. And Marge
Simpson did not exist yet when this was, uh, this
prop was created. So, uh, but it did amuse me personally.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
It does. Yeah. But then there is like a wipe
from this sarcophagus that takes us straight to the face
of our other main character, Helen Grosvenor.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
Oh, yeah, this is a really cool wipe. It's like
goes across seemingly like the Cairo skyline. It's like spinning. Yeah,
really neat effect. You know, certainly you can see some
trendsetting here.

Speaker 3 (01:24:24):
So Helen, when we first see her, is sitting on
the balcony wall at the edge of a ballroom where
a bunch of fancy British people are dancing in some
kind of, you know, party, fancy party. This would not
have been a reference point at the time, of course,
but having been in high school in the 2000s, I
looked at this shot and could not help but see

(01:24:46):
sarcastic goth at a high school dance. She's got the
dark eye makeup, dressed differently than everybody else, and looks
as though she has thorough disdain for her peers. It's
like all these jocks and cheerleaders, they make me want
to puke.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
So almost kind of a Winona Ryder sort of role.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
A little bit, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:07):
Yeah, I think that's a great read, and one that
I think gets more interesting when the reincarnation angle comes
fully into play. Someone out of place, out of time.

Speaker 3 (01:25:17):
Now, I admit that the sarcastic goth is not exactly
her character once she starts speaking. She's a little bit
more go-with-the-flow than that, but there is something about her, yeah,
that is other, that is kind of alienated and that
is certainly, she just has weird energy. And, uh, also
we see from her point of view when she's out

(01:25:39):
there on the balcony and she's wherever this like ballroom is,
she's looking out at the pyramids in the dark. So
I was just thinking like, wait, shouldn't more people be
taking in this view instead of just dancing?

Speaker 2 (01:25:50):
I guess that's the thing. Like the people dancing inside
or some of the, um, you know, the, um, the
colonial elite who are not as interested as they should
be in like the legitimate treasures of the land.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:01):
So Helen is approached by our old friend, Professor Mueller,
the man who demurred from taking part in mummy-related blasphemies
10 years ago. And they speak. Helen reveals that she
has a distaste for what she calls this horrible modern Cairo.
You could maybe take that different ways. I mean, one

(01:26:23):
way could just be that she doesn't like the modern world,
but you could also read that as she does not
like British-occupied Cairo anymore. Which at this point in history,
Egypt was nominally a sovereign country. But my understanding is
that a lot of the vestiges of the British protectorate
still remain. So it was in many ways still de

(01:26:45):
facto British occupied. And so I think she certainly does
not seem to be a fan of that world. And
Helen says she feels at home in what she calls
the real Egypt. the Egypt of old with the pyramids
and the Sphinx and the great ruins. It also here
says that Helen is a patient of Mueller. So is

(01:27:08):
he a physician of some kind? Is he supposed to
be a doctor?

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
I thought he was an Egyptologist and possible a cultist.
But I guess we're in an era where any man
with a doctorate of any sort can still make a
woman have a sherry and then tell her to go
to bed. Otherwise, I can't make any sense of it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:26):
Maybe he practices ancient Egyptian healing rights.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
Yeah. Well, maybe so that would work.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
Whatever he is, they have a warm relationship. Uh, Helen
is currently staying at Mueller's family, uh, residence in Cairo, uh,
because she does not want to stay with her own family.
We learned that her father is the British governor of Sudan.
And then we learned from some gossip around the room
that her father is English. Her mother is Egyptian and,

(01:27:54):
And we also get to hear gossip about Dr. Mueller's
unwholesome interest in ancient magic and the occult. In the
following scenes, the elder Wimple has a courteous but strange
meeting with Ardoth Bay at the Cairo Museum in the
Anxanamen exhibit. Wimple thanks Ardoth Bay for his help in

(01:28:16):
locating the tomb. And then Ardoth Bay displays odd behavior,
such as recoiling from a handshake and generally remaining frosty.
Then later that night, after the museum is closed, the
camera explores the dark exhibit hall again. And now we
find Ardath Bay having crept in after hours. He is

(01:28:39):
kneeling beside the coffin of the princess and he has
with him the scroll of Thoth that we saw earlier.
It's unfurled. It is illuminated by a flame from a
small lamp. And we see this pitiable yearning in his
eyes in a reverse shot. And this scene of him
reading from the scroll is intercut with scenes of Helen

(01:29:00):
Grosvenor dancing with random handsome young men at the party
across town. Uh, so the music of the ballroom bleeds
over into shots of Karloff reading her name, Anks and Amun,
Anks and Amun.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
I really love this scene. Again, it's a great use
of light and shadow here. And there's a haunting loneliness to, uh,
to his ritual, you know, carrying it out, not in
a secret layer of eldritch power, but in the shadows
of a reassembled sacred chamber in a museum. So again,
he's not trying to take over the world. His aim
is much humbler than that. And in many ways, relatable,

(01:29:38):
like he is trying to make this ancient romantic connection. Again,
he is trying to reconnect with the woman that he
died loving.

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):
So suddenly on the dance floor, Helen stops moving with
the music. She freezes and a grave look comes over
her face. And then as if in a trance, she
wanders away from her dancing partner and she goes straight
for the exit. She like stops at the coat check
to get her stuff. And then she gets in the car,
tells the driver to take her to the Museum of Antiquities.

(01:30:11):
And then in the car on the way there with
these spaced out eyes, she starts whispering the same words
Imhotep was saying in the museum. But she says his name.
She says Imhotep. Her car arrives at the museum just
as Frank Wimple and his father are leaving. They watch
as she like stumbles up to the main entrance in

(01:30:31):
a daze and is banging on the door trying to
get in. Frank goes to help her. He tells her
the museum is closed for the night. And then she
just falls unconscious on the ground. So the Wimples take
her back home and they lay her out on the couch.
Wimples Sr. recognizes the language that she is speaking in
her trance. He realizes that she is speaking ancient Egyptian

(01:30:55):
and saying Imhotep, quote, the name of a man unspoken
since before the siege of Troy. There's also a scene
right around here of a night watchman at the museum
who catches Imhotep conducting this ritual. So the guard sees
him and Imhotep tries to flee. The guard chases him
off screen, but then the guard screams. We don't know

(01:31:19):
what happened to him.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
Yeah, again, great use of light and darkness here with
Imhotep putting out his lantern and then causing everything to
go dark.

Speaker 3 (01:31:29):
Wonderful. So the characters here, this is a scene where
there's a dawning awareness of what's going on. Wimple Sr.
is greeted by Dr. Mueller, who arrives at his house,
and they discuss what they overheard. They talk about the
dread significance of the name of Imhotep, the mummy that vanished.

(01:31:50):
They recognize that that was the name of the mummy. Now,
at this point, Wimple Sr. thinks that the mummy was stolen.
But of course, you know, the guy who went insane
was like, yeah, he went for a walk. Meanwhile, Frank
hangs out with Helen, who's like recovering on the couch.
She's trying to figure out what happened. She's like, I fainted.

(01:32:11):
Where was I again? But then suddenly she doesn't want
to talk about it. And they end up discussing his
unearthing of the tomb of Anksanaman. He explains that she
was buried with all of the things she used in life,
her clothes, her jewelry, her toilet things, he says. And
then he starts to talk about something that happened when
he began to unwrap her. But Helen interrupts at this

(01:32:35):
as she says, how could you do that? And he says,
had to. Science, you know. That's not a good explanation, though.
But then he goes on to explain how when they
finally unwrapped her, He saw her face and he says,
you'll think me silly, but I sort of fell in

(01:32:55):
love with her. And then I was like, wait, was
that science?

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Well, it seems neither science nor magic, right? Because there's
no at least established connection that he has to these
reincarnated souls and so forth. But yeah, he's like, oh yeah,
I saw this mummy and I was like, she's a
little hot and you kind of look like her. It's
maybe at the Maybe it's just a weird line he's
been trying.

Speaker 3 (01:33:19):
I don't know. Yeah. She mocks him saying, do you
always have to open graves to find girls to fall
in love with? It's pretty good. Yeah. But he's like,
you know, you really do look like that mummy. You
look like that beautiful mummy that I loved. So we
can see where this is going. There is somehow this
striking resemblance between Helen Grosvenor and this skeletal mummified remains

(01:33:41):
of a princess from 3700 years ago. And we also
see that Helen and Frank are going to fall in love,
and they will. So meanwhile, Mueller and Wimple Sr., they
have to dash off to the museum because they get
a telephone call about the night watchman who was killed
on his rounds. It seems he died of fright, though
I don't know how the other museum guards who were

(01:34:03):
standing around have established this, that that was the cause
of death. But in the dead man's hand, they found
a scroll. What is it? The learned men look at
it and they discover it is the scroll of Thoth.
So they head back home with the scroll where they
find Helen and Frank kissing on the couch now. Well,

(01:34:23):
that escalated fast. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
And actual kissing, right? I mean, we get to see
it and everything. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:34:30):
And this is the scene somewhere around here where she's like, oh,
I don't know. Should I be okay with a strange
man making love to me? Yeah, yeah. But Wimple is
heartbroken when he sees this because he says quietly to Mueller,
he says, the curse has struck her and now through her,
it will strike my son. Things are about to get

(01:34:52):
worse from here. Helen falls asleep on the couch and
the three men retired to the study to talk about
what's going on. So they talk about, does Wimple still
believe the mummy of Imhotep was stolen? He's not so
sure anymore. Uh, Frank suggests, well, you know, if this
scroll is so full of devilry, why don't we just
burn it? And Mueller says that might not be a

(01:35:13):
bad idea. I think we should just burn it. But
before they can do that, uh, Imhotep, who they still
know as Ardoth Bay arrives at the front door. Uh,
now when he arrives at the door using his sorcery,
Imhotep hypnotizes the Nubian manservant who opens the door and
forces him thereafter to obey his commands. So now he

(01:35:36):
has someone to do his bidding here on Earth. And
then he steps into the room while Helen is asleep.
He sees her on the couch and he is seized
with recognition. He's like, oh, what could it be? He
creeps closer to her. She wakes up and they introduce themselves.
And he says, have we not met before, Miss Grosvenor?

(01:36:00):
She says, no, I don't think so. I don't think
I would forget. One would forget meeting you, Ardathbae. He
asks her if she's Egyptian. She says her mother was.
And then the three men come out of the room
and find these two with their faces like eight inches
apart staring into each other's eyes. So they're having an
intense meeting of the minds here or something. And we

(01:36:24):
see his face. His eyes are shot in such a
way that much of his face is in shadow, but
his eyes seem to glow.

Speaker 2 (01:36:32):
Again, the perfection of that effect that was first utilized
in Dracula, or at least was utilized previously in Dracula.

Speaker 3 (01:36:39):
Yeah. Helen does not want to leave his company at
this point. She is entranced by Ardoth Bay, but the
guys force her to depart. She promises she will see
him again, and he says he will be honored. So
the link is now established here. Now, after Helen leaves

(01:37:05):
with Frank, there is some intellectual sparring between Mueller and
Wimple and Imhotep. They're asking him questions about how he
found the location of Oxenamen's tomb. They're trying to trap
him in inconsistencies in his story or sort of trip
him up in recognition of the scroll found at the
scene of the murder. Imhotep talks his way out of this.

(01:37:28):
It reminds me of some similar verbal sparring scenes in
the Universal Dracula, like the scene where Van Helsing uses
the mirrored tobacco case to trick the vampire, showing his
lack of reflection. Much like in that scene, eventually Imhotep
kind of loses his cool and he drops the facade.

(01:37:48):
He says, the scroll is my property and it is
in this house. And he points to Wimple Senior and
starts to speak the words of a spell, but Mueller
interrupts him somehow. He says, we have foreseen this. The
scroll is in safe hands and it will be destroyed
the minute it has learned that you have harmed us.
This is a bluff, by the way. They've just got
it in the other room, but it works. Imhotep says,

(01:38:12):
you have studied our ancient arts and you know that
you cannot harm me. You also know that you must
return that scroll to me or die. So they're at
an impasse and Imhotep leaves calmly walking out the front door. Uh,
I love this scene. There's something hair raising about it
the way that it, you know, it doesn't come to

(01:38:33):
any kind of violence, but the thread is like overwhelmingly
in the air. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so the next thing
we get to see is the curse murder of Wimple senior. So, uh,
Imhotep is at home in his quarters, uh, where there
is this pool of water in which he can watch
events far away in space or time. This kind of

(01:38:55):
a misty pool. Later, we'll see the same pool used
to show things that happened long ago in Egypt.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
Yeah, yeah. At this point, it's not really introduced with
much fanfare, but it will definitely get its moment to
shine here in.

Speaker 3 (01:39:08):
Just a little bit. Now, in the pool, he watches
Wimple Sr. take the scroll to the fireplace to burn it.
But before he can do this, Imhotep inflicts his death curse.
He says a spell and points at the image of Wimple.
And then we see Wimple clutching at his chest as
his heart seizes. And then after this, the hypnotized manservant

(01:39:28):
of Wimple's house enters the study. He takes the scroll.
And then as this decoy tactic, it's pretty clever. He
takes papers from Wimple's desk and burns them in the fireplace.
And the trick initially works. Mueller thinks that when they
come on the scene later, he thinks that the scroll
has been burned. And he says to Frank, your father

(01:39:49):
destroyed the scroll knowing that it would cost him his life. Now,
in the following scene, a MacGuffin is revealed. Mueller shows
Frank a pendant necklace bearing the image of Isis, the
goddess Isis. which he says is the Egyptian symbol of life.
And he was going to give it to Frank's father,

(01:40:10):
presumably as a protection against curses like the one that
killed him, but he arrived too late. So he couldn't
protect Wimple Sr., but he's going to try to give
it to Wimple Jr.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Here.

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
And Frank is dismissive. He's like, don't try to make
me believe that this Ardoth fellow is a mummy come
to life. It was that idea and the horror of
it that killed my father. So Mueller comes and he
collects some of the ashes of the paper from the
fire into an envelope so he can study them later.
And they're going to go visit Helen. Mueller is concerned

(01:40:43):
for her well-being after seeing the way that she and
Ardoth Bay were looking at each other. But in the
car on the way there, Mueller examines the burned remains
of the newspaper and he figures out that they were
not the papyrus scroll. Uh-oh. Uh, Frank is still skeptical,
but Mueller convinces him to take the amulet of ISIS.

(01:41:04):
Frank initially wants to give the amulet to Helen if
it's really going to work, but Mueller tells him, no,
he says, Imhotep is not going to try to curse Helen.
He has other plans for her, but you, he will
destroy you if he gets the chance. Uh, you know,
basically you're the other guy at this point, you're, you're
target number one. Uh, so Frank takes the amulet, puts

(01:41:27):
it in his pocket. Here we get another chilling closeup
of Karloff with the, the softly glowing mummy eyes. He's
working some kind of magic on Helen from afar. Uh,
Helen told Frank and Mueller on the phone that she
wouldn't leave her, her hotel, but she does. Anyway, she
goes out for a walk in the city with her dog. And, uh,

(01:41:47):
she's walking, wearing this dark dress ornamented with what looks
kind of like a sash of something like a metallic
medallions across her body. Uh, her dog is a German shepherd.
And it does not want to go where she's taking it.
It's like pulling back on its leash, but she forces
it to go with her. And Helen arrives at a
house in the city with a heavy wooden door. Inside

(01:42:09):
she finds Ardoth Bay and the man from Wimple's house
who was hypnotized in the earlier scene. Now he serves
the sorcerer. And there is a, oh, there's a cat inside.
She brings a dog. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
And, and I believe we see a statue of the
goddess Bast in the background too, which is nice. You know,
you're in, this is cat country now. This is, uh,
the cats have divine authority over the dogs.

Speaker 3 (01:42:35):
Yeah. Uh, Helen loves this house inside is decorated like
ancient Egypt, like a temple of some kind. And she's like, oh,
this is great. This is the good Egypt. That's what
I'm into. And then they sit down in front of
Imhotep's pool of water in which these images appear. He
tells her that she is not going to remember what
he shows her. And yet he shall awaken memories of

(01:42:57):
love and crime and death.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
And this is where the pool of memory really gets
proper introduction. We get this amazing sequence with this. I'm
honestly not sure how they move the camera here, but
one gets at least gets the sense of like a
crane shot, like a moving crane shot, just so smooth
moving in on this, on this dark smoking surface of the, uh,

(01:43:21):
the pool of memory. And we get amazing dissolve transitions
here as well. Just a technical Marvel, this sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:43:29):
So this part of the movie is a flashback, uh,
where we learned the backstory of Imhotep and Oxen Amon
3,700 years ago. Uh, we, uh, did you understand that
was there love secret? I think it had to be secret.
Like they couldn't openly be in love with each other.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):
That's the sense I got from it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
Secret love that could not be realized was found out
too soon. And of course he is punished horribly for it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:54):
Right. Well, he's punished specifically because of what he does
because she dies. So that's right. Yes. Uh, she becomes
ill and dies. And when the princess dies, she's mummified
buried in a sacred tomb by her father, the Pharaoh, uh,
cannot stand to be without his beloved. So he steals
the scroll of thought from the temple. He tries to

(01:44:15):
use it to resurrect the princess so that they can
be together again, but he is caught before he can
finish the spell. And this is a terrible sacrilege. So
Imhotep is condemned to a fate worse than execution. He
is mummified and buried alive without the rites that would
allow his soul to go on to the afterlife. And

(01:44:37):
then the scroll is also buried with him so that
no such blasphemy can ever happen again. Then they say
that the workers who buried him were killed, too. And
then the soldiers who killed them were killed, too.

Speaker 2 (01:44:49):
But then those soldiers said, that's enough.

Speaker 3 (01:44:50):
We can stop here. That's right. So no one could
ever find the burial place. No veneration, no unearthing of
the terrible spell.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
But if it were to ever be unearthed, you'd have
a really self-contained mummy resurrection kit.

Speaker 3 (01:45:07):
I guess so. So Helen is entranced by all this,
and then Karloff gives this powerful speech after the flashback,
which I transcribed part of here. He says, Anxanamen, my
love has lasted longer than the temples of our gods.
No man ever suffered as I did for you, but
the rest you may not know, not until you're able

(01:45:30):
to pass through the great night of terror and triumph,
until you're ready to face the moments of horror for
an eternity of love. Until I send back your spirit
that has wandered through so many forms and so many ages.
But before then, Bast must again send forth death. Death

(01:45:50):
to that boy for whom love is creeping into your heart.
Love that would keep you from myself. Love that would
bring sickness and even death to you. So he is
acknowledging that there is a conflict within her, that there
is part of her that does not want to go
through whatever this night of terror is, this night of

(01:46:11):
horror that she must endure in order to be his
beloved forever. I think he's recognizing that it's not just
like she's purely 100% on board. She needs some convincing.
And part of what needs to be done is killing
this other guy who half of her soul is in
love with. Anyway, here we move into the final act

(01:46:33):
of the movie. Helen goes back to her hotel, somewhat
confused and missing memories. Like, what happened to my dog?
Didn't I have a dog? No, not anymore. Frank and
Mueller try to keep her confined in the house so
that she cannot go to Imhotep. And she is torn
between these different desires, like the two souls within her.

(01:46:55):
So she alternately wants to go to Imhotep and tries
to escape. And then she fears him and then begs
the people around her to not let her leave, no
matter what she says. She says, it's like there is
another thing inside of me that is fighting for life.
And so what is Imhotep's plan here? It's going to

(01:47:15):
amount to a showdown at the museum. Imhotep believes that
Helen is the reincarnation of Anxanamen, of course. But in
order for her to become his immortal revenant bride, he
has to kill her. mummify her and then resurrect her
using the scroll of Thoth. So you can't go straight
from life to eternal lover. You got to die and

(01:47:36):
be resurrected. That's the only way it works. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:40):
Like, you know, he needs her to be the Eve
to his Adam. They need to both be undying like
lich people.

Speaker 3 (01:47:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So he's going to do this at the
museum surrounded by the Egyptian artifacts and artwork. His plan involves, uh,
burning the original body of onks and almond. They like
get out the mummy of his beloved and set it
on fire. Uh, eventually, uh, uh, uh, Helen escapes from
the house, uh, when Imhotep nearly kills Frank with a curse. Uh,

(01:48:11):
though I think at the last moment, Frank is protected
by touching the amulet of Isis. so frank does not
quite die and then mueller and frank arrive at the
museum in time to stop imhotep from killing helen uh
there's when they get there they see mummy smoke pouring
out of the chimney but in the middle of this
ritual helen suddenly has a flash of lucidity and And

(01:48:35):
she says she does not want to die. She wants
to live. And she appeals to the goddess Isis for help. Uh,
cause there is a statue of Isis there in the museum.
She says to the statue of Isis, I call upon
thee as of old. And then in a hair raising turn,
the statue of Isis responds by moving. It raises its

(01:48:59):
arm in power where it is holding in its hand
and onk. And, uh, this Ankh emits like a flare
of energy, which incinerates the scroll of Thoth and takes
away Imhotep's power, causing him to revert to his former state.
So he again becomes this dead withered thing and crumbles

(01:49:20):
to dust and bones on the floor. And so that's
how Helen is saved, not by the heroes, like, you know,
figuring out how to defeat the villain, but by her
appealing to the goddess Isis and Isis saves the day
deus ex machina. I love this.

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):
I love how, as it's established early in the film,
this is a place, the entire setting of the film
is one in which the Egyptian gods of old hold sway.
Christian gods are never seriously invoked in the film. They're
not a part of the solution. Nobody's brandishing crosses or
calling on Christian power to overcome the adversary here. Isis

(01:50:01):
is the authority figure that is called upon. just as
Imhotep also calls on different Egyptian deities to carry out
his ends. So I really love this detail here.

Speaker 3 (01:50:14):
Yeah. The very last line is Frank has Helen, and
he says, Helen, come back. It's Frank. Come back. That
line feels a little underwhelming compared to the scene that
just happened, but it's that classic, that old monster movie wrap-up.
It's very abrupt at the ending.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):
Yeah, just abrupt as hell.

Speaker 1 (01:50:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:50:32):
They just suddenly were in the credits. I think there's
something in the credits where it's almost like they're letting
you know. It's like, yeah, we can have credits at
the end of the film where they're like, I forget
what the wording was, but it's like, they're great at
the beginning of a film. They're great at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:50:44):
Enjoy the credits, folks.

Speaker 2 (01:50:48):
But yeah, this one, yeah, 73-minute runtime. And when the
film is over, it's over. It's time to send folks home.
Let them talk about it on their own time.

Speaker 3 (01:50:57):
So that's the original Mummy. You know, I'm wondering, why
does it, it seems... Like, it works great to me
that he is defeated in the end by an appeal
to the power of the goddess Isis, where I don't
think it would work at all at the end of
Dracula or Frankenstein or any of these other movies I
can think of for someone to just suddenly appeal to
a god and have them defeat the monster for them. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:21):
It would feel a lot more, yeah, just out of
nowhere and kind of a cheap out. But here it doesn't.
Here it feels very much part of the fabric of
the story. Like, it's just well-balanced within uh, the screenplay
and within the, the, the picture that we've been watching
up to this point. So, uh, yeah, I thought it
was a great end ending, uh, overall, you know, again,
abrupt as is fitting of the time. Uh, but, uh,

(01:51:42):
but still I think excellently pulled off.

Speaker 3 (01:51:45):
I guess in the end, it emphasizes that it, it
takes Imhotep's, uh, sacrilegiousness, his blasphemy against what is good
and holy in a religious sense, seriously, uh, but not
in the sense that he's not in the sense that,
you know, Western Christian audiences would be familiar with where

(01:52:07):
it's like, the problem is you're not honoring, you know,
my religion. It's like within its own religion is a blasphemy.
And that is the problem. Like he is violating the
order of things from an Egyptian religious perspective. And thus
it is within the Egyptian religious perspective that he is chastened. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:52:26):
Like he has, he is obstructing Mott, you know, the, the,
the ancient Egyptian concept of balance and order and, and, and, and, and, uh,
more morality, you know, like that is what he is, his, uh,
as that's where he's crossed the line. And that is
why he's shut down by ISIS.

Speaker 3 (01:52:42):
One thing I was wondering about here, how human is
the reanimated Imhotep? Uh, so we see him appearing kind
of strange looking, but basically human. Like he doesn't, strike
anybody you know the people who interact with him don't
think he's undead they think he's a normal man but
does he have to like eat and sleep and stuff

(01:53:04):
or is he more like a vampire in that sense
and then he's not going to be eating food or
i guess a vampire does have to sleep but you
know is does he have no is he basically a
functional biological human being at this point or is he
you know like a sleepless hungerless deathless creature who just
dwells in his you know, in his feelings and staring

(01:53:26):
into the magical pool all day.

Speaker 2 (01:53:28):
I think the latter. I think that he is sustained
entirely by ancient magic at this point. Yeah, I don't
think he has to eat or sleep. You know, he
cannot be killed in the traditional sense of the word
as established earlier. So, yeah, I think he is in
a different place entirely. And he avoids human touch because
I imagine he is not warm to the touch. I

(01:53:50):
imagine he is room temperature at best. Hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:53:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:53:54):
I wondered why that was, why he doesn't like to
be touched. Is that a, uh, like a holiness or
purity thing? Like there's another part, uh, there's a part
in the ending where, uh, he has, uh, like he
has awakened sort of the onks and almond part of
Helen's personality, uh, where he's about to sacrifice her and

(01:54:15):
she looks around and sees all of the trappings of mummification, uh,
And she says, it is not permitted for me, a
goddess of the Temple of Isis, to be around impure
things like the mummification process. So she is observing blasphemies
and sacrileges that he is carrying out on her behalf. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:35):
I mean, I think he's come to the viewpoint that
these rules don't apply to him. You know, anything is
worth bending to his will and to carry out what
he wants to achieve here.

Speaker 3 (01:54:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:49):
Makes him a great villain.

Speaker 3 (01:54:53):
Okay. Well, that's all I've got to say about the mummy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:56):
1932 is the mummy. I'm glad we got to talk
about it. Uh, we went a little long here, but
I mean, it's, uh, it is an obelisk, uh, in
the horror genre. It is a, an important film. So I'm,
I'm glad we, we took the time to, to talk
it all out here. So, uh, we'd love to hear
what you have to say out there though. Listeners, what
is your history with mummy movies with, uh, the universal
mummy franchise, uh, or indeed 1932's The Mummy itself, write in,

(01:55:22):
talk about it with us. We'd love to hear from you.
And we'll also, if you have thoughts about the Brendan
Fraser Mummy films as well, yeah, that's on the table
as well. Any and all Mummy movies, we'd love to
hear your take.

Speaker 3 (01:55:35):
Do you have thoughts about the late 90s Irish bog
Mummy movie with Christopher Walken in it? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:55:42):
Well, you know, we'll have to come back to that one,
I think. I wouldn't still... under consideration for weird.

Speaker 3 (01:55:48):
House i haven't seen it but i'm tempted all right.

Speaker 2 (01:55:52):
Well let's go ahead and close it out here uh
as always we'll just remind everyone out there that stuff
to blow your mind is primarily a science and culture
podcast with core episodes on tuesdays and thursdays but on
fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
about a weird film on weird house cinema uh if
you were on letterboxd.com look us up our username is
weird house we have a nice list of all the
movies we've covered over the years sometimes a peek ahead

(01:56:13):
at what's coming up next Huge.

Speaker 3 (01:56:15):
Thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Speaker 1 (01:56:36):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema: The Mummy (1932)