Films: 1930s
(1932) The Mummy
Saturday, October 14, 2006
The Mummy
Director: Karl Freund
Release: 1932
"The Mummy" fails as a horror film, but it succeeds at being something else. What that is, exactly, is up for debate.
Essentially, "The Mummy" is a macabre romance, skillfully acted and directed. Unfortunately, "The Mummy" also tips its hand early on as to what it could have been, but never achieves.
Director Karl Freund, relatively fresh from cinematography on Universal's "Dracula" takes the helm of his first American movie and he creates a dialogue-dense, slow moving picture that attempts to tell the story of a man and a woman, separated by nearly 4,000 years and the lengths to which one might go to have the other.
Boris Karloff plays Im-ho-tep, an Egyptian prince buried alive for loving a vestal virgin, Princess Anckesen-Amon (Zita Johan). In 1921 a British archaeological team unburies Im-ho-tep and accidentally reanimates him with the help of a cursed scroll.
Im-ho-tep escapes the tomb, stealing the scrolls and reappearing 10 years later to help a subsequent team of British searchers find the remains of Anckesen-Amon.
Once Anckesen-Amon is safely in the Cairo museum, Im-ho-tep does his best to work the scroll's powers on her body, but somehow Anckesen-Amon's soul ends up in the body of Helen Grosvenor, whose part of a circle that includes 1921 team-member Sir Joseph Whemple (Arthur Byron).
Whemple, and his son Frank (David Manners, who played Jonathan Harker in "Dracula" the year before), become entangled in Grosvenor's dilemma when she attempts to break into the Cairo Museum.
Her guardian, Dr. Muller (Edward van Sloan, completing his Universal hat-trick of doctor characters in "Dracula," "The Wolf Man" and "The Mummy") joins the investigation when a guard turns up dead at the museum.
Im-ho-tep, not one for subtlety, visits the Whemple's that same evening and makes a powerful psychic connection with Grosvenor. Whemple draws the connection between the towering Egyptian and the missing mummy from a decade before. What follows is a struggle for power between the old and the young, the present and the past, as Im-ho-tep seeks to reunite with his lost love and the archaeologists seek to stay alive as Im-ho-tep's attacks them with magic.
"The Mummy" fails because Freund can never find his pacing. He's terrific with the camera, but the camera takes over his film. There are memorable and ambitious shots in "The Mummy," but there is never a moment when Karloff is anything more than menacing. His deep and dark eyes peer into the lens over and over, and there is undoubtedly something evil about Karloff's visage, but at other times he rather resembles a dopey giant plodding through the sets, murmuring at the other actors.
Johan is too strong to convey true endangerment. As such, she's an interesting character, especially in the final scenes when she holds her own against Im-ho-tep without help from the male leads.
Manners is left with little to do other than wrap Egyptian charms around doorknobs and profess his honest-to-goodness love for the afflicted Grosvenor.
So, it's the camera.
Freund pulls of a fairly athletic move which tracks toward a pool of water, then up and over it in one continuous shot until the lens is pointed down at its surface. It's a logical (and giant) progression from his single dramatic track through Dracula's cellar the year before.
In another interesting move, Freund directs an entire flashback sequence to suggest a silent film. It tells the story of Im-ho-tep's burial in such a way that the visual and performance elements of the segment exist in another language from the surrounding narrative.
What's missing is the monster. Karloff is compelling and charismatic as Im-ho-tep, but it's a shame the bandage clad version of the mummy quickly shuffles off screen. He's truly frightening during that scene. The wrapped version of Karloff's character communicated more force and threat than all the hooded-eye looks and curled fists to which he's relegated for the remaining hour of the film.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
