How The Mummy Became a Classic Hollywood Movie Monster

On February 16, 1923, a group of explorers led by Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter broke the seal on the entrance to the long-lost tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. Their discovery, which included some of the most well-preserved artifacts of the era, inspired a worldwide fascination with ancient Egypt. King Tut became a star, inspiring merchandise, books, vaguely racist fancy dress parties and a classic Steve Martin song. Where the world goes, so goes Hollywood, and in the early days of talkies, the allure of the mummy had to be plundered. Only one studio was right for the job, and over the past 90 years, they’ve worked to keep its legend alive.
Carl Laemmle Jr., heir to Universal Studios and head of production there from 1928 to 1936, loved horror films. His father, Carl Sr., thought they were tawdry, but he knew that audiences would devour classic tales of terror in the talkies era, much as they had done when Lon Chaney headlined movies like The Phantom of the Opera in the silent years. Dracula broke the mold in 1931, followed shortly by Frankenstein. The next year, inspired directly by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, he greenlit The Mummy. Unlike its predecessors, this one wouldn’t be adapted from a novel or well-known story.
The inspiration would come partly from bastardized Egyptian mythology, an Arthur Conan Doyle short story and the lingering fear over the supposed Curse of Tut that had besieged those who opened his tomb. Five months after it was discovered, Lord Carnarvon died of pneumonia. The curse was a press invention, and only eight of the people present in the tomb died within a dozen years of its opening. Yet, to white readers of the tabloids and viewers of cinema, the idea of a millennia-old curse from an almighty and “exotic” king proved too enticing to ignore.
1932’s The Mummy is ultimately a tragic love story. The mummy himself is Imhotep, a high priest who was buried alive and cursed as punishment for falling in love with the princess Ankh-esen-amun. After a careless archaeologist awakens him by reading from the Scroll of Thoth, he assimilates into modern society and passes himself off as an eccentric Egyptian historian named Ardeth Bey. Once he meets Helen Grosvenor, a half-Egyptian woman who looks uncannily like the princess, he seeks to be reunited with his lost love at any cost.
Boris Karloff gets one of his best roles with Imhotep, a figure of pity and fear who is far more interesting than the heroes who we’re supposed to root for. At a lean 73 minutes, it’s one of the tightest Universal monster movies and one more focused on lyrical mood than jumps or scares. It’s easy to be taken in by its drama and its locales, which look fabulous given that they’re all part of a Hollywood set. This is the mummy tale that most potently taps into the post-Tut frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. It’s a cautionary tale that warns against meddling with the ghosts of the past, although it can’t help but make doing so seem like a hell of a lot of fun.
After The Mummy made a solid box office profit, it quickly joined the horror family at Universal, which meant lots of quickly released rehashes and spin-offs with diminishing returns. It never received an official sequel, but was reimagined for a series of Lon Chaney Jr. films that didn’t do much to build upon the original (and, of course, there was a team-up with Abbott and Costello in the ‘50s). By the end of the 1950s, Universal’s monsters had essentially run their course, and the studio moved on from horror as its defining genre. Hammer, the British studio that became the horror stalwart of the mid-century, made its own mummy films, but they never captured the audiences’ imagination as keenly as their new, suave and bloodthirsty take on Dracula. Horror had moved on, and Universal wouldn’t reopen this particular tomb for over 40 years.
1999 brought us a new take on The Mummy, the one that holds a special place in the heart of many a millennial. Stephen Sommers’ version borrows the basics from the ’32 original but is less interested in being a horror than it is a rollicking old-school action-adventure. Indiana Jones is the most obvious forebear, with our central heroes, Rick O’Connell and Evie Carnahan, playing like the Spielberg icon crossed with Errol Flynn. The mummy comes second here, although the love story remains intact. Instead, the focus is on vintage thrills, the sort of sand-and-guns set-pieces that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Universal B-Movie from the ‘50s. The Egyptian aspects are still here, but the real hook is the action and love story between Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Imhotep, played by South African actor Arnold Vosloo, gets a more sympathetic arc in the first sequel, but it’s far less focused than Karloff’s arc in the 1932 original. The locations may be gorgeous (and the effects hilariously ropey, even for the time), but Sommers and company know you’re here for the heroes more than the villains.