Directed by: Karl Freund
written by: Nina Wilcox Putnam
Starring: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners
1 hour and 13 minutes
We open on a museum in 1921. They’ve dug up a mummy, but he’s a little different; his name was Imhotep, and he was buried alive… probably for the crime of sacrilege. He’s also come with a golden chest containing a cursed box. The occult expert who just happens to be there warns them not to open it, but one guys does anyway. It contains the scroll of Thoth, which supposedly has the power to raise the dead. As the junior archeologist reads the scroll, the mummy wakes up and walks away; the man goes mad.
We move forward to 1932. A couple more archaeologists, one of them the son of the first archaeologist, are lamenting their lack of luck finding anything. Just then, there’s a knock at the door, and a tall man in a fez enters. He tells them where to dig, and they find the tomb of an ancient princess.
All the treasure winds up in the British museum. As the tall man recites the magic words, the archeologist’s girlfriend, Helen, goes into a trance and tries to get to him, but the museum is locked. Wurmple (the archeologist) “rescues” her. The next day, they find a dead guard and the scroll. It turns out Helen is the reincarnation of Imhotep’s dead lover! The rest of the film revolves around the tall man in the fez trying to reincarnate his dead princess.
This film is quite different from later mummy movies. “The Mummy,” unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, was original, and not based on a book. This film is quite different from the Mummy movies that came later, even the ones from Universal. Imhotep’s more of an ancient wizard than a shambling mummy, at least after the first scene. Story-wise, it has a lot more in common with the Brendan Fraser movies than the later Universal mummy movies. The story beats also are very similar to Dracula, with the old expert who recognizes an ancient evil that threatens a young girl. Dr. Mueller, the expert is played by Edward Van Sloan, who played Van Helsing in Dracula. The similarities don’t stop there. The details are different, but it’s clear that someone was trying to duplicate the success of Dracula in the laziest way possible.
Overall, it’s fun to watch, not boring at all, and has remained in pretty good condition in the intervening years.