Episode 7: Films Featuring Mummies

Ii-Wey! This past week I had the honor and pleasure of being a guest on the podcast “Voice of Olympus” hosted by Hercules Invictus and Athena Victory. The show, held each Monday on Spiritual Unity Radio Network, celebrates and explores ancient Greece and Rome via guests whose work in some way intersect with these defining Western civilizations. As many know, ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire have a past, having influenced each other’s societies, be it cultural and political. After talking about my entry into the world of mummies, the conversation turned to mummy films. 

I’m old school and still hold that Karl Freud’s 1932 The Mummy from Universal starring Boris Karloff and Zita Johann is my all-time favorite mummy films. Following on the heels of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein, this film follows a reanimated 3,700-year-old mummy who seeks to revive his lost love after meeting a modern socialite, looking quite like his princess from his ancient past. Weaknesses have been pointed out about this film, which include the all too brief appearance of the mummy: Karloff is only in full mummy makeup at the beginning of the film while for the rest of the film, he has a weathered wrinkled complexion. Also, a number of critics have argued that the narrative beats of Dracula and The Mummy are essentially identical, which really should not come as a complete surprise because John L. Balderston wrote the script for both films as well as an early script for Frankenstein. However, part of the appeal comes from the suspenseful tension that is still evoked after 80+ years of its premiere. While the lost love storyline wasn’t new at that time – early literary mummy stories, especially those written by Theophile Gautier, explored this theme – the spellbound magnetism of Karloff and reciprocal performance by Johann results in dynamic memorable characters as well as the story itself. (If you are not familiar with the film, here’s the link to the trailer.)

After the interview, I thought about some of the other mummy films I have seen. There are a few that stand out for a variety of reasons: the horror, a different ethnic mummy was featured, or just a unique storyline. 

With a tagline “The Curse is Real,” The Pyramid (2014, Gregory Levasseur), is one of the horror films I saw recently. A father-daughter archaeologist team explore a three-sided pyramid that has been buried for 5,000 years. A remote rover is lost in the pyramid, so the team enter into the labyrinthine passageways, reading the hieroglyphs as they travel further into the heart of the pyramid, and which naturally translates into a horrific and deadly situation for the lost team. The plot was thin and the characters lacked development, so this film was panned as one of the worst for that year. However, the effects and visual cues create some decent jump scares (for me anyway). Follow this link to the trailer. 

Also from my collection, Legend of the Bog (2009, Brendan Foley) starred footballer turned actor Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; Snatch). The main draw for this film is the fact that it features a bog body/mummy instead of the typical Egyptian mummy. Six individuals find themselves at a cabin in the middle of a bog outside of Dublin. While they all share being lost, they also have a secret connection: each of them had been involved in killing someone. I remember the hunter (Jones’ character) comments on the lay lines and their intersections being significant for the druids, which I thought was unique. While the plot tried to be ambitious through it complexity of storylines, regrettably it fell short of its mark. Here’s a link to the trailer. 

Another non-Egyptian mummy can be found in the Aztec Mummy Collection released by BCI Eclipse Company in 2006 and includes La Momia Azteca (trans. The Aztec Mummy), La Maldicion de la Momia Azteca (trans. The Curse of the Aztec Mummy) and La Momia Azteca contra el Robot Humano (trans. The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy). I’ll confine my discussion to the first time, La Momia Azteca which was directed by Rafael Lopez Portillo and released in 1957. The film opens with a warrior being buried alive for a forbidden relationship with a maiden who was killed as a sacrifice to the Aztec god(s). In modern day, a doctor’s fiancée agrees to hypnotic regression and as luck would have it, the doctor taps into her past memories as the sacrificed maiden. Needing concrete proof that the regression worked, the doctor and his group go to the tomb and inadvertently reawaken the warrior. There are similarities to The Mummy (1932) and that’s okay. However, I wish the quality of the film had been better because the plot, pacing, and mythos are intriguing and fascinating. I found a video clip of the first ten minutes of the film here. 

A more recent Aztec mummy film was Charles Pinion’s American Mummy (2017). A pull quote from Fangoria on the Blu-ray states, “You don’t have to go to Egypt to unearth an angry ancient one.” The story follows a group of university students at a dig in New Mexico where a mummy with a unique death mask has been found. One of the students knows quite a bit about the mummy, including a blood ritual that revives the spirit of an Aztec lord. Death follows under the shroud of darkness, which gave this film’s action some spooky atmosphere. The film takes a different path than the Aztec films from the 1950s, however it was refreshing to see another non-Egyptian mummy story. Check out the official trailer here. 

Lastly, echoing last week’s post discussing the use of a mummy for the purpose of telling a ghost story, is the French film, Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre (2001, Jean-Paul Salome). A rediscovered mummy unleashes an evil spirit who periodically possesses a troubled woman (Sophie Marceau) while a detective and an Egyptologist try to solve the mysterious deaths and objects that go missing from the museum. A large appeal of this film is the locale, because it was shot in and around the Musee du Louvre in Paris. The story is engaging and the interaction between actors Michel Serrault (the detective) and Julie Christie (the Egyptologist) is delightful. This film is based on a horror novel – Belphegor – by Arthur Bernede and I have yet to read it. Check out the official trailer here. 

Bonus film: Enki Bilal’s Immortal (2004) for incorporating the gods of ancient Egypt into a futuristic fantasy film. No mummies, but a visual treat. See the trailer here.

Senebti!