Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed

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Welcome to the gorgeously restored

Vista Theatre in Los Angeles,

which has re-created

the mystical Egyptian dcor

that was so popular

in movie palaces of the 1920s.

Egypt was all the rage then,

in the years following

the discovery of King Tut's tomb,

with all those legends

about its supposedly fatal curse.

So, what better place

could we have chosen

to celebrate Hollywood's

most famous restored Egyptian,

Boris Karloff as the mummy?

When Universal released The Mummy,

it had already established itself

as Hollywood's leading house of horrors,

with films like Dracula, Frankenstein

and The Old Dark House.

But The Mummy was something

radically different.

This time the monster was also

a halfway sympathetic lover,

and the timeless romantic fantasy

of a love transcending time and space

inspired countless other films.

So let's do a little

archaeological excavating of our own,

as we unearth the original story

of our... Mummy Dearest.

What's the matter, man?

For heaven's sakes, what is it?

He went for a little walk!

You should have seen his face!

By the time Boris Karloff took his

legendary midnight stroll in The Mummy,

the public was already familiar

with the mysteries of ancient Egypt

through the spectacular discovery,

a decade earlier,

of King Tutankhamen's

treasure-laden tomb.

Almost as fascinating as the treasures

were the stories,

fuelled by an eager press,

of a deadly curse believed to strike down

all those who disturbed

Tutankhamen's resting place.

"Death, eternal punishment,

for anyone who opens this casket."

Good heavens, what a terrible curse!

If anybody died

who was even distantly related

to anybody who was around when the

tomb was opened, this would be news.

This would be indirect evidence

of the curse at work.

Even if the curse was bogus,

the Egyptian belief in immortality wasn't.

To assure resurrection, an elaborate ritual

of mummification evolved.

The jackal-headed god Anubis

presided over the embalming rites,

which required 70 days for completion.

Curiously, the screenplay

that became The Mummy

was not originally an Egyptian story at all.

Asked to develop a vehicle for the new

horror superstar, Boris Karloff,

screenwriter and journalist Nina Wilcox

Putnam concocted Cagliostro,

based on the legend of a historical figure

who claimed to have lived for centuries.

The historical figure of that name

was a poor Italian in the 18th century

who passed himself off as an alchemist

and a hypnotist, conducted seances,

became a fashionable figure, apparently,

in the aristocratic world of France.

Putnam's story was substantially revised

by John L Balderston,

a playwright who had collaborated

on both Dracula and Frankenstein.

He also knew

a thing or two about mummies.

He was always a student of history.

He loved reading history. We had

all kinds of books around the house.

And Egypt, of course, was one

of the main parts of ancient civilisation,

and he was intrigued by it.

He was in London after World War I -

he worked for the New York World

as a correspondent -

and one of his assignments

just turned out to be

the opening of King Tutankhamen's tomb.

So, of course, he was in his element.

He loved it.

The Mummy marked

the directorial debut of Karl Freund,

the celebrated German cinematographer

who had already photographed

Universal's Dracula,

taking his trademark mobile camera

deep into Transylvanian crypts.

He also shot the highly expressionistic

Murders in the Rue Morgue,

in which Bela Lugosi

played the Dracula-like role

of a scientist who also needed

women's blood -

not for sustenance, but for mad

evolutionary experiments.

For The Mummy, Freund would get to call

all the shots, not just the visual ones.

"Lmhotep. High Priest

of the Temple of the Sun at Karnak."

Poor old fella. Now what could you have

done to make 'em treat you like that?

Balderston's screenplay

renamed the mummy "lmhotep",

after the real Egyptian architect

who built the first pyramid.

For a while, "lmhotep" was a working title

of the film, along with "King of the Dead".

Meanwhile, Universal was slightly

renaming the film's star as well.

Well, he was billed

as "Karloff the Uncanny",

and at that time, and today also,

there are very few stars

that are billed just by their last name.

So he had achieved an awful lot

between the years 1931 and 1933,

between the first Frankenstein film

and the filming of The Mummy.

Once more, Karloff would wear

an extraordinary make-up,

created by Universal's

resident wizard, Jack Pierce.

I think what made the mummy make-up

work was Karloff, and Karloff's face.

He had this great bone structure for it,

and his performance,

even though he was supposed to be

this dead thing coming back to life,

it was very subtle, but it was frightening.

I think the combination of Pierce and

Karloff was such a great combination,

and they were such a great team.

With the two of them together, they've

made these classic images in horror films

that I don't think will ever be matched.

In preparation for the make-up,

studio publicity claimed

that Pierce had carefully studied

ancient Egyptian embalming techniques.

I really have no clue what research he did.

When you look at real mummies...

The first mummy that I ever saw

was Boris Karloff

in the Jack Pierce make-up, and I thought

that's what mummies look like.

When I finally saw pictures of Rameses,

I found he was kinda different-looking.

It wasn't quite the same effect.

I think, actually, putting the make-up on

for The Mummy and taking it off

took longer than

the make-up for Frankenstein.

I only know what I've read,

and I read something about, I think,

eight hours to do the mummy.

Which I can believe - especially since

Pierce had to wrap his body as well.

Back in those days they only had spirit

gum, cotton, collodion, stuff like that,

but something we even do today

is called an old-age stipple,

where you actually stretch

the person's skin.

And I'm sure what he did

is paint a layer of spirit gum on Karloff,

stick some cotton on - and I understand

he used Egyptian cotton,

I think just because it was finer cotton -

glued that on, painted over it with either

more spirit gum or collodion, and dried it.

Then, once it was dry, he released it

and it would form these wrinkles.

And I'm sure he did many layers.

Where it didn't form enough

he'd add a bit more and build it up.

Very tedious, time-consuming,

very painful, I'm sure, for Boris.

I still can't believe... Having this collodion

and stuff around your eyes,

he must have teared up

through this whole process.

Had to hold his breath as well, I'm sure.

Fortunately, he didn't have

to wear the bandages as lmhotep

except for a very brief

period of time on camera.

But it was really excruciatingly painful

to take that make-up off.

I know that they spent hours and hours

and hours putting it on for the first day.

My understanding was

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