Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed Page #3

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of her faith to keep her going.

You will not remember

what I show you now,

and yet I shall awaken memories

of love and crime and death.

The most famous sequence in the picture

is probably the one in which

Zita and Karloff look into the pool

and she experiences her past lives.

And during this sequence, Zita -

because of lack of food

and working till late, late hours, and the

problems she was having with Freund -

she passes out.

And she claims she had what was

one of two near-death experiences.

She said "I could see myself

leaving my body."

And, of course, the first thing she sees

when she opens her eyes is Boris Karloff,

completely in make-up,

but out of character,

saying "Zita! Zita, darling!

Are you all right?"

And she, of course,

didn't want to let any of the crew know

that she had been on another plane.

The Mummy took Universal

to a new box-office plane,

as audiences thrilled to its unique

mixture of horror and romance.

Beyond the excellent performances,

careful art direction paid off handsomely.

The detailed re-creation of Egyptian

murals and hieroglyphics,

supervised by the noted

Hungarian artist Willy Pogany,

lent an unusual air of authenticity

to an otherwise fantastic story.

Technically and artistically,

it was one of the studio's most

accomplished fright films to date.

The best scene, perhaps, in this film

is the coming-to-life

of the mummy at the beginning.

But what is so remarkable

about that to me

is that they went to all the trouble to

make up Boris Karloff from head to foot

in the mummy wrappings,

in the extreme make-up,

and yet they just show his face a little bit,

they show his hand a little bit,

they move down the chest

as the hand moves,

but they don't show him walking around.

There's even a still of the standing Karloff

in the make-up reaching to take the scroll.

But they didn't have that shot

in the movie.

And what self-discipline

there must have been

to go for the implication

and the suggestion and the hint

rather than the blunt statement.

And as for Boris Karloff,

he was an actor who could very easily

be seen to be overacting.

His looks were so striking,

his voice was so distinctive,

that all he'd have to do would be

to do something fairly strong

and it's overwhelming.

So he had the wisdom,

or his directors, or the combination,

had the wisdom to understate things.

Have we not met before, Miss Grosvenor?

No. I don't think so.

I don't think one would forget

meeting you, Ardath Bey.

Then I am mistaken.

The voice has very little inflection.

He hardly moves physically.

But there's always that sense that there's

this great overwhelming force

ready to come out at any time.

In time-honoured Hollywood fashion,

The Mummy borrowed significantly

from a proven box-office sensation.

There is the shadow of Dracula

hovering over this story line.

John Balderston, who had done

the adaptation of the play Dracula

for the American stage,

when he was working on this script

it seems as though

he remoulded the material -

consciously or unconsciously,

perhaps unconsciously -

but remoulded it in the light

of some of the relationships

and situations in Dracula.

You have an undead person

who has a strong romantic

overtone to him...

My blood now flows through her veins.

She will live through

the centuries to come...

as I have lived.

The ancient rites must

be performed over thy body.

Then I will read the great spell with which

Isis brought Osiris back from the grave.

And thou shalt rise again.

A character in both cases who has

a powerful hypnotic control over others.

Come... here.

"Come here" says Dracula.

The mummy, by a much longer distance,

has the power to cause things

to happen across the city.

Even to the point of the talisman -

the cross in one case,

the Isis figure in the other case.

All that, if you phrase it a certain way, no

one would know which movie you mean.

After what happened,

you need rest badly.

But I don't. I was tired, but...

Why, I've never felt so alive before.

You're so... like a changed girl.

Oh, you look wonderful.

I feel wonderful.

I've never felt better in my life.

If I could get my hands on you,

I'd break your dried flesh to pieces.

And I will have Carfax Abbey

torn down stone by stone,

excavated a mile around.

I will fnd your earth box

and drive that stake through your heart.

As filmed, the Balderston script

told a much more elaborate story

of reincarnation than the public ever saw.

There were a whole series of different

historical periods represented,

in each of which she dies.

There was one in ancient Rome,

one where she is confronted by Vikings,

there is one in the Middle Ages

with crusaders.

There are stills that show

that they obviously had filmed this.

At some point it was decided

that this would slow the story line down.

When Universal began a new cycle

of horror thrillers just before World War II,

The Mummy was an obvious

candidate for reincarnation.

In The Mummy's Hand,

Western actor Tom Tyler was recruited,

not to play lmhotep, but a role so similar

that footage from the original film

was shamelessly recycled,

with close-ups of Tyler

substituted for Karloff.

The mummy was now called Kharis,

and instead of ancient scrolls and spells,

a new technique

was used to revitalise him -

an elixir brewed from

precious tana leaves.

Three of the leaves will make enough

fluid to keep Kharis' heart beating.

The mummy's already

ghastly appearance

was further enhanced

by a post-production optical effect

in which Tyler's eyes were meticulously

blackened frame by frame.

The effect was obviously not completed

in time for the theatrical trailer.

The film's exciting climax

was shot on an imposing temple set

left over from James Whale's

jungle adventure, Green Hell.

Stop him!

Spawned from the depths of doom

comes the most fearful monster

of the ages,

to strike with paralysing terror

the despoilers of ancient tombs.

Having already played the Frankenstein

monster and the wolf man,

Lon Chaney quickly added the mummy to

his stable of frightening characterisations.

In The Mummy's Tomb, Kharis

followed the characters from the last film

to a previously sleepy New England town.

Since the studio never explained

how Kharis returned from the ashes

following his immolation

in The Mummy's Hand,

there was no reason to think that

another fire would keep him down either.

Kharis still lives?

Lives only for the purpose

for which he was created:

To guard Ananka's tomb

until the end of time.

In The Mummy's Ghost,

John Carradine was appointed

the latest High Priest of Ananka,

the mummy's lost Egyptian love.

Ananka's reincarnations at Universal

had become so numerous

you almost needed a Rosetta stone

to decipher them all.

Do you not know who you are?

I am Amina Mansori.

You are the princess Ananka,

third daughter of Amenophis,

one-time Pharaoh of all Egypt.

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