There's only one scene depicting what has become the shambling, bandaged mummy of popular culture, and contemporary audiences are bound to dismiss the film as an intolerably slow melodrama, but "The Mummy" is one of the true cinematic masterpieces of horror. The sets and various Egyptian trappings are nice to look at, and yet they're only garnish. This film's actual theme is the danger of the past: how it can rear up in all its seductive power and completely overwhelm the present. We may be terrified of this power, but still irresistibly drawn to it.
John Balderston's screenplay reproduces the dramatic confrontation between the monster and the occult expert that he had originally written for "Dracula" (1931); this was one of the earlier film's most gripping scenes, and it's arguably even more compelling here. (Edward van Sloan does a splendid job in both.) Director Karl Freund was a veteran of the silent era, and his staging of the flashbacks to ancient Egypt in silent movie style is a nice touch. Zita Johann delivers a sympathetic performance as a frightened, baffled woman with one foot in the present and the other in a mystical past that threatens to swallow her whole. Boris Karloff, of course, was already a master of his art. He plays Imhotep as a driven, grimly obsessed man who has nothing in the present but a false identity; his commitment to the past is total, and he is intent on recreating that past with Johann (at the expense of her life in the twentieth century).
Some of the script's details get a little jumbled midway through the film, but "The Mummy" is otherwise perfect. (And, unlike many other Universal horror productions, it doesn't feel rushed.) Nine and a half stars.
John Balderston's screenplay reproduces the dramatic confrontation between the monster and the occult expert that he had originally written for "Dracula" (1931); this was one of the earlier film's most gripping scenes, and it's arguably even more compelling here. (Edward van Sloan does a splendid job in both.) Director Karl Freund was a veteran of the silent era, and his staging of the flashbacks to ancient Egypt in silent movie style is a nice touch. Zita Johann delivers a sympathetic performance as a frightened, baffled woman with one foot in the present and the other in a mystical past that threatens to swallow her whole. Boris Karloff, of course, was already a master of his art. He plays Imhotep as a driven, grimly obsessed man who has nothing in the present but a false identity; his commitment to the past is total, and he is intent on recreating that past with Johann (at the expense of her life in the twentieth century).
Some of the script's details get a little jumbled midway through the film, but "The Mummy" is otherwise perfect. (And, unlike many other Universal horror productions, it doesn't feel rushed.) Nine and a half stars.