“Anck-es-en-Amon, my love has lasted longer than the temples of our gods. No man ever suffered as I did for you. But the rest you may not know. Not until you are about to pass through the great night of terror and triumph. Until you are ready to face moments of horror for an eternity of love.”
When people talk about “The Mummy,” they’re usually thinking of the iconic 1999 film starring Brendan Fraser. But many forget that that film was a remake of The Mummy from 1932, starring Boris Karloff as the titular creature. While perhaps not as well remembered as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy helped to establish some popular horror movie tropes that are used in films to this day.
History
The film that would become The Mummy was initially inspired by the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Before the setting was moved to Egypt, the writers had devised a plot centered around a 4,000-year-old magician named Cagliostro who sought to murder anyone who resembled his lost love. The story ended up being reworked into a reanimated mummy seeking to reunite with his lost love, who had since been reincarnated in the modern world. Boris Karloff, who had brought Frankenstein’s monster to life the year before, was chosen to star in the role of Imhotep.
Importance
The Mummy remains an important entry in the history of early film horror for several reasons. First, it proved that it was possible to make a horror film that wasn’t directly adapted from a novel, like Dracula and Frankenstein for instance. Writers could be creative in how they put a story together and still make a great movie. Second, it firmly established the modern movie trope of a cursed creature searching for a reincarnated lost love. This trope has popped up more and more frequently in recent years, particularly in film adaptations of Dracula.
Legacy
The impact The Mummy has had in the nearly century that has passed since its release cannot be overstated. With its impressive makeup effects for Imhotep alone, the movie created the definitive look for movie mummies that has barely changed in the last hundred years. But its biggest legacy can likely be found in how the undead Imhotep obsessively seeks to renew his lost love with Anck-es-en-Amon. This laid the foundation for innumerable tragic villains over the decades, the kind who simply can’t accept that their chance has come and gone. Most of these can trace back to Karloff’s Imhotep and his doomed attempt to reunite with the woman he loved so long ago.
In conclusion, The Mummy more than deserves its place among the Universal horror films of the 1930s. By establishing the trope of reincarnated lost love and taking the first tentative steps beyond just adapting novels to film, The Mummy represents that pivotal moment when Hollywood began to realize the boundaries of what could be told on the screen were truly limitless.
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