The September theme of the month!

It's time. I have consulted the calender, and the theme of September is:

THE MUMMY

OK, actually, it's a couple days past time, but I needed to actually watch the movie before I posted about it. And yeah, while watching this one, I realized that I had never seen the original Universal's The Mummy, so this was a double pleasant treat for me.

So, The Mummy is a story about an ancient Egyption, Imhotep, who loves the hell out of his girlfriend, Ankh-es-en-amon. Unfortunately for Imhotep, his girlfriend gets sick and dies. She still look pretty healthy in bed, but whatever, maybe she had some kind of fast-acting desert cancer.

Imhotep acts like he's going to go along with the normal funeral stuff, but at the last minute he makes off with the scroll of Thoth. This scroll contains magic words that can be used to bring the dead back to life. Unfortunately, using it apparently pisses off the Gods. But, really, Imhotep just wants his girlfriend back. Is that so bad? Can you blame him?

I would have done the same thing.

So he attempts to use the scroll of Thoth, but at the last minute some guards bust in on him and interrupt it. They escort him away, and for his sacrilege, he is buried in a sarcophagus for 3700 years. They also toss the scroll of Thoth in there, just to be safe, so no one goes on a zombie-raising rampage.

So a bunch of centuries go by, and some archeologists finally dig up Imhotep. They also find the scroll, and one of them decides to give reading it a shot. The words resurrect Imhotep, and he gets the hell out of there-- but not before the sight of him drives the archeologist insane.

At 42 seconds, this guy has what must be the best on-screen freakout of the 30's

Holy shit that's a crazy laugh.

Ten years pass, and a new crew is out there digging around. Imhotep shows up calling himself Ardath Bey and directs them toward digging up his old girlfriend. He secures her mummy, but it seems there's still a snag-- her soul has been trapsing around the world through various bodies over the centuries, and now it's in some girl in Cairo. He tries to summon her with his magic mummy powers, but apparently she also has her own soul, and the two souls are struggling for control of her body.

Wait, so this is how reincarnation works? Are we all just a big bundle of souls from all the past ones? We get reincarnated AND we get a new soul? Why?

I'm not entirely sure you even have one soul, Yikes.


Anyway, as you must have guessed by now, Imhotep isn't what we usually think of when we think of mummies. He's not a gift-wrapped zombie. He's a creepy guy with a powerful stare, and he can give people heart attacks from long distance.

Look at that shit.

Overall, I don't think he's such a bad guy. He endured 3700 years of imprisonment for the sake of love, and yeah, he heart-choked a few guys, but only because they were actively trying to prevent him from getting back together with his girlfriend. Ultimately, I guess it's supposed to be bad that his girlfriend's soul was going to take over this newer girl's body entirely, but why shouldn't the old soul have an equal chance? Is the new, more modern soul a better soul somehow?

Questions for the ages.

Anyway, let's take a look at a few editions of this movie available.

You've got your standard single movie DVD.  It comes at a pretty decent price, and you get what you want-- one dvd, one mummy movie; your lack of the 1932 Universal classic is solved.

Then there's the Legacy Collection.  This is what I own.  Just like the Wolf Man collection, this is the one I prefer.  Here you get 5 movies for like 25 bucks.  That is, The Mummy, Mummy's Hand, Mummy's Tomb, Mummy's Ghost, Mummy's Curse.  That's a lot of mummy. You could have a mummy party, a mummy festival.  

A real mummy bash.

There's also a nice collection of documentaries and features.


There's also a Mummy poster.  I like to throw this in there, because it's the same poster featured on my calendar.  



So yeah, it's a good movie, some creepy atmosphere, and I didn't even mention how good Boris Karloff is in this.  Every movie he's in where he doesn't have an opportunity to use his voice is a waste really-- not that I'm saying I want to trade in his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster, though.