The Mummy
The Mummy (1959) Rewatch? ✅
Couldn’t be arsed rummaging so despite not being a particular fan of the film, threw it on to watch all the same seems as it was right in front of me.
Yeah, I’m still holding that it’s pretty dull stuff and far from Hammer’s finest hour and a lot of that is the film crushing together a bunch of the Universal Mummy films into one and, well, not doing a very interesting job of it.
But, you know, it still looks pretty lavish in that Hammer Horror way, the mummy risen, covered in thick layers of mud, really is a fantastic scene still and it’s not like it’s a bad film, just kinda one that exists. Watchable if never overly exciting.
It does have this weird thing where Peter Cushing, who would be in his mid forties at the point the film was made, is filling a role that’s seemingly scripted for someone vastly younger. He gets to do his heroic turn later on but the early parts of the film are super jarring watching a grown ass man talk about his Uncle like the kid in any number of American films. It’s jarring but also, it is kinda fun in its own little way. Not sure what anyone was truly thinking with it but it adds a nice, surreal, air to the first quarter of the film.
Elsewhere, Christopher Lee doesn’t really get to do much and spends most of the film silent, covered in mud and bandages, the rest of the cast keep things ticking along and Michael Ripper makes their customary appearance. George Pastell gets to wear a fez again (they missed a trick not giving him one in Tomb Of The Cybermen, imo) and pretend to be Egyptian. It’s largely all fine.
I came out of it mainly wondering how much watching it when the rest of the Hammer oeuvre exists is part of my funk with it. With 2024 eyes, (and some point in the eighties eyes for when I first got to see it) it’s incredibly Hammer-by-numbers but of course, in 1959 that really wasn’t the case.
I wonder whether my view would be different if I’d watched it on release, you know?