Movie Details
| Title: | The Mummy | |
| Director: | Karl Freund | |
| Year: | 1932 | |
| Genre: | Classic | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.10.12 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.10.12 | DVR | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2012 OK so gaming one a minor skirmish this morning. I'm not getting going until 11:30. Sigh. Also, I just want to say that it's like the biggest movie geek comfort blanket to see Robert Osbourne appear on the screen to talk about the movie I'm about to watch. I will be absolutely crushed the day he dies because he's been "that old guy on TCM" forever now and he's still chugging along with the nice little anecdotes and movie trivia in between features. I don't think I'm alone in saying, for anyone who's watched a significant number of movies off TCM, that he's just the best. I had no idea that The Mummy was directed by the guy who DP'd Metropolis and would later give up directing and go back to shooting movies like Key Largo! That's great! Thanks, Robert! Anyway, The Mummy. Karloff in fake wrinkles. Girl: How could you open that horrid tomb? Boy: Had to! Science, you know! Most of what I got from this is a sense of historic adventure that this movie was probably made as a reaction or play to the still-relatively-new events of King Tut's tomb discovery and the ensuing curse. I mean, this was made in the early thirties. During the prologue when it says it's 1927, that's just a few years ago. All the Egyptian artifacts and archaeology and everything else was new to most moviegoers and probably in vogue due to Tutankhamen. Isn't that crazy to think about!? It kind of put a preoccupying layer over the whole movie for me... ...which is good because I didn't get much more out of it. I mean, that's a bit harsh. Karloff is good (although I've never seen a more mummy-like dude than his "disguise" as modern-day Egyptian Ardath Bey) and I liked how they used a very subtle effect of filling the whites of his eyes with light to show hypnotism. But I feel like I've seen all these classic Universal horror movies before even if I haven't so for me this is just a bit of housekeeping. For that reason I'm going from most familiar to least in my triple feature in hopes that the last one will hold my interest in more ways than completionist checkboxing. |
