THE MUMMY (1959)

Directed by Terence Fisher
Written by Jimmy Sangster
Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Yvonne Furneaux, Eddie Byrne, Felix Aylmer, Raymond Huntley, George Pastell, Michael Ripper, George Woodbridge, Harold Goodwin, Denis Shaw, Gerald Lawson, Willoughby Gray, John Stuart, David Browning

Out of all of the classic movie monsters, I feel the Mummy doesn’t get much respect. There’s the whole slow shambling thing the Mummy does, his aversion to fire, and the listless and emotionless way he goes about things, but through the lens of Hammer and the ever-talented Terence Fisher, I rediscovered THE MUMMY to be a true masterpiece in classic horror cinema.

It doesn’t hurt that this film has both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in it. Though they don’t interact that much verbally, they do tussle quite a bit in the third act of this film. Covered in layers of mud and bandages, this role of the Mummy (aka Kharis, an Egyptian priest in love with his queen Ananka) isn’t one of Lee’s liveliest of performances, but this film does highlight the vast physicality Lee possessed in many of roles. Through simple movements of the eye and a purposeful shamble towards his victims, Lee carries much emotion even without a tongue in his mouth. The muck-covered face of the monster is amazingly emotive here, all a testament to Lee’s power as an actor.

His offscreen friend and often onscreen nemesis Peter Cushing has a much meatier role as John Banning, the son of an archaeologist who discovers Ananka’s tomb and disturbs it–a deed which begins a series of unfortunate accidents and disasters surrounding the treasures taken from the tomb and their proprietors. Cushing is fantastic here, crippled because of his dedication to archaeology but still powerful in intellect and insight. Cushing was quite young in this role, and I was surprised how much he looks like Michael Fassbender in this film. While some of Cushing’s later roles cast him with a much younger leading lady, he seems much closer in age with Yvonne Furneaux, who plays both Ananka and the present-day maiden Isobel.

By now, the story is well known. The tomb of a pharaoh (in this case an Egyptian queen) is opened and a curse is released, but Isobel is the spitting image of Ananka, which confuses Kharis the Mummy when he is sent to kill Cushing’s Banning by a vengeful Egyptian priest (George Pastell). Reminiscent of the way Jason was put down in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2, the Mummy’s love for Ananka and her similarity to Isobel proves to be the Mummy’s downfall. While the film ends abruptly (as most did in those days), the climax is as thrilling as they come, and what really surprised me was the clever script by Jimmy Sangster, who gives everyone a quippy and fun tone despite the dire circumstances. I especially loved the repartee between Cushing and the police inspector, who thinks the archaeologist is nuts for thinking a mummy is after him. Really fun stuff that you don’t normally see in horror films.

This classic Hammer Film is not to be missed and gives one of the less respected monsters his just desserts.