The
plot - John Banning (Peter Cushing) is on an expedition in Egypt with his father
and his uncle. Their quest is to find
the tomb Princess Ananka, the high
priestess of the god Karnak.
Banning the Younger is unable to finish the dig because he’s got a
broken leg. This leaves his father and
his uncle to finish the job. Before they
can unseal the tomb, an Egyptian man named Mehmet Bey warned them not to do
that, lest they be cursed. Of course,
the two men ignore him and open up the tomb anyway. While the uncle goes to tell John about the
find, the dad reads from The Scroll of Life.
A door opens (we don’t see anything come out) and then we hear his
father scream. When the uncle goes back
into the tomb, he finds his brother uttering complete gibberish. Something scared the hell out of him, but
nobody knows what it was.
Fast forward three years - the Bannings are
back in England. Banning’s father is
confined to a nursing home. He hasn’t
uttered a single coherent, articulated sound since his committal. But suddenly he’s lucid and he summons his
son. The son dutifully shows up, and his
dad tells him about what happened in the tomb after he read The Scroll of
Life. He inadvertently awakened Kharis
(Christopher Lee). Kharis was mummified
alive and sentenced to guard Ananka in the afterlife. His crime?
He was the high priest of Karnak who unfortunately (for him) fell in
love with Ananka. After her interment,
he snuck into the tomb and read aloud The Scroll of Life to try to bring her
back to life. Funny thing is you can see
her right eye twitch, but I digress. Kharis
was caught, tried, had his tongue cut out so he won’t scream during his
mummification. So after he’s mummified
he goes into his box (a little too willingly - he didn’t struggle).
After Banning’s father tells his son about
Kharis, he tells him he believes the mummy will come to England and kill all
those who desecrated Ananka’s tomb. The
son doesn’t believe him. In the
meantime, Mehmet Bey has brought Kharis to England. He’s a believer in Karnak, and he’s sworn to
do as Banning’s father suggested. He
hired a couple of drunken guys to bring a crate (containing Kharis) to his
house. Of course, the box falls off the
wagon and into a bog. Bey finds out, but
he’s not concerned. After the police
disperse from the scene of the box’s disappearance, Bey comes back and reads
the Scroll of Life. A question I had was
“how did the mummy understand when Bannings father read the scroll aloud in
English? I ask because Bey read it in
Arabic. Again, I digress… When Kharis emerges from the bog, he looks
more like Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four than a typical mummy.
What happens next? Kharis breaks into the nursing home and kills
Banning’s father. Shortly thereafter, he
kills banning’s uncle. Banning figures out
that his old man was right all along, and that he’s probably next on the hit
list. While reviewing some old drawings
he notices his wife bears a striking resemblance to Ananka. This comes in handy when Kharis comes to kill
Banning. When Kharis breaks into Banning’s
house, Banning shoots him before Kharis starts to strangle Banning. The wife enters and screams. Kharis sees the wife, takes note of her
resemblance to Ananka, he lets go of Banning and leaves. When Kharis returns to Bey’s house, he thinks
his mission is accomplished. He is
somewhat shocked when Banning himself calls on Bey, his new neighbor.
Bey
is somewhat shaken because he knows he doesn’t have a lot of time to finish off
Banning, and Banning knows it. After the
police have done some fact checking, they believe Banning’s story about the
mummy. So at least they have a plan for
the next time the mummy shows up to kill Banning. Bey and the mummy go to Banning’s house to
finish the job. But as Banning nearly
dies at the mummy’s hand, his wife busts in and commands the mummy to
stop. As Bey keeps telling the mummy to
kill Banning, the mummy listens to Banning’s wife instead and kills Bey. The mummy carts the wife off to the swamp,
where she awakens just in time to avoid drowning. She tells Kharis the mummy to release
her. After he complies, the police and
their posse (who have been following the mummy from Banning’s house), open fire
and fill the mummy full of holes. The
mummy sinks back into the bog with the Scroll of Life firmly clutched in his
hand. Game over, thanks for playing.
Was
this Mummy better than the 1932 original?
As much as I love Hammer films I’d have to say “no.” But that doesn’t take anything away from my
appreciation for this movie. If it’s a
Hammer movie with both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, I’m all over it.
No comments:
Post a Comment