The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The mummy originates from funerary practices in which the body of the deceased is ritually wrapped in bandages and the organs removed for preservation. The mummy is almost always associated with Ancient Egyptian history and there has been great fascination with mummies following the unearthing of the tombs of pharaohs. Though fictional depictions usually centre on Egyptian mummies, mummification also appears in other cultures.
The mummy gained a fascination on screen not long after the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. There were a couple of silent films but the genre was popularised by Universal’s The Mummy (1932). The Universal mummy we know emerged from the series of sequels that followed, which typified it as a slow, shuffling creature wrapped in bandages risen from the dead, usually come to look for the reincarnation of its lost love.
There have been numerous B mummy movies, while Mexico has produced their own films about Aztec mummies. Hammer remade the Universal film with The Mummy (1959) and made several mummy films of their own but little changed from a slow shuffling creature wrapped in bandages. There have been a number of mummy comedies, even erotic films.
The 1980s began a move towards revising the genre, including the first mummy films to be actually shot on location in Egypt. The genre was revived in the late 1990s with the big-budget The Mummy (1999), which mounted it as an Adventure Film with CGI effects. This produced several sequels and imitators.
Abbott and Costello’s fourth and final meeting with the Famous Monsters. However, this is a desultory outing where nobody seems to be making much of an effort
Bizarre effort in which actors play Laurel and Hardy who are engaged in a comedic caper against a mummy. The film is all excruciating knockabout slapstick
A cheap and tattily made film from regular genre director David DeCoteau concerning a revived Aztec mummy. This had nothing at all to add to the genre.
Adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars about the spirit of an Ancient Egyptian queen possessing a modern day woman. Lavishly produced with a series of novelty deaths modeled on The Omen. Also the first mummy film to actually shoot in Egypt
Hammer Films adapt Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars about a revived mummy queen. A troubled production that ended up being one of Hammer’s never-quite-rans
Low-budget and cheap looking adaptation of a lesser-known Bram Stoker novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars. This was clearly made to capitalise on Stoker’s name following the success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
This sounds more like a tabloid headline “Elvis and JFK vs a mummy in a retirement home” than it does a film. It is however a work of considerable ingenuity from Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli
The second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
The second mummy film from Hammer Films, this is a rather dull variant on the genre. Their usual flair and production values emerge here under a director who makes this turn out plodding
By its very title, this is a mummy film that is trying to exploit Dawn of the Dead. Once the mummies are revived this is to all intents and purposes another in the fad for extremely gory Italian zombie films
This was one several different films with the same title that came out around the same time. This painful effort comes from Spanish horror star Paul Naschy who plays his signature role of the wolfman Waldemar Daninksy
Michael Almereyda conducts a unique take on the mummy film dispensing with all the cliches in the eerie story of a Druidic mummy unearthed from an Irish peat bog
Luc Besson adapts a French comic-book – sort of a female version of Tintin – with uneven but generally amiable regard. The result is somewhere between an Indiana Jones adventure and the quirkness of an Amelie
Painfully dull film edited together from two unrelated Mexican films ending an incomprehensible plot featuring a revived Aztec Mummy and another mummy that transforms into a werewolf played by Lon Chaney Jr
The first of two animated Hellboy spinoffs with the live-action actors returning to voice their parts. This is the better of the two animated films, developing a weirdness as it takes Hellboy inside a Japanese spirit realm
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
I’m not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here, in some search for novelty on what has gone before, the monsters are turned back into humans
Blumhouse conduct not a reboot but a new mummy film – that has no actual mummy in it and instead seems to have taken most of its moves from The Exorcist. And naturally the title leaves you asking “Lee who?”
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
Classic Halloween tv special. As with most of its ilk, it places the focus on a light-hearted treatment where the monsters are no more serious than Halloween revelers
This has the mildly amusing idea of taking the idea of films like Dracula vs Frankenstein et al one step further and actually pitting various classic monsters against one another in a wrestling match. Beyond its mimicry of televised wrestling though, there is almost nothing else to the film
The Asylum conduct a monster bash – a crossover between the Famous Monsters – and actually do a modest and quite enjoyable job that pays affectionate homage to the characters
Rather charming effort where the Famous Monsters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Creature – are revived and pitted against a group of kids. The film has a great deal of affection for the originals and the encounters are delightful
The original mummy film starring Boris Karloff. Unlike the sequels where the mummy became a slow, shuffling creature, this is a subtle classic with haunted mood.
Nominal remake of the Boris Karloff The Mummy, which has now been inflated into a big budget Indiana Jones adventure. Stephen Sommers lets the film overspill with CGI spectacle but the exercise is deflated by a jokey, unserious attitude
The reboot of the Mummy series emerges as a wannabe Michael Bay film where even star Tom Cruise plays second banana to the CGI eye candy. Equally, an attempt to jumpstart a shared universe out of Universal’s Famous Monsters with the inclusion of Dr Jekyll seems awkward
After their enormously successful revival of Dracula and Frankenstein, Hammer Films and Terence Fisher turned to revive the mummy film, all with the bold, vivid effect of their early films
Low-budget film that would very much like it if we mistook it for one of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films
Sequel to the 1999 The Mummy. Here Stephen Sommers amplifies everything in that film by a factor of ten where the constant bombardment by the spectacular reaches an point of absurd overkill
In a seeming competition for the most ridiculous killer shark of all time, Z budget director Mark Polonia gives us a film about a mummy shark revived from an Egyptian pyramid
The third of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films that feels like it has no point other than to steal $10 from your hand and give you a bucket of content free mental popcorn in return
This was the fourth and final of Universal’s Mummy films starring Lon Chaney Jr. However, by this point the series had become trapped in a series of repetitive plot moves
This was the fourth and second to last of Universal’s Mummy films with Lon Chaney Jr in the role of Kharis. By now the series has been reduced to a well-worn formula
The first and best of Universal’s Mummy sequels with Tom Tyler in the role, this achieves modest atmosphere
The third of Universal’s Mummy films where Lon Chaney Jr inherits the role of Kharis
Rob Zombie conducts a big-screen remake of The Munsters and surprisingly enough makes his best film yet
Following the release of Nacho Libre, we had this parody – a porn film about lucha libre (Mexican masked wrestlers), an idea that in practice ends up about as random and lame as it sounds
Thought to be a long-lost Edward D. Wood, Jr film for many years. Although only written by Wood, this has all the bad acting and hilarious purple prose of a Wood film. The film consists of strippers doing routines in a graveyard
A party bus is stranded in the desert and surrounded by Satanists. At least this is a film that you cannot complain delivers exactly what it promises – plentiful toplessness, gore and cheesy creature effects
The director of Battlefield Earth teams up with Uwe Boll to deliver a sub-Indiana Jones adventure about venturing into an Egyptian pyramid in search of Ancient Astronauts. The tomb raider cliches are so tired and creaky that the film fails to generate any excitement
This was the seventh of Full Moon’s most popular series, the Puppet Master films. This goes back to tell how young Andre Toulon (Greg Sestero) originally created the puppets
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
Another of the films from the Mexican wrestling superhero Santo where he and his friend Blue Demon encounter assorted Famous Monsters raised by a mad scientist
Horror film where escaped convicts wander into a Western ghost town where a gold treasure is guarded by mummies
Film spinoff from the Tales from the Darkside tv series, this is an anthology of three horror tales, the result is a surprisingly slick and well made film
This was part of a late 90s spate of revival of the mummy movie. This effort from Highlander director Russell Mulcahy revives the genre with a modern arsenal of effects
I had heard about this for years – it had a reputation as ‘the mummy from outer space film’. Seen, it proves disappointingly routine – all the tomb raiding is over after the first scene and the rest is little more than a slasher movie with the mummy akin to a hockey-masked maniac wandering a campus killing co-eds
Film from B-budget director Fred Olen Ray that is sold in a way that would have you believe it is a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark but in reality is no more than a dull and cheap revived mummy queen film
Painfully unfunny comedy from Mel Brooks writer Rudy De Luca with journalists Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr encountering monsters while on assignment in Transylvania
Essentially a 1940s mummy film with a voodoo priest resurrected in the present and stalking the reincarnation of his love. In English translation, this has been thrown together with a meaningless word salad title to appeal to the era’s fads for Blaxploitation and exorcism films
This is surely one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Another Mexican wrestling superhero film where a duo of woman wrestlers take on the Aztec Mummy from another Mexican horror series
An animated film based on the hit playing card phenomenon, which proves largely incomprehensible to anybody not versed in the game