Aware they couldn’t rely only on teen coloratura Deanna Durbin to make good on the entire studio payroll (Deanna was popular, but getting chubby-cheeked post-puberty), Universal Pictures began a second wave of their iconic early ‘30s monster movies. (Even expanded the canon with Curt Siodmak’s WOLF MAN/’41.) Surprisingly, they included Karl Freund’s THE MUMMY/’32 in the select group. Always an outlier amid Universal’s monstrous clan: poetic, still, more atmospheric than corporal, fatalistic rather than destructive; the Mummy maxim: Leave Me In Peace. That idea pretty much holds in this first of four sequels. (Not seen here, the three to follow star Lon Chaney Jr who had just joined the studio.) In this one, jug-headed archeologist Dick Foran and comic sidekick Wallace Ford follow a lead discovered on an ancient piece of pottery to a hidden tomb where a mummy awaits his daily dose of tea for the living-dead. Father/daughter nightclub magicians Cecil Kellaway & Peggy Moran also on board while mummy protector George Zucco (who apparently gets killed off in all four pics!) tries to stop them from disturbing the peace. Sounds close enough to work for Universal, but nothing feels or looks right. And they let you know it by reusing bits of footage from the original MUMMY. Hack director Christy Cabanne and producer Ben Pivar knew which side the studio’s bread was buttered. So where Freund’s original beauty anticipated the imaginative suggestive horror of Val Lewton @ RKO (CAT PEOPLE/’42; THE LEOPARD MAN/’43); this reboot points ahead to schlockmeister William Castle.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Stick with the dreamy nightmarish original; OR: For a more modern reboot, Hammer Films’ excellent 1959 version. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mummy-1932.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-mummy-1959.html
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