The Mummy (1932 film)

Did You Know?

• The mummy of Imhotep was buried alive, as his viscera were not removed and signs of struggling were found.
• The Scroll of Thoth was likely based on the Book of the Dead, a real ancient Egyptian funerary text.
• Archaeological evidence suggests that at least one conspirator in a plot to assassinate Pharaoh Ramesses III may have been buried alive, influencing the film's screenplay.

Production

Producer Carl Laemmle Jr. commissioned story editor Richard Schayer to find a novel for an Egyptian-themed horror film after the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 and the alleged curse of the pharaohs. Schayer found no suitable novel, though the plot resembles Arthur Conan Doyle's short story 'The Ring of Thoth'. Schayer and writer Nina Wilcox Putnam learned about Alessandro Cagliostro and wrote a nine-page treatment titled Cagliostro, set in San Francisco, about a 4,000-year-old magician who survives by injecting nitrates.

Laemmle hired John L. Balderston, who had covered Tutankhamun's tomb opening as a journalist and contributed to Dracula and Frankenstein, to write the script. Balderston moved the story to Egypt, renamed the film The Mummy and the title character Imhotep after the historical architect, and changed the plot from revenge to reviving his old love by killing and mummifying her reincarnated self. He invented the Scroll of Thoth, inspired by the Book of the Dead and the fictional Book of Thoth.

Karl Freund, cinematographer on Dracula, directed his first U.S. film. Freund cast Zita Johann as Anck-es-en-Amon, named after Pharaoh Tutankhamun's wife Ankhesenamun.

Release

Universal Pictures released The Mummy theatrically in the United States on December 22, 1932. It opened nationwide in Australia on March 16, 1933. In the 1990s, MCA/Universal Home Video released it on VHS as part of the Universal Monsters Classic Collection, and also on LaserDisc. In 1999, Universal released it on VHS and DVD as part of the Classic Monster Collection.

In 2004, The Mummy: The Legacy Collection was released on DVD, a two-disc set also including The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost, and The Mummy's Curse. In 2008, a two-disc 75th Anniversary Edition DVD was released. In 2012, the film appeared on Blu-ray in the Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection box set. The following year, it was included in a six-film Blu-ray set with Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man; that set was issued on DVD in 2015.

In 2014, The Mummy: Complete Legacy Collection on DVD included six films. In 2016, a Walmart-exclusive Blu-ray with a glow-in-the-dark cover was released. In September 2017, a Best Buy-exclusive SteelBook Blu-ray with Alex Ross cover art appeared. That same year, the six-film Complete Legacy Collection was released on Blu-ray.

In August 2018, the film was included in the Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection Blu-ray box set, also released on DVD. Later in October 2018, it was part of a limited Best Buy-exclusive Blu-ray set with Alex Ross artwork. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released the film in 4K UHD Blu-ray in October 2023, and again in 2024 as part of a Universal Monsters 4K collection.

Reception

The Mummy was not as profitable in the United States as Dracula and Frankenstein. After three weeks in release in January 1933, ticket sales were noted as dropping in some cities but holding steady in others, despite favorable reviews. It was a major box-office hit in Australia. The Los Angeles Times was positive, but The New York Times reviewer was unimpressed.

Modern reviews have been much more positive. James Lowder in White Wolf Inphobia #53 (March 1995) rated it 4 out of 5, calling it an effective and chilling horror film, crediting Boris Karloff and director Karl Freund. Cliff Aliperti at Immortal Ephemera quoted film historian William K. Everson's 1974 comment that The Mummy is the closest Hollywood came to creating a poem out of horror. The film has been criticized by some modern audiences for its othering attitude toward contemporary Egyptian and Eastern culture, portraying it as primitive and superstitious; critic Caroline T. Schroeder cited a scene where Helen Grosvenor disparages Islamic Egypt while longing for classical Egypt.

Related works

While other Universal Monsters movies got direct sequels, the 1932 film The Mummy did not. Instead, the mummy character was reworked starting with The Mummy's Hand in 1940, which launched a series of its own. That series included The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Curse, and the comedy crossover Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. These later films centered on a mummy named Kharis, though the Abbott and Costello film called him Klaris.

The Mummy's Hand reused footage from the original 1932 movie, and Boris Karloff can be spotted in those clips even though he received no credit. Tom Tyler took over as the mummy in The Mummy's Hand, and Lon Chaney Jr. played the role in the next three sequels. In the late 1950s, Britain's Hammer Film Productions started its own mummy movies with The Mummy in 1959. That film was not a remake of the 1932 original but instead drew from Universal's The Mummy's Hand and The Mummy's Tomb.

Hammer's later entries—The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Shroud, and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb—had no connections to each other or to the first Hammer film, except that the Scroll of Life appeared in two of them. Universal's 1999 film The Mummy claimed to be a remake of the 1932 movie, but its plot was actually closer to The Mummy's Hand. It featured Imhotep, brought back to life by the Book of the Dead, searching for the reincarnation of his lover Anck-su-namun, and included a Medjay named Ardeth Bay.

That movie led to two sequels, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, as well as the prequel spin-off The Scorpion King and its own sequels, plus a short-lived animated series called The Mummy that ran from 2001 to 2003.