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Fantastic!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Hammer's first take on the Mummy and probably their best stab at it--or for me, anyway--perhaps the only one worth watching. Lee and Cushing are back as the 2 great stars, and Yvonne Furneaux makes for a very lovely female lead. This Mummy takes more inspiration from the 2nd wave of the old Universal chestnuts, harking back to Prince Kharis rather than Karloff's Imhotep. As far as the old Universal cycle goes, I assume most horror fans agree that the "Karloff" version is the superior one, but the films with Kharis--mostly the ones with Lon Chaney Jr., are a lot of fun as well. At any rate, the Hammer version sticks to pretty much the same formula--not many deviations aside from the obvious technicolor & the fact that Lee as the mummy, can see with both eyes. Reportedly, after this role, Lee stated that he had had enough of playing mute, heavily bandaged monsters, but his take on the creature is excellent nonetheless. Just a subtle expression or a movement with the eyes can display some great emotion--for those actors with obvious talent.

Hammer remakes Universals' "Kharis" series of 1940s mummy movies, with engaging results, in standard tale of "profaners of the tomb" and the consequences that they must face. In the late 19th century, elderly Stephen Banning (Felix Aylmer), his brother Joseph Whemple (Raymond Huntley), and Stephens' son John (Peter Cushing) lead an expedition that discovers the Egyptian tomb of the Princess Ananka. The mummy watching over things is Kharis (Sir Christopher Lee), who is brought back to England three years later to dispatch Joseph and the Bannings."The Mummy" is not as thickly atmospheric as the best Hammer films, and those Egyptian scenes do look pretty artificial, but it still delivers quite a bit of fun. Lee carries on the tradition of a shambling, stumbling automaton in high style, and his character has the appropriate amount of true physical menace. Plus, Lee is allowed to express a fair amount of emotion through his eyes, the only part of his body not covered by Roy Ashtons' excellent makeup. It's great fun to watch him and his old friend Cushing tussling in action scenes. The very gorgeous Yvonne Furneaux doesn't show up until around the one hour mark, but as the wife of Cushings' character, she does play a rather important role, since Mrs. Banning coincidentally bears a resemblance to the Princess.Aylmer and Huntley are joined by other top British character players like Eddie Byrne (as the police inspector), George Pastell (a Hammer repertory player who often specialized in ethnic roles), the ubiquitous Michael Ripper (in a funny comedy relief role as a drunken, frequently frightened poacher), George Woodbridge (as a police constable), and Willoughby Gray (as Dr. Reilly). Cushing is a delight, as always.Accompanied by ominous music composed by Franz Reizenstein, "The Mummy" is just as colourful and pleasing to look at previous Hammer Gothic favourites "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Dracula". Definitely recommended.Seven out of 10.

Terence Fisher may not be that slam-bang action type of filmmaker that modern audiences might be used to know with blockbusters (such as decent ones like the 1999 Mummy, or bad ones like the 2017 Mummy), but he was an ideal choice for these color-filmed, handsomely mounted though modestly budgeted horror films from Hammer in the 50's. Following his great success on Dracula, it stood to reason he should do the Mummy, and what he came up with was at times creepy - and, I imagine if you saw this as a kid or decide to show this to small children, scary at points, like when the Mummy crashes through the window into the padded room at the asylum - and deliberately paced. In other words, it moves a little slow, but that's not to the detriment of the film; it's more your problem than the movie's if you find yourself frustrated, and unlike even the 32 Mummy, this doesn't lack a good many memorable sequences and visuals (the 32 Mummy did have some, but not enough).In this you also get of course Cushing and Lee, and I really liked their physicality in the movie. Cushing's character, the son of an archaeologist that has a history with the red-fez wearing Master-of- the-Mummy in this story, is hobbled with a bad leg, and this isn't just something that the writers give Cushing for as some crutch, no pun intended. Instead this ends up becoming important when the Mummy comes in ready to strangle people, and seeing Cushing moving about, whether it's in an action-y moment or otherwise, is fascinating in how he puts his body into things, as any good actor should. Lee, too, is thoughtful in what is a character with no spoken lines (if Lee does speak, I don't remember it, and I just watched the film), and he is remarkable perhaps due to limitations with his costume or injuries on set or what have you, and he makes him as memorable as the Karloff Mummy; you feel his presence in a room and his eyes do a lot of good work as well.There is a point midway through the film when Cushing reads from the history of this Karras character from thousands of years prior in Egypt when everything went down, and this is the one part of the movie that dragged for me. it's not to any major detriment of the film, but it's the one time I felt Fisher's style, which I otherwise loved in the film (i.e. that scene where the casket falls off the wagon, falls in the mud pond, and then when the character comes over later to say the things that make Karras come out of the ground, beautiful), start to get a little long. But this is a minor complaint in what is otherwise the best of the Mummy movies; it has a strong musical score, the acting is quality (yes, even the typical types you get in Hammer movies like the local British drunks at the bar), and the ending is almost bordering on tragic if you think about how this character has been depicted (the Mummy is the horror movie icon that doesn't have his own agency, or at least as much as the others).

Here's another colourful classic from those chaps at Hammer, made at the peak of their popularity in the late '50s. From here on they were on their way down, forced into lower and lower budgets in the '60s (forced to shoot two lots of films back-to-back in 1965 in order to utilise sets), remaking the same types of film again and again, and desperately trying to cling on to the last remaining viewers in the early '70s with added gore and sex. THE MUMMY is a faithful retelling of previous entries in the genre, only this time with different names and lots of colour. Hammer made their mummy (played by Christopher Lee) a frightening, towering figure of evil, and scenes of it striding across the countryside, caked in mud and slime after rising from a bog, manage to be very frightening indeed.It's also a surprisingly tame film, at least in the version I saw, tame enough to get a PG rating in the UK. The only grisly moment comes when Lee gets his tongue cut out in flashback, but MARK OF THE DEVIL this isn't! We witness the event from behind Lee's head instead. Supposedly, racier/gorier versions were shot for foreign markets, and I'd love to see a print of one of these one day - it would certainly make interesting viewing.Anyway, in the tradition of their previous hits THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and Dracula, this film has a great score from James Bernard, good photography and lots of nice scenery/sets and costumes. Full use is made of the colour film available to Hammer, making it a very nice picture to look at. My only real complaint with this film would be the running time, which feels very short (although it isn't really). A fair quarter of an hour is taken up with a lengthy flashback scene explaining how Lee came to be buried in the princess' tomb. Therefore the film feels very short, and there's not a lot of opportunity to build up atmosphere. Instead what we get is a surprising amount of action and lots of shots of Lee coming out of his tomb and prowling the countryside while menacing music plays on. What more could you want from Hammer? Of course the third pairing of Cushing and Lee is the factor that really makes this film unmissable (just about any film starring the pair is a classic, with perhaps the exceptions of THE GORGON, I, MONSTER, and NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT). Lee plays the monster once more, using only his eyes to convey loneliness and sadness as the titular character. Indeed he puts in a sympathetic performance, yet still manages to be frightening when we first meet up with him. Cushing, on the other hand, does what he does best, i.e. be the hero and fight evil. He does get a couple of excellent fight scenes with Lee set in a library, where he rolls over desks in a display of sudden agility and even spears the mummy with a poker (an idea of his own). Cushing's character is typically noble and intelligent, yet not as interesting as his Doctor Frankenstein or Van Helsing - in fact, John Banning is quite a bland role, but Cushing breathes life into it with his typical skill and makes all of the scenes in which he appears professional and worthy.An excellent supporting cast flesh out the ranks, including Yvonne Furneaux as the glamorous damsel in distress (given shamefully little to do, though, aside from be carried by the mummy). Felix Aylmer is the fussy, selfish elder Banning, who probably deserves the strangling that he gets, when the mummy breaks through the bars of his padded cell and attacks him (again a great moment). Further down the cast list, Michael Ripper puts in a comic bit part as a drunk poacher who can't believe his eyes, George Pastell is suitably evil as a suspicious foreigner, and old-time performers like George Woodbridge (a staple for Hammer) lend solid support.The special effects are limited, but there are some excellent scenes involving the mummy getting shot where huge holes are blown in his chest - very convincing too. The ending sees the mummy taking Banning's wife and walking back into the bog, before putting her down and getting gunned to death by surrounding policemen (KING KONG anybody?), which manages to be quite tragic and fitting. The Egyptian scenes and flashbacks look convincingly done on a low budget, and the mummy kills a string of people to keep the horror content flowing. In all, this is another well-made classic from Hammer, with all the correct elements, and the best mummy movie I've seen so far.