Pjtaylor-96-138044 'The Mummy (1932)' is not the best of the classic universal monster movies and there's even an argument to be made that the remake (the 1999 Brendan Frazer vehicle, at least) is a much more fun and entertaining experience, though all other incarnations of the character and story have missed the original's point and none have ever recaptured its style or spirit. This is still a seminal horror picture that confidently tells its tale and takes its place in pop-culture legend for good reason, though. There's a bit more on-screen violence than you're used to in these flicks, the underlying undying 'love' plot is an interesting and nicely explored one (though a bit damsel in distress nowadays) and the central performance is decently unsettling, bolstered by on-point and transitional make-up effects. Its creepiness isn't necessarily the crux of the character, however. In fact, there's a much more 'human' side to the bandaged bogeyman, here. 6/10

merelyaninnuendo The MummyDark Universal will have to come up with something better than this for it will do just fine for a single installment but not for a series and especially not if one of the loopholes of the movie is character's perspective and its development. The Mummy is definitely amazing and horrifying but comparing it to the other films like Dracula or Frankenstein of the same genre, it is short on content and execution. Although the details mentioned in here (the dog or how she convinces her servants to help her escape to him) are as good as Dracula or Frankenstein. Karl Freud doesn't quite get the picture, is probably the reason he couldn't execute it to that level and fails to convince the audience about writer's vision. At the end, The Mummy is of course smartly written, well performed and has the perfect environment and only if it would have been in proper hands, might have been on the major league.

Thomas Drufke When looking at classic monster-horror films, there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed. Not necessarily meaning that the films have no realism, but more so that the films are so dated in style and aesthetic that it becomes extremely difficult to understand how moviegoers were able to feel the scares of such a film. The Mummy is an interesting movie with the mythology it sets up, but lacks the thrills or lasting direction to catapult itself into the hall of fame of horror films. One thing this film does incredibly well is use Boris Karloff. Because the film is more of an atmospheric horror, it relies on particular creepy images rather than scaring with shock- horror, and no image is more creepy than a close up of Boris Karloff staring you down directly into the camera. He's a legend, and The Mummy is just one of many examples of that. Following along in the same sort of structure as films like Frankenstein, you can figure out the plot beats relatively easy, but that doesn't necessarily take away from the experience, though it certainly doesn't enhance it. Overall, this short take on The Mummy mythology is a fun one, even if it produces little to no scares whatsoever. 6.7/10

Leofwine_draca A lesser Universal horror film than the other well-known classics from this by-gone era but one that is still entertaining in a lot of ways. It is Karloff who makes the film as the prince brought back to life, and the make up work on him this time is no less impressive than that in FRANKENSTEIN, although not as famous. Karloff's face is a mass of wrinkles and he really does look thousands of years old.Surprisingly, Karloff is only swathed in bandages for a few minutes at the beginning of the film; the image of the bandaged mummy on the rampage is from the film's numerous sequels and Hammer's 1959 remake, among others. Dwight Frye also stars as his usual gibbering maniac, this time repeating "He went for a little walk!" after he has brought Karloff back to (un)life. The film also has some great costumes and a nice Egyptian set, complete with hieroglyphs, which is to be expected really. Karloff gets to deliver a lot of sinister lines and shows us that he is capable of acting as well as wearing make up. Unfortunately most of the film consists of minor characters talking, drawing room talk as it were, and in this area the film is rather dated, much like it's other counterparts of the time, although not quite as dated as the earlier Dracula.Altogether this is an interesting film, enlivened by Karloff's central performance and worth seeing as the film which kicked off a whole sub-genre. Looking back on it, the film may be dated but really it's from a cinematic era which we'll never see again. Look at this and other classics such as THE HAUNTING, and then look at what happened to the horror genre after the mid '70s. No more will we see atmospheric films such as these, instead all we get is blood and gore, which is not necessarily bad but still saddening to see how things have changed.