The Mummy (1932), Part II

It's 1932. The British Museum is at it again. Apparently their operation has gotten a little swankier since 1921. The sign on their dig house is way more pimped out. Enter our blandly handsome hero, Frank!

Frank, as it turns out, is actually Sir Joseph's son. He's following in his father's footsteps, but he doesn't really seem to share his father's enthusiasm for the scholarly aspects of Egyptology. As we'll soon see, he's a lot more interested in finding cool stuff and scoring chicks.

Frank and his buddy Dr. Pearson are just wrapping up their field season. They are disappointed. Apparently they didn't find many shiny things. Just a bunch of stupid potsherds and stuff. Not like in the good old days, when there was less competition for the good looting spo-- er, excavation sites.

The doc starts talking about that strange case ten years ago, when that Oxford kid on Sir Joseph's dig died. Frank is pretty sure he died of boredom. Archaeology, man. What a drag.

We're just hearing about how poor old Goofy Assistant "died laughing -- in a straight jacket!" and Sir Joseph Whemple swore never to dig in Egypt again, when a knock sounds on the door. Enter one of the most awesome villains in monster movie history:

Whoa, he's looking a lot better than he did last time we saw him. Apparently he's been moisturizing.

It's immediately clear that this is not one of those stereotypical horror-movie mummies of the groaning and bandage-dragging variety. Why is that the image that everyone thinks of, anyway? It's like how Boris Karloff's subtle and tragic Frankenstein's monster has not impressed himself on the collective consciousness the same way as his stiff-limbed, expressionless successors have. Weird.

Anyway, this mummy is erudite, quietly dignified, and patient. He's been biding his time for the last ten years, adopting a new identity, learning English (and presumably Arabic as well), and getting less crusty-looking. He's come bearing a clue for these two bored and desperate doofuses that will lead them to "the most sensational find since the tomb of Tutankhamun" -- the tomb of the princess Ankhesenamun. (That's the daughter of Akhenaten and wife of Tutankhamun, by the way. She's also the granddaughter of Amenhotep III, who has apparently been conflated with his son. Hey, at least they're all from the same general time period!)

Frank is surprised that Ardath Bey (as Imhotep is calling himself) is so eager to give up this sensational find to someone else. The mummy explains that Egyptians are not allowed to excavate the tombs of their ancient forbears -- "only foreign museums" have that privilege. Hmmm. I'm sure that would come as a surprise to the various Egyptian archaeologists who were active at the time. To name just one, Selim Hassan was, that very year, busy excavating 32 newly discovered mastaba tombs at Giza. Whoops!

But Frank and his colleague buy Imhotep's story. The next day, they're hanging out under an umbrella, smoking pipes and watching their team of Egyptian workmen do clearance at the spot Imhotep indicated to them. No wonder you two asshats are so bored. You're not doing anything!

(The scenery here looks fairly convincing, by the way, but apparently it's all shot in California. I guess those awesome shots of Deir el Bahri were stock footage, after all. Ah well.)

But wait, someone has found something! Dr. Pearson's going to have to peel his sweaty ass off of that stool and go take a closer look. It's a hard life, I tell ya.

They've uncovered a step! Dr. Pearson promises the workers "double baksheesh" if they'll dig even faster. Groan.

In no time, the workmen have cleared away the debris and revealed the still-sealed door of the intact tomb:

We're told it's sealed with the name of Ankhesenamun, but it looks suspiciously like Tutankhamun, from what I can see of it in the next shot. The other one has the four sons of Horus and some . . . stuff under them that I can't make out. Frank calls it the "seal of the Seven Jackals." Well, the official necropolis seal had a jackal on it, and nine bound captives. They are awestruck! This tomb hasn't been opened since the priests sealed it "3700 years ago." Hmm. That's a few centuries early for the late 18th Dynasty, but okay. They're in the right millennium. I'll take what I can get.

The news is sensational! Sir Joseph Whemple even decides to come back to Egypt to supervise the operation. Note that the "princess" pictured here is King Tut. Ooh, now we get more interesting stock footage. This time, it's the Cairo Museum. Then we get this, which is not stock footage:

Oh dear. Now I see where they got the "3700 years ago" thing. Someone swapped a three and a seven when they were looking up dates. D'oh! I also like that Frank and Dr. Pearson are the BRITISH MUSEUM FIELD FORCE.

We get a quick look at some of Ankhesenamun (or should I say Anck-es-en-Amon)'s funerary equipment. It's not awful, I guess, although this sarcophagus is pretty odd looking:

And now we get our first major clue to what this is all about:

Awww.

Now we see the princess's actual coffin, which is not, thankfully, a copy of King Tut:

That's . . . not too terrible, I guess, although it doesn't scream 18th Dynasty royal coffin to me. We get a quick pan across a stylized landscape of modern Cairo, and then:

Enter our babe du jour. GEE, I WONDER WHAT IS BEING HINTED AT HERE.

Actually, one of the things I love about this movie is how much information it manages to convey in a few simple, dialogue-free shots. I think that was an art left over from the silent era that many filmmakers forgot in the decades that followed.

Whew, time to take a break. Part III coming soon!