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The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film

( McFarland & Company, Inc, 2002, 202 pages )

Book Review by Frank J. Dello Stritto

The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film targets three niches in the ever-popular mummy market: monsters in the movies, monsters in print, and the history and science of actual mummification. I have only a layman’s grasp of real mummies, and can only comment that “The Mummy In Fact” seems a competent summary.“The Mummy in Film” includes a few movies that have been overlooked, and gives generous coverage to the most famous mummy movies: the Universal series of 1932-1944, the Hammer films of 1959-1971, and Universal’s recent big-budget blockbuster hits. The part of the book that deserves most attention is “The Mummy In Fiction.”

Unlike some other classic monsters, movie mummies were not spawned by a literary classic. Yet, when Universal made The Mummy in 1932, it tapped into a well-developed, long-entrenched mythology.  That myth was constructed via countless and largely undistinguished tales of living mummies written in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Several studies have looked at different aspects of the enormous body of obscure mummy literature: Drake Douglas’ Horror, Peter Haining’s The Mummy – Stories of the Living Corpse, Bob Brier’s Egyptian Mummies, John Richard Stephens’ Into The Mummy’s Tomb, Nicholas Daly’s wonderfully titled, That Obscure Object of Desire: Victorian Commodity Culture & Fictions of the Mummy.  A key to just how many mummy stories have been written is that all these researchers have unearthed their own set of arcane tales.  Likewise for The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film, Susan Cowie and Tom Johnson have dug up some long forgotten titles.  Some notable mummy fiction—Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lot 249—is given its due, but Cowie & Johnson describe a good many short stories and novels that may be all but lost.  They do the same with some very early mummy movies, which are indeed lost.

"The Mummy in Fiction” is mostly plot summaries of various works.  That’s fine for long out-of-print stories, but the authors are showing their age when they take the same approach in “The Mummy in Film.”  Before home video and cable television, movie plot summaries were a necessary reference.  Now, with old movies themselves and descriptions of them so accessible, I could have done with less rehashing of the familiar storylines.   This is not to say that The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film lacks critical analysis and behind-the-scenes history, but too often the authors load on the plot minutiae and duck other responsibilities.  Telling the reader that Universal’s Kharis films “have that indefinable ‘something’ that make them still watchable” is not very helpful.  Nor is their claim that Tony Curtis in The Mummy Lives “ has none of the…whatever it takes…to play such a role.”  I have never seen that movie, and don’t know what they talking about. 

The authors are obviously Hammer film lovers, and this book is strongly recommended for Hammer fans.  Alas, I don’t share their admiration of Hammer, and I will never rank Christopher Lee’s mummy portrayal with Boris Karloff’s nor mention Terence Fisher with Karl Freund in discussing great directors. That’s an honest difference in preference, but on one point I must take issue with their comments.  The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film’s mean-spirited treatment of Lon Chaney, Jr. is not its finest quality.

Chaney, who adorns the cover of The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film, played Kharis in three Universal movies (The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse), made between 1942 and 1944.  He complained about the thankless role to which he was contractually bound, and about the grueling experience (head-to-toe in heavy mummy wrappings and make-up during summer shootings).   Kharis had no dialogue, no facial expression and almost no body movement other than the famous shuffling walk. From what’s on the screen, Chaney apparently did the best he could, but Cowie and Johnson claim he “made the least of the acting opportunities given him, and proved that not only was he no Karloff, but that he couldn’t fill Tom Tyler’s wrappings either” (Tyler played Kharis in 1940’s The Mummy’s Hand).  They admit that Chaney’s “lack of charisma…never hurt him less than as Kharis,” but decry his “nonacting style,” and finally conclude that “Klaris” in Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy was “no worse than Chaney.”  I profoundly disagree with those statements, but Cowie & Johnson then go after the man himself.  Chaney would not have succeeded, they claim, but for his father (though he long resisted taking his father’s name, paid his dues for 10 years before finding stardom; and few “Juniors” lasted as long in Hollywood as he did).  The sad decline of his latter years is summarized once (page 78), and then repeated three pages later (page 81).  After a Chaney quote about the torment of playing Kharis, comes the comment “considering the enormously greater discomfort being suffered by those fighting World War II, his complaints probably generated little sympathy.”  Later in the book Cowie & Johnson quote with admiration a present-day Egyptologist: his laments about his excavation work sound very much like Chaney:  too hot, too humid, too cramped, too painful.  The authors do not point out that a short distance away in the Middle East, some world-class suffering is going on.

Chaney was an actor of limited range and ability, but so in varying degrees is almost every movie star.  The stars are remembered because of that something that Cowie & Johnson are unable to define.  The Kharis’ films are neither Chaney’s nor anyone else’s best work.  Lawrence Talbot is his masterpiece.  In his five performances as The Wolf Man, Chaney created a mythic figure of haunting sorrow; and in that no actor has yet surpassed him.

{ The Mummy in Fact, Fiction & Film is available from McFarland & Company, Inc.  Box 611 Jefferson, North Carolina 28640. Order Line: 1-800-253-2187 }