Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed

This is an interesting documentary about Universal's classic Mummy series of movies. It concentrates the most on the first one, providing information on how it came to be, about its director Karl Freud, its main stars Boris Karloff and Zita Johann, and makeup man (or sadist?) Jack Pierce.

There are interviews with film historians, and relatives of some of the people involved with the film, such as Karloff's daughter. Relatively little attention is paid to the sequels, but they are covered.

I found it interesting how The Mummy started off as being about the Italian historical character Cagliostro! Also interesting to see was how The Mummy copies certain formulas and scenes from the Universal Dracula film, which they illustrated by showing some of these scenes one after another. A similar thing happened with The Invisible Man copying Frankenstein, as the documentary for The Invisible Man notes.

Another video documentary of one of the classic Universal monster movies by David J. Skal (author of "Hollywood Gothic") that appear on home-video collections, this one about "The Mummy" (1932) covers ground already covered in Skal's treatments of the other films. This includes the resurrection of such information as that Boris Karloff was a good guy and that Jack P. Pierce's makeup work was arduous. Not seen in the other ones, however, is a brief biographical sketch of Zita Johann, since she's only the lead actress in "The Mummy" and doesn't appear, like Karloff, in the Frankenstein films and, thus, in Skal's docs for them. We're told that in real life she was also into the occult and that she wasn't fond of director Karl Freund. There's no such biographical sketch of Freund, though, nor recollections from his accounts of the production; instead, we're told that he was fat, hard to work with, but good at camera stuff. I think they could've dug a bit deeper in their "unearthing" on that account.

Rudy Belmer hosts again, but doesn't add anything interesting, except to contradict himself, beginning the show by stating that "The Mummy was something radically different," only to later say that it "borrows significantly" from the 1931 "Dracula," which indeed it does, as film historian Paul M. Jensen discusses here in some detail. The best part of this doc is the juxtaposition of scenes from the two films, which underscores their similarities better than one can in writing, including in my IMDb review of "The Mummy." Another interesting thing here, which I didn't know and wish they had more information on, is that the script originally included reincarnated love scenes throughout history. As indicated by surviving publicity stills, these scenes are assumed to have been shot, but were obviously cut. As usual, the doc ends with a summary of subsequent Universal pictures of whatever monster is covered--in this case the 1940s Kharis mummy movies and the later Abbott and Costello parody. No mention is made of the mummy series by Hammer, and this doc must've been made before the 1999 "The Mummy" with Brendan Fraser, since it was also distributed by Universal, and the other docs by Skal have no qualms with advertising Universal's later productions, including frequent clips of the semi-fictional biopic of James Whale, "Gods and Monsters" (1998).

This is found on the DVD of the 1932 version of The Mummy, and is a retroactive making-of documentary of, you guessed it, said picture(near the very end, it goes into the sequels as well(including the Abbott and Costello one...), though never the Sommers ones(for which I am quite grateful)). It consists of clips, interviews(with crew from it or their offspring and the like, as well as film historians, who have very compelling things to say), behind-the-scenes stills, and a little horrifyingly corny narration by host Rudy Behlmer, who(or whose writer) must have also come up with that off-putting pun they used for a name for this production. They go into the strained working relationship between the two masters of their craft(Johann(her belief in the occult is detailed as well) of acting and Freund of cinematography(taking on the role of director for the first time)), the arduous make-up process(hours of pain to apply or remove), other, works by these same people(such as Frankenstein... with that one, the similarities are really obvious, and they don't try to conceal that), and the restraint of not showing off the titular creature. The editing is good, and this is very informational and interesting. There is a bit of disturbing and violent content in this. I recommend this to any fan of movie itself, as well as the commentary track by Paul Jensen. 7/10

Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed (1999)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Nice documentary that was originally released on Universal's DVD of THE MUMMY (1932). The documentary takes various historians and discusses the troubled making of the 1932 film that featured Boris Karloff in his first monster role after becoming a star in FRANKENSTEIN. The documentary covers the painful make-up, the leading ladies hatred for the director and we then get to hear about the sequels that would follow in the 1940s. Historian Rudy Behlmer hosts this documentary and fans of the film are certainly going to eat this up since we get the perfect mixture of clips as well as some great interviews. We get to hear from Sara Karloff who shares her thoughts on the film as well as her memories of what her father told her about it. Rick Baker has some nice comments on the make up in the film and we have others like David Del Valle adding some nice touches. Some could argue that the sequels deserved their own documentary but I think they're given some nice attention here, although I'll admit that I'd like to have heard some of the experts opinions on Chaney, Jr. in the role.

Exceedingly well-done documentary on the making of The Mummy with lots of great stories about some of the stars and makers of that film. Zita Johann is examined in great detail(greater than Karloff I believe), and we get lots of second-hand stories about her spiritualism, her fights with Karl Freund the director, and her wit. Film historian Gregory Man details a couple of the stories with great clarity, wit, and even does an impression of Freund! There are other stories about Karloff and the arduous make-up he endured for Jack Pierce. There is a whole exposition done on where the concept of the story came from and then the documentary moves to a point by point and scene by scene comparison of The Mummy and Dracula. Even more might have been examined by giving actors like David Manners and Edward Van Sloan(who seems never to get any love in these things but was crucial in those early Universal greats!)some talk. The documentary then moves to the sequels and gives them some time, but it really just goes over them in a somewhat cursory manner. Producer/director David Skaal once again has given the Mummy as well as all the other Universal monsters in the stable their due.