Hammer series

(On Cable TV, January 2022) There have been four “official” movies called The Mummy in the past century, all three of the recent ones trying to ape the original 1932 Universal Monsters version. The success of those remakes has been variable—I’m still inordinately fond of the 1999 Brendan Fraser version starring the lovely Rachel Weisz, but the 2017 Dark Universe one was a big disappointment. The 1959 Hammer-produced one was the last remaining on my list, but as it turns out, it’s just as variable (and unfaithful to the original) as the other ones. As with most Hammer remakes of the Universal movies, The Mummy has a charm of its own—early Technicolor cinematography, with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee headlining the cast. It’s dated but not unpleasantly so, and it takes a lot of liberties with the source material. Some of it works—it’s fun to have a slightly more action-packed finale—while some of it doesn’t: an aspect of the original film that many remakes miss is the strength of the romantic component of the film, and I feel as if this one held off a long time before introducing the heroine, who’s the spitting image of the Mummy’s beloved. Still, this take on The Mummy feels one-of-a-piece with the rest of the classic Hammer horror films: not particularly good, but enjoyable on its own terms and having a distinct personality compared to the original or later remakes.