As of May 4th, The Mummy (1999) is twenty-five years old. Wowie. It's enough to make a horror girlie feel downright decrepit - as decrepit as a mummy, you might say.
And before you start saying The Mummy isn't horror, it's action/adventure, you can get right out of here with that nonsense. It's horror adjacent. It's an adaptation of one of the classic Universal Monster movies, for crying out loud. Its got jump scares. Its got a curse and a book you shouldn't read from but do anyway. Its got multiple reanimated corpses. Its even got some entry-level body horror.
Just because it's also got romance, river boat battles, and (for some reason) a plane crashing into quicksand doesn't negate that.
It was an excellent piece of gateway horror for eight-year-old me. Downright scary in some places, but with enough hijinks, jokes, and action set pieces to take the edge off. It was my first big blockbuster. I was at just the right age for such a movie, too—old enough to follow the plot, too young to be critical of its faults.
One of my earliest memories is of watching The Mummy with my brother and cousins in my grandparents' darkened living room. This wasn't the first time I'd seen it, but it was the first time I’d watched a scaryish movie with my peers, no adults in sight.
Once the credits rolled, all of us were jazzed, too freaked out to sleep. Then one by one they slept, but I remained awake, the grain in the closet door looking like open-jawed, screaming mummy faces.
There would be more such sleepless nights in the future, but this is the first that I remember. It's enough to make me think that without it, I might not be writing this little newsletter today. That's trippy.
So when my local theater had a week-long anniversary run of The Mummy - which just so happened to coincide with my brother and Dukes of Horror co-host being in town, you can bet your scary little butt that I dragged him to it.
Part of me wondered if it would hold up. So many beloved movies from childhood lose their luster under adult scrutiny.
I’m happy to say that’s mostly not the case for The Mummy. The biggest issue, of course, is the inherently problematic nature of a story about white people looting a country of its wealth and history. The few Arab characters we do get are gross stereotypes. Not great.
Other issues - various plot contrivances, gigantic set pieces for spectacle’s sake - can be chocked up to being either conventions of the time the movie came out, or conventions of big blockbuster movies (which, to a certain extent, are in and of themselves products of a certain age.)
This movie has more than enough good in it to make up for that. The chemistry between our three main characters is sublime. Brendon Frasier is at the top of his game, no whiff of the hardships Hollywood will soon throw at him. Rachel Weisz shines as Evelyn, quite probably the defining role of her career. John Hannah is show-stealingly funny. Together they make a perfect three man band.
The set is mesmerizing. The day shots of Cairo are gorgeous, and the subterranean ruins of Hamunaptra—faded walls of hieroglyphics, crumbling statues half-sunk into the sand—are so real that you practically feel the cool tomb air kiss your skin.
(Side note: If you haven’t experienced The Mummy ride at Universal Studios, you definitely should if you ever get the chance. The waiting area of the ride does such a good job of recreating this atmosphere.)
Along with all the laughs and thrills, there were certain moments in this movie that gave me actual chills. And for a fleeting few seconds I felt like I was eight years old again, experiencing it all for the first time.
Happy anniversary, The Mummy!
I’m H. H. Duke, author, podcaster, and more. Most importantly, I love horror! Since you enjoyed this post enough to make it to the end, click the button below to hear more from me. I share reviews and essays about old and new horror books and movies, as well as any other spooky thing that catches my fancy.