A word I do not use often, but should, is perfunctory. When stopping to think about it, I suppose it is the worst word one could bestow on a product. Good and bad is one thing; it makes an impression. Camp is another. Perfunctory suggests the product set out to do that--and no more. It is like damning with faint praise.
Hammer's film of "The Mummy" was, at best, perfunctory. Still, I learned several things from it.
Hammer's idea of redoing the Universal classics was to simply add technicolor and gore. Big deal. Forget about atmosphere, or acting.
What is more, this "Mummy" combines several of the Universal films, contradicting itself along the way. The Egyptian sets and costumes look borrowed from DeMille's 1956 "The Ten Commandments," while everything else looks so obviously shot on a sound stage, it detracts from any atmosphere there might have been.
The plot of the original and "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944) are combined. Christopher Lee plays Kharis, who, in the Karoloff original, was called Imhotep. Kharis did not show up until 1940, when Universal made "The Mummy's Hand." For desecrating the tomb of Princes Ananka, his beloved, his tongue is cut out, he is mummified and entombed--alive.(Even for 1959, this sequnce was pretty graphic. The 1932 version was less graphic, but I am still haunted more by that scene than the one reenacted here.) But forty centuries later, along comes John Banning (Peter Cushing), with his father (Felix Aylmer) and uncle, to find Ananka's tomb, bringing her back to England. That is when George Pastell, as Mehemet Bey, (no relation to actor Turhan Bey, who appeared in some of the Universal "Mummy" movies) an acolyte of the God, Karlac, and the actor who gives the film's campiest performance, resurrects Kharis, who, recalling his love for Ananka, sets out in search for her. Bey's goal is to have Kharis wreak revenge--ie; death--on the desecrators of Ananka's tomb.
What a mish-mash. John Banning's wife, Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux) turns out to resemble Ananka, so Kharis is powerless to follow Bey's orders. He tries to save her, and this leads to the climax, borrowed from "The Mummy's Ghost," where he walks into the swamp, and is shot, but not before handing over Isobel to Banning. Bey has been killed--what a vicious queen!!!!!!!!!!!! But that Kharis gets shot is preposterous, when, scenes earlier, it was shownbullets go right through him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poor Christopher Lee; what a thankless role, I hope he was paid well. "The Mummy" may not be the worst film "Svengoolie" showed; I think that still belongs to "Curse Of The Undead"--another 1959 product-- but it is, as I have said, merely perfunctory, neither very good, nor very sound.
Don't waste the masking tape on this one, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3 comments:
When young people want to say something is mediocre, they say “meh”
I kind of like it!
I never heard that term.
You are up on language of the young
more than I. Speaking of, what is a
"cis" woman?
Victoria,
Thanks so much for clarifying.
I am currently reading "Detranition
Baby," and it has all these terms
I am not familiar with. And the
author did NOT provide a glossary.
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