SHOW ME: The Mummy (2017)

Who's The Mummy? Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet
Mummy's Love? Tom Cruise as Nick Morton
Where? Iraq, England, Egypt (in flashbacks)
How Long? 110 minutes

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I can't tell you how much I wanted to like this, to stand resolute in the face of the complete critical condemnation the latest iteration of The Mummy disappeared under upon its cinematic release.

But it really is that bad. It's a mess of unnecessarily repetitive exposition; over-the-top special effects sequences that are there only for inclusion in the trailers, serving no plot purpose whatsoever; a surfeit of bland characters; and a story of jumbled random encounters that made me think the writing team had simply transcribed a 13-year-old's Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Tom Cruise is the nominal protagonist, Nick Morton, an amoral and opportunistic treasure hunter who uses his military career as a smoke-screen to loot valuable artefacts from war zones. Yeah, a real stand-up guy we can all instantly emphasise with!

I think we're supposed to like him purely based on the fact he's played by Tom Cruise. Sadly, that isn't enough.

Using a map stolen from British archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), a character so one-dimensional she almost doesn't exist, Nick and his buddy Sergeant Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) stumble upon an unusual ancient Egyptian burial site in Iraq.

The sarcophagus of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) is retrieved and loaded onto a cargo plane. En route to London, Chris is possessed by evil spirits and killed, returning as a ghost that only Nick can see in a Griffin Dunne in American Werewolf In London sort of deal.

The plane suffers the mother of all bird strikes and crashes in the English countryside.

Nick miraculously survives the experience without a scratch. It seems he has been "cursed" by Ahmanet to be her "Chosen One".

There's a chase sequence involving Nick and Jenny in an ambulance, escaping Ahmanet and her newly-raised zombie followers.

This ends with Ahmanet being captured and our "heroes" being whisked off to London to meet Jenny's boss, Dr Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) of the Prodigium, a super-secret monster-hunting organisation located under the Natural History Museum.

The Prodigium want to dissect and study Ahmanet, but before they can she escapes and wreaks havoc on London, trying to recover a crucial gem hidden in a knight's tomb, recently unearthed by the Crossrail excavations.

Ahmanet needs the gem to complete a ritual that involves sacrificing her Chosen One (ie Nick) with a magical dagger that will then summon the Ancient Egyptian god Set.

Nick, however, comes up with a cunning plan to thwart Ahmanet's schemes... by doing exactly what she wants!

The Mummy is all over the place. There are traces of a good idea in there, but somewhere along the development process it clearly got away from the film-makers and took on a monstrous life of its own.

There's a definite whiff of the pulp genre's freewheeling disregard for logic in service of a rollickin' story here, but that style's bravura exuberance is replaced with generic corporate clichés.

A sterling example of film-making by committee, the fingerprints of the suits and money-men are all over The Mummy, leaving the unavoidable sensation that an eye-catching trailer was made first - to sell the concept to the general public - and then a film was assembled around that.

Outside of the unengaging leads, you have an antagonist with seemingly god-like powers, able to do pretty much whatever she wants - when it suits the plot - while conversely seeming impotent when it serves the plot.

For instance, one minute she's having to create zombie followers one at a time, by killing people and giving them a "kiss of life", and the next she can raise a horde out of thin air with just a wave of her hand.

There's so much material crammed in this 110 minute movie, clearly with the aim of laying the groundwork for Universal's proposed Dark Universe 'shared world' of monster movies, that even though the time flys by surprisingly quickly you can't help seeing large chunks that could easily have been left on the cutting room floor.

Russell Crowe is wasted as Dr Jekyll, whose outburst as Mr Hyde is - like so much here - pointless and Tom Cruise just phones it in, playing Tom Cruise at his least engaging. His performance is about as far away from his charming best as imaginable.

More an action-adventure funfair ride than a horror movie, the true horror of The Mummy is that anyone involved in releasing this into the wild ever thought it was a competent, coherent, movie in the first place.

SHOW ME: Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Who's The Mummy? Eddie Parker as Klaris
Mummy's Love? n/a - no romantic sub-plot
Where? Egypt
How Long? 79 minutes

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are a pair of American chancers stuck in Egypt looking to earn a quick buck and passage back to the States. They learn of Dr Gustav Zoomer's (Kurt Katch) discovery of the mummy of Klaris and his desire to hire a couple of men to escort his precious cargo back to the United States.

Marie Windsor as Madame Rontru

However, before they can talk to him about the job opportunity, the archaeologist is murdered and Abbott & Costello find themselves caught between the machinations of a group of criminals, fronted by the exotic Madame Rontru (Marie Windsor), and Klaris-worshipping cultists, led by led by Semu (Richard Deacon).

Our hapless heroes come into possession of a cursed amulet, which Costello finds among the dead doctor's possessions. This amulet is the key to the location of the treasure-packed tomb of Princess Ara, which the living mummy Klaris is supposed to guard.

Sadly, Abbott & Costello's 1950's slapstick shtick hasn't aged well - growing tiresome quite quickly - and the comedy of misdirection, misunderstanding, and mistaken identity has frayed round the edges worse than the mummy's bandages.

There's a restaurant routine where Bud and Lou are trying to pass off the cursed amulet to each other that comes across as really forced and a later serving of rapid-fire wordplay around "pick" and "shovel" only reminds us how brilliant Who's On First? was.

And pity poor Eddie Parker as Klaris, stumbling around like a man in a baggy onesie, a victim of the "too slow to be scary" editorial decision that blighted several earlier mummy movies.

While it's only 79 minutes long, but the limply-scripted Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy seems much longer, almost interminable at times.

Bizarrely, although their characters are supposedly called Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, respectively, Abbott and Costello refer to each other as Abbott and Costello throughout the film.

This was the last movie they made with Universal, and I can't help feeling that their heart wasn't in it.

I'll admit I know next-to-nothing about Abbott & Costello, so that's pure baseless speculation on my part but as a comedy-horror Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy is neither terrifying or particularly amusing.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Curse (1944)

Who's The Mummy? Lon Chaney as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Virginia Christine as Princess Ananka
Where? Louisiana, Egypt (in flashbacks)
How Long? 60 minutes

Bizarrely, while following on from the events of The Mummy's Ghost, the New England swamp that Kharis carried his beloved into at the end of the earlier movie has now moved to Louisiana... without any explanation.

Which is odd because The Mummy's Curse not only features the usual flashback retelling of the mummy's origin but also features archaeologists from the Scripps Museum (as last time) and references to the previous efforts to return Kharis and Princess Ananka to Egypt.

Work to drain the swamp is being held up by superstitious workmen, fearful of the curse of the mummy after he disappeared there 25 years earlier (yes, another massive time jump as well).

Never fear though as Dr James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe), from the Scripps Museum, arrive to retrieve the bodies of Kharis and Ananka.

Hiding in plain sight, Zandaab is actually the latest High Priest of Arkam with his own designs on the mummy, assisted by the slimy Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), one of the work crew who is also a disciple of Arkam.

Virginia Christine

The story takes an interesting twist when a bulldozer disturbs the resting place of the mummy of Ananka (Virginia Christine), which rises from the swamp and eventually, after bathing, reveals itself to be a very attractive woman.

Ananka's memory is a bit hazy, but she is taken by Cajun Joe (Kurt Katch) to the nearby café run by Tante Berthe (Ann Codee). Unfortunately, Kharis lumbers in and kills Berthe as Ananka runs away.

The lovely Ananka is later found by the side of the road by Dr Halsey and Betty Walsh (Kay Harding), the secretary of the work crew and niece of Pat Walsh (Addison Richards), head of the swamp clearance project.

There's a hysterically funny sequence as Kharis lumbers slowly towards Betty, then Dr Halsey's car, but they manage to get away with Ananka, totally oblivious to the presence of the mummy.

In their care, Ananka starts to come to her senses, and is later able to help Dr Halsey with his research, seemingly possessing an in-depth knowledge of Ancient Egypt.

Kharis, again, comes for Ananka, whisking her away to a nearby ruined monastery, where Zandaab has set up his base of operations.

Betty, looking for the missing woman, is lured to the monastery by Ragheb, who tries to force himself on her, but is interrupted by Zandaab, who ends up dead in the ensuing melee.

Halsey then turns up and tackles Ragheb, until Kharis intervenes, driven by Ragheb's betrayal of his oath. The two former allies fight until Kharis brings down the walls and ceiling of the monastery on them!

Meanwhile, too late to save the missing woman they had been looking for, Halsey, Betty, and the rest of the mob (there's always a mob) from the work site find the mummified remains of Ananka in an adjoining room.

The Mummy's Curse was the last outing for Lon Chaney Jnr in the monster role and the last 'proper' mummy movie from Universal for quite some time.

Strange plot decisions aside, the film's a mix of interesting ideas (bringing Ananka to life, presumably in the rejuvenated body of Amina Mansori from The Mummy's Ghost, for instance) and over-the-top, melodramatic, hammy, acting (sadly the beautiful Virginia Christine is rather prone to this).

It's also retreading very familiar ground - even with the unexplained location switch - of evil cult priests trying to return Kharis and Ananka to Egypt, so it's easy to see why Universal didn't bother to keep the franchise alive any longer.

The trouble with Kharis, once you accept the the horror of his having been buried alive and then kept alive by tana leaves, is that he is painfully slow, and has only one functioning hand (his right arm has remained largely immobile through all the movies to date, except when he's needed to carry someone).

As clearly demonstrated in the scene with Dr Halsey's car, unless Kharis can back his prey into a corner or paralyse them with fear, as presented, he isn't really much of a threat anymore.

The Mummy wouldn't return for 11 years and then it was in the comedy Abbot & Costello Meet The Mummy.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Who's The Mummy? Lon Chaney as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Ramsay Ames as Amina Mansori/Ananka
Where? Egypt, America (Mapleton)
How Long? 60 minutes

In Egypt, the ageing High Priest of Arkam (Karnak in the previous films), tasks Yousef Bey (John Carradine) with retrieving the living mummy Kharis (who has somehow survived the conflagration at the end of the last movie) and the body of Princess Ananka.

However, back in the States, at a university in Mapleton, Massachusetts, the mummy's rampage is being taught as fact by Professor Matthew Norman (Frank Reicher), who later recreates the tana leaves recipe and accidentally summons Kharis... who breaks his neck!

Yousef Bey arrives in town just as the authorities are whipping up the mob for another mummy hunt, so he contacts Kharis and they head to the Scripps Museum where Ananka's mummified corpse is on display.

Unexpectedly, when Kharis goes to remove Ananka's body from its sarcophagus, it disintegrates because her soul has left it and transferred itself to the nearest young Egyptian woman, Amina Mansori (Ramsay Ames), girlfriend of the odious and condescending student Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery).

As a witness to Professor Norman's murder, she's already been told not to leave town, but Tom knows better and has plans to take her to his family in New York for some rest and recuperation.

Following up on the break-in (and murder of a guard) at the museum, as well as the professor's death, big city police inspector Walgreen (Barton MacLane) hits on the idea of - with the assistance of the museum's Dr Ayad (Lester Sharp) - of luring the mummy back to Professor Norman's house, with the tana leaves concoction, and trapping it in a ten foot pit!

But Kharis and Bey have other ideas, and kidnap Amina Mansori.

Unfortunately, once again, as we've seen with frightening regularity in these films, the priest ends up falling for Amina and decides, instead of returning her to Egypt as he was supposed to, that he's going to use the magical leaves to grant both her and him eternal life so they can run away together (not that she ever consents to any of this nonsense).

Kharis isn't best pleased with this turn of events and kills Bey, before making off towards nearby swampland with Amina's unconscious - and rapidly ageing - body, pursued by a mob of locals led by Tom Hervey and the police.

Events then take an unexpectedly dark turn as the film dives headlong into a messed up, nihilistic ending with the mob standing impotently by as Kharis (still with Amina's body, now a grey-haired husk) walks into the swamp.

Although stricken with some am-dram-level acting (Robert Lowery, I'm looking at you in particular) as well as a penchant for recycling plenty of plot points from previous Mummy movies, The Mummy's Ghost stands out for its unremittingly bleak ending.

How did Kharis survive the fire at the end of The Mummy's Tomb? Who knows? Magic reasons, probably.

It's also the slimmest of justifications for calling this film The Mummy's "Ghost", but then all the adventures after the original seem to have been gifted with totally random - and meaningless - names.

It's best not to overthink it.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

Who's The Mummy? Lon Chaney as Kharis (Tom Tyler in flashbacks)
Mummy's Love? Elyse Knox as Isobel Evans
Where? North America (Egypt in flashbacks)
How Long? 60 minutes

Three decades have passed since the events of The Mummy's Hand (possibly making this a futuristic sci-fi yarn, although fashions etc remain in a 1940s bubble!) and in his Mapleton, Massachusetts, home an aged Steve Banning (Dick Foran) recounts the events of the previous movie to a captive audience, including his son, Dr John Banning (John Hubbard) and John's girlfriend, Isobel Evans (Elyse Knox).

Given that The Mummy's Tomb is only an hour long, a good ten minutes is taken up at the start reliving The Mummy's Hand, with plenty of footage from that film used for the flashbacks.

We then learn that both Andoheb (George Zucco) and the mummy, Kharis (Lon Chaney Jnr), survived their encounter with the American archaeologists, but, for reasons unknown, have waited 30 years to get their revenge.

Like the high priest of Karnak before him, Andoheb passes on his secrets, and mission, to his apprentice: Mehemet (Turhan Bey). Mehemet takes the mummy by sea to America to exact revenge on the members of the expedition that defiled the tomb of Princess Ananka.

Banning goes first, and his death draws his old friend 'Babe' Hanson (Wallace Ford) to come and pay his respects to his old friend. No, I don't know why Babe's surname has changed between films, but in my headcanon it's probably got something to do with a dodgy deal he got tangled up with and trying to avoid creditors. That said, a seemingly random journalist recognises him by sight and knows his name.

Thankfully, the years have mellowed Babe and he's not the annoying character he was in the last movie. He quickly guesses who killed Banning, but no-one believes him... until he, too, is killed.

By this time, Doctor John has received a military commission, but before he goes to take up his new position he plans to marry Isobel.

However, the first time Mehemet sees her (while spying on John, the last of the Banning bloodline) he falls in lust and commands Kharis to kidnap the maiden, so he can threaten her with the usual deal: to be given an immortal life and live out her years as the slave-bride of the high priest.

The Mummy's Tomb is so bad it's actually rather funny, from the drawn-out opening, through some hilariously bad detective work (check out the scientist burying the lede on his examination of a piece of cloth found in the grounds of the Banning household... after going on and on about mold and chemical traces, he just happens to mention the 'hieroglyph' on the cloth that matches one found in the tomb of Princess Ananka!) right up to the overzealous mob that end up burning down the house Dr John has just inherited from his father.

And let's not overlook the unquestioned racism that stirs up the mob in the first place: simply because the new caretaker of the nearby cemetery is Egyptian he MUST be connected to the mummy murders, and so it's okay for 30 or 40 men armed with burning torches and guns to head over there to confront him.

Of course, he is responsible. It's Mehemet after all. But that's rather beside the point.

Although, in all honesty, it made no difference to my eyes, cinematic legend Lon Chaney Jnr took over the monster role of Kharis with this movie, and would continue portraying the character through the following two sequels to The Mummy's Tomb.

The mummy is still only using one hand and sporting a full head of hair, although greased back. While it's impressive - and indicative of the creature's strength - that the mummy does all his killing with a single hand, the hair really bugs me as it simply looks wrong.

I guess this is another magical side-effect of the sacred tana leaves.

SHOW ME: The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Who's The Mummy? Tom Tyler as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Peggy Moran as Marta Solvani
Where? Egypt
How Long? 67 minutes

Rather than a sequel to the original Mummy movie, The Mummy's Hand was a re-imagining and it was this film that spawned several B-movie sequels.

In late 1930's Egypt, washed-up archaeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his incredibly irritating (and casually racist) 'comedy' sidekick Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) come upon clues to the location of the undiscovered tomb of Princess Ananka.

Unable to raise the funds for a proper expedition from academic sources, they go into partnership with travelling stage magician The Great Solvani aka Tim Sullivan (Cecil Kellaway), and head out with Sullivan's daughter, Marta (Peggy Moran) in tow.

Little do they realise that the tomb of Ananka, in the Hill Of The Seven Jackals, is guarded by a sleazy priest (George Zucco), who has been masquerading as antiquities professor Andoheb and - through the use of sacred tana leaves - has control of the living mummy of Ancient Egyptian Kharis (Tom Tyler) to protect Ananka's final resting place.

Devoid of the subtle menace of the original, The Mummy's Hand has a grating slapstick quality to it thanks almost entirely to the presence of the Babe character, although the surfeit of magical tricks from The Great Solvani outstay their welcome as well.

Coming in at just over an hour, there's hardly time to develop a story, but The Mummy's Hand does alright in that department by sacrificing depth and sub-plots on the altar of pulp adventure.

What this film does bring to the franchise though is the iconic imagery of lumbering, bandage-draped, mummy - especially when he is carrying Marta's unconscious body into the temple.

Before the Brendan Fraser action romps of the early 2000s, this was how the general public perceived cinematic mummies - in much the same way they believe all zombies crave brains, even though that's not part of that creature's formative mythology as set out in George Romero's movies, but rather an element from the comedy horror of 1980's Return Of The Living Dead series.

Unlike The Mummy, there's no great time-crossed love story in The Mummy's Hand, even though belatedly skeevy Andoheb reveals a plan to kill and resurrect both himself and Marta so they can be lovers for all eternity (a plan she is most definitely not okay with, as she only has eyes for square-jawed Steve).

The Mummy's Hand also uses more exteriors than The Mummy, although our first view of the temple on the Hill of the Seven Jackals, when Andoheb is summoned by the dying High Priest of Karnak (Eduardo Ciannelli), is laughably un-Egyptian.

And, although unconnected with the earlier movie, it does feature footage from it: most notably when recounting the backstory of Kharis where it uses much of the silent 'film-within-a-film' from The Mummy (that explained Imhotep's story), but re-edited with Tom Tyler instead of Boris Karloff and tana leaves instead of The Scroll of Thoth.

SHOW ME: The Mummy (1932)

Who's The Mummy? Boris Karloff as Ardath Bey and Imhotep
Mummy's Love? Zita Johann as Helen Grosvenor and Ankh-es-en-amon
Where? Egypt
How Long? 73 minutes

In the 1920s a British Museum expedition to Egypt unearths an unusual mummy, that of Imhotep seemingly mummified with his organs intact and buried alive, next to a 'cursed' casket containing a magical Scroll of Thoth.

An impetuous young member of the expedition tries to transcribe the scroll, awakening the mummy. The sight of the lumbering creature drives him insane and then the mummy disappears into the desert with the scroll.

A decade later, another British museum expedition is led to the burial site of priestess Ankh-es-en-amon, by mysterious - and slightly sinister - local businesman Ardath Bey (Boris Karloff).

Once Ankh-es-en-Amon is secure in the Cairo Museum, Ardath Bey (who is really Imhotep, the resurrected mummy, as if you couldn't guess) uses the Scroll of Thoth to try and bring his love back to life.

It is later revealed that pharaoh's son Imhotep was madly in love with the priestess back in the day and when she died of natural causes at a young age, he stole the magical scroll to try and resurrect her, but was discovered and sentenced - by Amenophis, his father - to be buried alive, along with the scroll, so that no one else could ever use that again.

However, it turns out that Ankh-es-en-Amon's soul has been through a constant cycle of rebirth and is currently residing in the body of Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), who is staying in Cairo with the elderly Doctor Muller (Edward Van Sloan), and has caught the eye of walking plank Frank Whemple (David Manners), the son of the original archaeological expedition leader.

Using his Ancient Egyptian magic, Imhotep plans to ensnare Helen Grosvenor, kill her, and then bring her back to life using the scroll, so they can be together forever.

One of the more subtle of Universal's classic monster movies, the original Mummy film is moody and pacy; as with most genre movies of that era it doesn't hang around and gets on with its story quick sharp.

It's more psychological than out-and-out horror, playing on Lovecraftian themes of fear of the unknown, dark magics, loss of self-control etc

Karloff is, of course, magnificently memorable as Ardath Bey/Imhotep and Zita Johann impresses as the flighty socialite that shows she has backbone, while the lusty and overbearing Frank is held at bay by magical forces.

Despite our common perceptions of "the mummy" as a shambling bandaged member of the undead, that version of the creature is barely seen - just briefly after his initial, accidental, resurrection - but then for the bulk of the film, he is the towering, but well-spoken, figure of Ardath Bey.

Bey even has his own 'secret headquarters' in the backstreets of Cairo, decked out in Ancient Egyptian style, complete with a scrying pool, through which he is able to cast spells at unsuspecting targets.