Tuesday, October 8, 2013

October Horror 2013: 8 - The Mummy (1932)


Similar to last year's Call of Cthulhu, I find myself somewhat ill-equipped to react appropriately to a movie like this.  Now, while it at least has sound, it's still black & white and comes from an era far removed from modern horror cinema.  Camera placement back in the day was a very different animal than it is now.

That said, 1932 was in a pre-steadicam era and as such the camera was generally placed on a tripod and operated mechanically in the few instances they required panning.  There were some shots where the frame shook violently, and I'd believe those to be where the camera was handheld for close shots or some more complex movement.  One particularly impressive movement was of a camera from behind two characters in an arc before stopping suspended over a pool of fog, which then became a sort of flashback/film-within-a-film.  I'd assume it was thought of as impressive back in the day when all effects were done with optical compositing, and this would even be the early days of compositing.

The Mummy's plot concerns an archeological expedition to Egypt which unearths the tomb of Imhotep.  Against the advice of their occult consultant the expedition leads decided to bring up the mummy and also read aloud a found scroll which inadvertently brings Imhotep back to life and he wanders off.  10 years later the original archeologist's son is leading a somewhat fruitless expedition in Egypt when he's interrupted by a man named Ardath Bey who shows him where to uncover the tomb of princess Ankh-es-en-amon, claiming that Egyptian natives aren't allowed to dig up their dead and he must tell a foreign archeologist where he found an artifact.

As to reactions I thought the shots and camera action were surprisingly lively feeling.  It didn't feel that far removed from a more modern movie most of the time, but the lack of dynamism was noticed as a whole.  The plot included an oddly stilted feeling romance sub-plot that almost felt obligatory so they could have a female lead pursued by two suitors, which is a pretty common trope.  These early Universal horrors tended to have that Damsel in Distress, and this feels quite formulaic.

That said, I definitely enjoyed it as an artifact.  It wasn't too tough to watch, though a bit slow sometimes.  One or two of the early creepy scenes were quite effective, and like a lot of great modern movies worked on the strength of the actor's performance.

I believe we're including one "old" movie and one subtitled movie in this week's "Ultimate Movie List" subset, so this is the old and tomorrow is the sub'd: Ju-on

--PXA

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