- The Mummy (1959 film)
Infobox Film | name = The Mummy
caption =film poster byReynold Brown
director =Terence Fisher
producer =Michael Carreras
writer =Jimmy Sangster
starring =Peter Cushing Christopher Lee Yvonne Furneaux Eddie Byrne George Pastell
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor =Universal Pictures
released =25 September 1959 (UK release)16 December 1959 (US release)
runtime = 88 min
language = English
budget =
amg_id = 1:33764
imdb_id = 0053085"The Mummy" is a 1959 British
Hammer Horror film starringChristopher Lee andPeter Cushing .Though the title suggests Universal Pictures' 1932 film of the same name, the film actually derives its plot and characters entirely from two Universal later films, "
The Mummy's Hand " and "The Mummy's Tomb ". It is one of a few Hammer remakes of Universal films.tory
In
Egypt in 1895, a team of archaeologists, including John Banning (Peter Cushing ), his father Stephen Banning (Felix Aylmer ) and his uncle Joseph Whemple, are searching for the tomb ofPrincess Ananka, thepriestess ofKarnak . John is held up by an injured leg while his father and uncle open the tomb. Before they enter, anEgypt ian man named Mehemet Bey (George Pastell ) appears and warns them not to go in, lest they face dire consequences. Stephen and Joseph ignore him, and within find thesarcophogus of Ananka. When Joseph leaves to tell John the good news, Stephen finds the mythical Scroll of Life and reads from it. He then sees something that drives him into acatatonic state. John and Joseph continue excavating the tomb but cannot find the Scroll of Life, little suspecting it is now in the hands of Mehemet Bey.Three years later in
Engerfield ,England in 1898, Stephen Banning comes out of his catatonic state at the Engerfield Nursing Home for the Mentally Disordered, and sends for his son. He tells him that when he read from the Scroll of Life, he accidentally brought to lifeKharis , themummified priest of Karnak and the eternal guardian of Princess Ananka's tomb, who was sentenced to eternal living death as punishment for his forbidden love for the princess. Now, Stephen says, Kharis will hunt down and kill all those who desecrated Ananka's tomb. John does not believe his father.Meanwhile, Mehemet Bey, revealed as a devoted worshipper of Karnak, has come to Engerfield under the alias of Mehemet Akir to track down the Bannings. He hires a pair of drunken carters, Pat and Mike, to bring the slumbering Kharis in a crate to his rented home, but the two men foul up and Kharis' crate ends up falling into a pond. However using the Scroll of Life, Bey exhorts Kharis to break free of the crate and rise from the water, then sends him to
murder Stephen Banning at the Engerfield Nursing Home. Soon after, Kharis is also sent to murder Joseph Whemple, doing so right before the eyes of John Banning, who shoots Kharis twice at close range with arevolver to no effect.Scotland Yard Inspector Mulrooney is sent fromLondon to solve the murders, but because he is skeptical and deals only in "cold, hard facts," he refuses to believe John's wild story about a killermummy , even when John figures out that he is to be Kharis' third and final victim. While Mulrooney attempts to build his investigation by interviewing people who have seen Kharis, including the two carters, John notices that his wife, Isobel Banning, bears an uncanny resemblance to Princess Ananka. Mulrooney meanwhile slowly begins to come to the conclusion that John is right, and that there is indeed a mummy in Engerfield. Together he and John try to figure out who is controlling Kharis.Mehemet Bey sends the dreaded mummy to the Bannings' home to slay his final victim. However, upon seeing Isobel, Kharis stops his attack on John and leaves. Bey mistakenly believes that Kharis has slain John, and is surprised when John turns up alive at his house, suspecting him of being the one controlling the mummy. After John leaves, Bey sends Kharis to make a second attempt on John's life, only this time John has Mulrooney as his
bodyguard , and Kharis seems more interested in pursuing Isobel than he does following Bey's murderous orders...Cast
References
*imdb title|id=0053085|title=The Mummy
*citation | title = The Mummy (1959) | journal = The American Film Institute Catalog | url = http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi&rft_id=xri:afi:film:52966 |
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