Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week was The Mummy!
The Mummy (1999) was a perfect watch for Halloween, though maybe not super comfy or cozy? I don’t know but we slip some creepier ones in for Halloweeeen too so it all evens out! This one isn’t super creepy all the way through, though, and oneee thing you should know is that The Mummy does not take itself too seriously.
Even though it isn’t really a horror film, it deals with the dead and ancient curses, gross bugs, the undead, and bringing people back from the dead and…., etc., etc.
And we also get to see when Brendan Frasier had a career. Ha! I kid. I kid. I know his career has been resurrected like some of the characters in this movie. I just thought it was a funny line.
This movie has become a cult classic after performing well in the theaters, but even better for video/DVD sales which raked in $1 billion for Universal in 2000. The movie’s success even led to a sequel, The Mummy Returns, which was must less successful and then yet another sequel, which was not a huge success either, if I remember right..
Even though I have seen this movie a couple of times, it’s been a long time since the last rewatch, so I rewatched it with my kids to remind myself of specific scenes, plot, etc.
Etc. is the word for today, by the way. I’m going to keep using it throughout this post just to be annoying, obnoxious, belligerent, etc. etc.
(I’m kidding about that too. I can’t keep that up for an entire post…..or can I?)
This movie starts with the affair between Imhotep and Anck-su-namun, the mistress of the Pharoah. No one was to touch Anck-su-namun other than the Pharaoh but I guess Imhotep missed that memo because he started an affair with her.
The two are caught by the Pharaoh, the Pharaoh is killed, the Pharaoh’s men come in, Imhotep escapes while Anck-su-namun reminds him that only he can resurrect her later so she kills herself before the Pharaoh’s men can.
Imhotep then steals Anck-su-namun body and tries to resurrect her but is interrupted by the pharaoh’s guard and is intombed with a bunch of creepy beetle things and buried alive “for all eternity.”
Ha. As if that line is going to stick. Of course, we know something is going to happen to disturb this dude’s resting place.
The Medjai, by the way, are sworn to prevent Imhotep’s return, as his resurrection would grant him immense power. They are guarding over him when Rick O’Connell (Brenden Frasier) is in the French Foreign Legion, fighting against an Arab Army, and finds the tomb, but runs away when the sand begins trying to attack him.
The Medjai decide not to kill him, but instead to “let the desert kill him instead.”
Bad idea because Rick lives and discovers an intricate box, which he takes home with him and has stolen by Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah) who gives it to his sister, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) a librarian and very green Egyptologist.
Evelyn finds a map inside the box that will lead them to buried Egyptian treasure but it is in the city of the dead. She takes it to her boss at the ancient library but he — oops — sets in it on fire. Was that an accident? Hmm…not so sure there.
Now Evelyn wants to know where Jonathan got it so they set off to find the man who Jonathan stole the box from.
Rick is in jail and actually looks way too clean to have been in jail and he agrees to help Evelyn get to the lost city of death if she will get him out of jail. She figures out a way, but the jailer says he is going to come along to keep an eye on his prisoner.
From there, hijinks ensue, especially when the group runs into a rival team also looking for the city and treasure and Rick runs into an old “friend” who always abandoned him at the most inopportune moments. That friend is Benji and he provides a lot of humor throughout the film, including an iconic scene where he uses symbols from several different religions to keep the mummy from attacking him.
This movie is a fun ride. My husband and I had seen this years ago in the theater when we were first dating — we think anyhow. Our memories are so fuzzy because we are so old.
The Boy said during this movie, “This movie is so fun. I’m really liking this.”
I could have sworn he’d seen this movie before, but he had not, and wanted to, so the timing was perfect, great, impeccable, etc. etc.
The movie is full of eye-candy for all with Rachel Weisz being pretty and Brenden and Oded Fehr and even Arnold Vosloo for those who like bald men.
As I mentioned above, The Mummy is not necessarily a “horror” film but there is a lot of grotesque scenes and moments involving — a bit of a spoiler here — the mummy trying to piece himself back together, which involves pulling other pieces off living humans.
The film was shot in Morocco and The United Kingdom. I found it interesting when I read that Universal took out kidnapping insurance on the crew and cast but didn’t tell them until filming was over. Yikes.
This is the movie where we almost lost Brendan Fraser to by the way
According to an interview with Brendan on The Kelly Clarkson Show, in the scene where Brendan is being hung, the director told him it wasn’t looking believable. Brendan pushed up on his tiptoes while the man who was holding the rope lifted up and Brendan had nowhere to go but try to push down.
“So he was pulling up and I was going down. And then the next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways and there was gravel in my teeth.”
He said the stunt coordinator was leaning over him clapping his hands and calling, “Brendan. Come on, Brendan.”
When he did, the coordinator told the actor, “‘Congratulations, you’re in the club — same thing happened to Mel Gibson on ‘Braveheart.’”
The Mummy became such a hit that there were two sequels and a spinoff. Yes, I saw the spinoff with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, The Scorpion King. No, I do not recommend it.
I never saw The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor but I probably wouldn’t recommend it either.
This movie did get positive reviews when it came out, with most calling it lot of fun.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a positive review, writing, “There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased.”[
Trivia and facts:
*Disclaimer: always make sure to double check these as what I report is only as good as the sites I pull it from and they are not always accurate.
- The library disaster in the beginning of the film was done in one take. It would have taken an entire day to re-shoot if a mistake had been made. (source IMdb)
- The effects team was told “no gore” when designing the look of the Mummy. They actually did tests for “grossness threshold.” (source IMdb)
- Erick Avari who portrayed Dr. Terence Bey now portrays Nicodemus on The Chosen. (source: me!)
- With the exception of a loin cloth, a few pieces of jewelry, and pasties, Patricia Velasquez as Anck-su-namun, was nude except for body paint, which took four hours to apply. (source IMdb)
- This movie is a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. (various sources, including my husband.)
- The white nightgown Evelyn wore when the ship was attacked became transparent when it got wet and had to be digitally painted white during post production so the film could keep its PG-13 rating. (source IMdb)
- The Medjai were originally supposed to be tattooed from head to toe, but Stephen Sommers vetoed it because he thought Oded Fehr was “too good-looking” to be covered up. (source IMdb)
- The crew could not shoot in Egypt because of the unstable political conditions. (source IMdb)
- To avoid dehydration in the scorching heat of the Sahara, the production’s medical team created a drink that the cast and crew had to consume every two hours. (source IMdb)
- Sandstorms were daily inconveniences. Snakes, spiders and scorpions were a major problem, with many crew members having to be airlifted out after being bitten. (source IMdb)
- When Evelyn reads the inscription “He who shall not be named” on Imhotep’s sarcophagus, the hieroglyphs used are accurate. The inscription actually translates literally as “the one without a name.” (source IMdb)
- The film is called The Mummy everywhere except Japan where it is called Hamunaptra: The Capital City of the Lost Desert. (source, TVTrops.org)
- “John Hannah claimed in interviews that he didn’t have the best time shooting the film because he felt the character of Jonathan was pretty redundant: he had been hired as a comedic actor but Beni was far more prevalent as the comedy relief and he didn’t work as a sidekick either since Evy fulfilled that role as well. Whenever Hannah tried bringing this up to Stephen Sommers, the latter would just tell him to make something up. Luckily, later films in the series would give Jonathan a more focused role as the comic relief and give him more stuff to do.” (source, TVTrops.org)
- “The original script’s opening had a number of edits. Imhotep was originally supposed to narrate, and following Seti’s murder Imhotep was supposed to lead the ritual to curse Anak-su-namun’s mummified body for her crime of regicide, only for Imhotep and his priests to dug up the body as soon as all the other witnesses were either dead or had left; in a scene mirroring Imhotep’s origin story in the original film, the diggers were to be killed by the soldiers after burying Anak-su-namun, and for the Med-jai to kill the soldiers afterwards in order to keep her grave a secret. During the ritual at Hamunaptra, Imhotep explains the ritual didn’t require a human sacrifice since Anak-su-namun’s organs were still fresh. When the Med-jai arrive to stop Imhotep, one of them smashes the jar containing Anak-su-namun’s heart, explaining why it it’s intact in one shot, and broken in the shot where her soul flees back to the underworld. Lastly, Imhotep explains how part of the Hom Dai works: the sacred scarabs would be able to enter his now tongue-free mouth and he’d be forced to consume them, cursing him, while the scarabs would become cursed as well upon consuming his flesh, creating a perversion of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Yes, the scarab swarms that plague our heroes later are all undead insects.” (source, TVTrops.org)
If you want to read Erin’s impressions of the movie, you can find it here
So, have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?
Up next in our Comfy, Cozy Cinema will be The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down a Mountain.
You can read my impressions of past movies in this year’s Comfy Cozy Cinema and past years here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/
Our full list of movies is here:
