Like Dracula, The Mummy‘s central plot device involves the battle for the control of the mind/soul/body of the central female character, the love interest, and like Dracula, the mummy is a revived, almost immortal being with occult powers that are weakened by religious icons. Similarly, The Mummy can be seen as a reworking of Dracula. Later he was to script Freund’s other memorable directorial work, the delirious Mad Love (1935), and for James Whale he would script arguably the best of the Universal Horrors, James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).īalderston’s earlier theatrical work informs The Mummy and it is remarkable how a number of the themes and ideas found in Dracula (the film, the book or the play), and to a lesser degree Frankenstein (the film version of which had already pilfered from Browning’s Dracula) reoccur in The Mummy.
Balderston was also not a newcomer to the horror genre, having written the original plays on which both Frankenstein and Dracula were based before scripting The Mummy. Although Boris Karloff made his reputation with Frankenstein (1931) and further consolidated it with The Old Dark House (1932), The Mummy was his first starring role (after appearing in seventy films). This brought him to America at the dawn of the sound era, where he shot Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) and Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) before embarking on The Mummy. His moody chiaroscuro lighting, extreme camera angles and mastery of the moving camera gained him a reputation as a stylistic innovator. Murnau’s films including Der Letzte Mann (1924), several of Fritz Lang’s films including Metropolis (1927), and E. Novice director Karl Freund is best known as the legendary German cinematographer who filmed many of F. The Mummy began the third of the successful Universal horror franchises – predating the final franchise, The Wolf Man (1941), by almost a decade – and perfectly illustrates the almost incestuous nature of the ’30s horror cycle. Balderston from the story by Nina Wilcox Putnam Richard Schayer Phot: Charles Stumar Art Dir: Willy PoganyĬast: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan, Arthur Byron.
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Source: NLA/CAC Prod Co: Universal Studios Prod: Carl Laemmle Dir: Karl Freund Scr: John L.