# The Mummy (1959) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 30, 2019, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017 "2019-09-30T00:22:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cjackson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a3d4f5/32.png) [@cjackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjackson)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2019, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/1 "2019-09-30T00:22:22Z")
Have any of you seen this one from Hammer? It’s by far my favorite of the mummy in bandages movies. Christopher Lee manages to say much without having any dialogue while as the mummy. I wish there more films like this one. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2019, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/2 "2019-09-30T17:10:27Z")
I agree. I like the fact that they named the title character “Kharis”, rather than “Imhotep”. In the real world, Imhotep was considered to be a benevolent being. In life, he was the architect of the first pyramid. After his death, Egyptians prayed to him for help. It annoys me that the first Universal movie, and the more recent re-boots, used his name for the villain. I would have preferred if they had set it in Egypt, rather than England, but you can’t have everything, especially on Hammer’s budgets. At least they used the Scroll of Thoth, rather than the silly Tana leaves. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2019, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/3 "2019-09-30T17:16:36Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > I agree. > > I like the fact that they named the title character “Kharis”, rather than “Imhotep”. In the real world, Imhotep was considered to be a benevolent being. In life, he was the architect of the first pyramid. After his death, Egyptians prayed to him for help. It annoys me that the first Universal movie, and the more recent re-boots, used his name for the villain. > > I would have preferred if they had set it in Egypt, rather than England, but you can’t have everything, especially on Hammer’s budgets. At least they used the Scroll of Thoth, rather than the silly Tana leaves. “Kharis” was the name Universal used for the Mummy in its movies from the 1940s, played by Tom Tyler in _The Mummy’s Hand_ and by Lon Chaney Jr. after that. (Except for _Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy_, where the Mummy is called “Klaris” and is played by Eddie Parker). ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/4 "2019-09-30T17:40:24Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > “Kharis” was the name Universal used for the Mummy in its movies from the 1940s, played by Tom Tyler in _The Mummy’s Hand_ and by Lon Chaney Jr. after that. (Except for _Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy_, where the Mummy is called “Klaris” and is played by Eddie Parker). Indeed, Hammer’s _The Mummy_ is something of a remake/re-imagining of the Universal Kharis series, in particular the first two, _The Mummy’s Hand_ and _The Mummy’s Tomb_. In addition to the name Kharis, Hammer also reused the names Stephen and John Banning (the heroes of _Hand_ and _Tomb_, respectively), and Mehemet Bey (the villain in _Tomb_). Hammer even gave John Banning’s wife the name Isobel, which was the name of John’s love interest in _The Mummy’s Tomb_. The climax, with the Mummy sinking into the swamp, is taken from _The Mummy’s Ghost_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2019, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/5 "2019-09-30T19:05:31Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > Indeed, Hammer’s _The Mummy_ is something of a remake/re-imagining of the Universal Kharis series, in particular the first two, _The Mummy’s Hand_ and _The Mummy’s Tomb_. In addition to the name Kharis, Hammer also reused the names Stephen and John Banning (the heroes of _Hand_ and _Tomb_, respectively), and Mehemet Bey (the villain in _Tomb_). Hammer even gave John Banning’s wife the name Isobel, which was the name of John’s love interest in _The Mummy’s Tomb_. > > The climax, with the Mummy sinking into the swamp, is taken from _The Mummy’s Ghost_. And that’s a bit surprising, actually. In their other horror films from the same period – _Dracula/Horror of Dracula_, _Frankenstein_, and _Phantom of the Opera_, Hammer went to great lengths to distance themselves from the Universal movies. Their could claim a bit of plausible deniability, i that all three of those are nominally based on pre-existing literary works, so the use of the same names was pretty much a given. But they seriously changed the plot in the case of _Dracula_, and they changed to look of the _Frankenstein_ monster, and they made big changes to the plot of _Phantom_ (putting the chandelier scene at the end, and giving him an evil hunchbacked assistant, although they kept the hokey “wronged composed whose face is disfigured by acid” meme from the Universal Claude Rains version). But _The Mummy_ had no literary antecedent\*. the 1932 Universal film was based on a wholly new story and screenplay by John Balderston (who had rewritten Dracula for the American stage, and wrote the Universal script). The 1940s Universal Mummy movies basically cribbed from the 1932 version, and, despite their many changes, still told the story of the Mummy trying to reunite with his reincarnated lover. So when Hammer remade it, you would have thought that they’d make big changes, but they kept the same names (including the same name for the re-incarnated lover) and the same basic idea. The only really significant change is that Christopher Lee made a surprisingly fast and athletic Mummy. It’s as if, for this movie, they didn’t care if people (and universal’s lawyers) thought they were copying directly from the Universal movies. \*Not that no literary antecedents existed for resurrected mummies. There was a story about a resurrected mummy in the 1820s – interest in things Egyptian was high because of what had been brought back after the Napoleonic wars, and the deciphering of the hieropglyphics by Young and Champollion. Then Poe wrote his “Conversation with a Mummy”, and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote “Lot 249” and Bram Stoker wrote “The Jewel of Seven Stars”. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2019, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/6 "2019-09-30T22:43:05Z")
After _The Curse of Frankenstein_ and _Dracula_, Hammer got permission from Universal to use Universal’s old movies. from [Hammer Film Productions - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions) > [@](#): > > The huge box office success of The Curse of Frankenstein led to the inevitable desire for a sequel in The Revenge of Frankenstein, and an attempt to give the Hammer treatment to another horror icon. Dracula had been a successful film character for Universal in the past, and the copyright situation was more complicated than for Frankenstein. A legal agreement between Hammer and Universal was not completed until 31 March 1958 – after the film had been shot – and was 80 pages long.[25] > [@](#): > > With the agreement in place, Hammer’s executives had their pick of Universal International’s horror icons and chose to remake The Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Mummy’s Hand. All were to be filmed in colour at Bray Studios, by the same team responsible for The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. The Mummy (the title used for the remake of The Mummy’s Hand, which also incorporated significant story elements from that film’s sequel, The Mummy’s Tomb) was made in 1959, The Phantom of the Opera followed in 1962, and Hammer collaborated with William Castle on a remake of The Old Dark House in 1963. The Invisible Man was never produced. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2019, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mummy-1959/841017/7 "2019-10-01T15:03:22Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > After _The Curse of Frankenstein_ and _Dracula_, Hammer got permission from Universal to use Universal’s old movies. > > from [Hammer Film Productions - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions) I wasn’t aware of that, but it explains a lot. The remake of _The Old Dark House_ wasn’t really a remake – I recently watched both versions, and almost nothing from the original – except that there was an isolated Old Dark House and that there were Eccentric inhabitants – was retained. Even the nature of the inhabitants and their eccentricities were different. Hammer also made its own werewolf picture – 1961’s _Curse of the Werewolf_, starring Oliver Reed. But it doesn’t seem to owe anything to the Universal werewolf and wolfman pictures, aside from the “werewolf” being a man-wolf hybrid kind of creature, rather than wolf.