One of my all time favorites.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

When looking at classic monster-horror films, there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed. Not necessarily meaning that the films have no realism, but more so that the films are so dated in style and aesthetic that it becomes extremely difficult to understand how moviegoers were able to feel the scares of such a film. The Mummy is an interesting movie with the mythology it sets up, but lacks the thrills or lasting direction to catapult itself into the hall of fame of horror films. One thing this film does incredibly well is use Boris Karloff. Because the film is more of an atmospheric horror, it relies on particular creepy images rather than scaring with shock- horror, and no image is more creepy than a close up of Boris Karloff staring you down directly into the camera. He's a legend, and The Mummy is just one of many examples of that. Following along in the same sort of structure as films like Frankenstein, you can figure out the plot beats relatively easy, but that doesn't necessarily take away from the experience, though it certainly doesn't enhance it. Overall, this short take on The Mummy mythology is a fun one, even if it produces little to no scares whatsoever. 6.7/10

As a long time fan of the Universal monster movies, The Mummy has been a favorite of mine for quite some time. Boris Karloff's portrayal was perfection. His stern gaze and wrinkled appearance gave me chills. My favorite shots of him were when he would use his powers to control or kill someone. The up close shot combined with the lighting playing with his eyes really magnified the significance of what was going on. The story was solid and explained how Imhotep came to be where he was, with some great story telling through the reflection pool. The only thing I could possibly complain about would be how the film ends. It feels like it was cut too soon and something is missing. Other than that, I say this is a film that speaks volumes over the ages as one of the original sound horror films.

A lesser Universal horror film than the other well-known classics from this by-gone era but one that is still entertaining in a lot of ways. It is Karloff who makes the film as the prince brought back to life, and the make up work on him this time is no less impressive than that in FRANKENSTEIN, although not as famous. Karloff's face is a mass of wrinkles and he really does look thousands of years old.Surprisingly, Karloff is only swathed in bandages for a few minutes at the beginning of the film; the image of the bandaged mummy on the rampage is from the film's numerous sequels and Hammer's 1959 remake, among others. Dwight Frye also stars as his usual gibbering maniac, this time repeating "He went for a little walk!" after he has brought Karloff back to (un)life. The film also has some great costumes and a nice Egyptian set, complete with hieroglyphs, which is to be expected really. Karloff gets to deliver a lot of sinister lines and shows us that he is capable of acting as well as wearing make up. Unfortunately most of the film consists of minor characters talking, drawing room talk as it were, and in this area the film is rather dated, much like it's other counterparts of the time, although not quite as dated as the earlier Dracula.Altogether this is an interesting film, enlivened by Karloff's central performance and worth seeing as the film which kicked off a whole sub-genre. Looking back on it, the film may be dated but really it's from a cinematic era which we'll never see again. Look at this and other classics such as THE HAUNTING, and then look at what happened to the horror genre after the mid '70s. No more will we see atmospheric films such as these, instead all we get is blood and gore, which is not necessarily bad but still saddening to see how things have changed.

After the success of Frankenstein and Dracula in 1931, why wouldn't Universal quickly pump out another monster movie. The next film to release was The Mummy, bringing back Boris Karloff, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan to star yet again. Edward Van Sloan's character was very similar to that of Van Helsing and Karloff didn't seem to full develop the spirit of The Mummy. Perhaps more scenes should have involved Karloff in his actual lumbering Mummy state than the true version of himself. Other aspects of the film didn't really jump out either. The story was a bit on the weaker side, with the backstory hard to follow and the movie's climax wasn't up to par. Karl Freund made a nice attempt being the filmmaker of The Mummy but it certainly isn't a stand-out classic such as other Universal monster movies.