The Mummy 4K 1932 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

The Egyptian priest Imhotep comes back to life 3700 years after his death. Meeting an Englishwoman, Helen Grosvenor, he recognizes her as a priestess who also lived almost forty centuries ago...

Review 4K Movie

Carl Freund was incredibly lucky with his work. This German cinematographer managed to work with the best masters on both sides of the Atlantic, from Todd Browning to Fritz Lang, to film adaptations of works such as On the Western Front Without Change and Murder in the Rue Morgue. And all the more so, he caught the transition from silent to sound cinema, a process that, as we know, entailed many personal and professional tragedies. And it is through this prism of individual views that "The Mummy" was created.

Hence the conclusion - this film contains perhaps the most accurate and measured composition of the film horror of the 1930s. If you want to introduce this era of cinema to an unprepared, so to speak, naked viewer, this would be the best option. You could, of course, prefer "Dracula," "Frankenstein," or even "Freaks," but such completeness of standards applied in the production of movies of the time is not present in any of these films. As it seemed to me, it's like a billet of ready-made clichés joined together in one place for later cutting and pasting, like a kit for a child's applique. That said, it's silly to berate the film based on this reason, it's just that those were the standards back then. And in fact, The Mummy is the real blockbuster of the American box office of 1932. Are the typical popcorn films nowadays made according to other parameters?

There is an expression - from world to world, and here it could not be more appropriate. The idea of the dead man waking up seems to be taken from "Doctor Calliraghi's Office", Boris Karloff's makeup resembles that of Frankenstein's monster, and various sad love stories have been passed down since the dawn of time. If you look even more closely, you notice an interesting thing - in fact, "The Mummy" is a remake of "Dracula" one year later, so much these films have in common. Barely saved from ruin in 1931, Universal Studios didn't seem to want to give up the recipe for the success of its biggest hit, and besides, audiences demanded more horror and scares. De facto, the storyline and most of the main characters were taken directly from the legendary ghoul movies. The story being told about a priest (Boris Karloff, ex-Frankenstein) returning from the realm of the dead and his desire to possess a young girl and turn a similar mummy into himself was from the beginning specialized for commercial success. And the fact that the mummy goes to oblivion at the end, with the help of Frank's loving character (David Manners, former real estate agent Jonathan Harker) and Egyptologist Dr. Mueller (Edward Van Sloan, aka Dr. Waldman, aka Professor Van Helsing), only confirms this.

And now for the most important thing of all. What brings the spark of life to any movie, no matter what layer of dust it lies under? That's right, the acting and the right atmosphere. And here, to create both, "The Mummy" has its trump card up its sleeve - Boris Karloff. The way he brought to life a corpse that had lain in a tomb for 3,700 years defies description. It is the kind of thing that is better seen once than heard a hundred times. Plus, its devilish appeal is aimed directly at the viewer and at times you catch yourself wanting to look around and see if anyone is reaching for you with dried-up hands. It's not that the other actors played badly, no. But even the best of them, like Van Sloan, pale in comparison to Karloff's deadly appeal. So in the end Carl Freund has succeeded in creating a real cult monster, albeit a bit secondary, but attractive in its own way.