Mummy on Screen

Basil Glynn is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Middlesex University, UK. His publications have explored a variety of film and television topics, notably television body horror and Asian transnational drama. He is the co-editor of the collection Television, Sex and Society: Analysing Contemporary Representations (Bloomsbury, 2012).

The mummy has long been neglected in horror criticism as a stiff and lifeless movie monster. But The Mummy on Screen finds a beating heart beneath the bandages. With exhaustive research and deft analysis, Basil Glynn lifts the shroud on the mummy and finds a fascinating and malleable monster whose mute body nonetheless speaks volumes about the Orientalist imagination.

• AcknowledgementsAuthor’s Notes Introduction:Death is Only the Beginning: Unravelling the Mummy on Screen Section 1: The Mummy in the West and Western Cinema1. The Creature’s Features: Moulding the Mummy and the Mummy Movie The Oriental Mummy as Western Projection The Mummy Genre: Interest and Disinterest 2.The Mutating Mummy: From Ancient Artefact to Modern Attraction Mummy Medicine: An Egyptian Prescription The Mummy as Memento: A Collectible Corpse The Mummy as Public Attraction: Exhumed, Examined and Exhibited Section II: The Mummy in Literature, on Stage and the Silent Screen3.On the Page and Stage: The Mummy Movie’s Literary and Theatrical Influences The Mummy’s Tome: A Body of Literature The Rediscovery of Ancient Egypt: A Pharaoh to Remember The Mummy’s Literary Life: Electrifying Tales! Romance and the Mummy: Amorous Archaeologists and Comely Corpses Literature’s Monstrous Mummies: Dread, Despair and Doyle The Empire Strikes Back: Stoker’s Au Revoir to the Voyeur Archaeologist Playing Dead: The Mummy in the Theatre 4. Preserved on Film: The Silent Mummy of Early Cinema Egypt and the Cinema: Monoliths, Mesmerism and Mummies The ‘Mummy Complex’ and the Preservative Nature of Film The First On-Screen Mummies: Short-lived Moments of Horror in theTrick FilmWinding People Up: Pretend Mummies and Mummy Mix-ups in Silent Comedies Mummy Dearest: The Mummy as Romantic Character Tomb Raiders: Egypt and Early Horror Teutonic Terrors: The First Mummy Horror Movies Grave Danger: Tutmania, the Curse and the Death of the Silent Mummy Section III: Universal Studios and the Mummy of the 1930s and 1940s5. The Mummy (1932): Overcoming the Silent Treatment ‘The Mummy:’ Art Horror or Production Line Horror? The Delicate Horror of ‘The Mummy:’ A Shudder not a Shriek! A Dichotomized Damsel: A 1920s/1930s Eastern/Western Woman A Real Lady-Killer: “The Mummy” as Gothic Romance The Mummy and the Nubian: Yellow Peril and Black Brute 6. The 1940s Mummy Film: A Decade of Decay The Mummy Returns: The 1940s Mummy as Cadaverous Copy More than the Sum of Its Parts: Innovation and the 1940s Mummy ‘The Mummy’s Hand’ (1940): Reinventing the Mummy ‘The Mummy’s Tomb’ (1942): A Memorably Murderous Mummy Lon Chaney Jr.: Cursing the Mummy! The Mummy in America: Fear and Roaming in New England “The Mummy’s Ghost (1944):” Escaping Bandaged Bondage “The Mummy’s Curse (1944):” The Female Mummy Returns The Demise and Rise of the Mummy: To Buffoon and Back AgainSection IV. Hammer Studios and Beyond: The Mummy of the 1950s-Present7. Hammer’s Resurrection of the Mummy: Sex and Digs and Wrap and Roll Show Me the Mummy: Realism with Restraint in ‘The Mummy’ Culture Clash: The Mummy’s Case and the Aftermath of Suez 8. Wrapping up the Mummy: The Last 60 Years Bibliography