October 29th, 2015 - The Mummy Theme Park (2000)

Watching a movie a day is kind of a stupid thing to do. It's occasionally a slog, and being a year into this thing I can't help but think that my time may be better spent on other pursuits. But at the same time, I kind of love it. And films like The Mummy Theme Park are a big reason why.

Don't get me wrong - Mummy is a bad, bad movie. But it's my kind of bad. Bad dubbing, cheesy (yet charming) & very over-used special effects, and a plot that makes you shake your head and laugh. I'm not a huge supporter of the term "so-bad-it's-good" - that's kind of an oversimplification. But it's a good catchall for a film that manages to be extremely enjoyable despite the fact that it doesn't succeed in what it sets out to do. Or, in the case of The Mummy Theme Park - maybe it does. It's a fun, fun movie. But maybe not in the way it's supposed to be.

March 12th, 2015 - Legend of the Mummy (1998)

Alternatively known as Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy. Although if you read the reviews, many Stoker fans get kind of pissed at this movie, saying it's sullying his name. I haven't read the novel it's based on ("The Jewel of the Seven Stars"), but yeah - anyone associated with this film has been sullied to a certain extent. It's not very good by any stretch of the imagination - it's just a slow, boringly shot, periodically confusing film with no good characters or effects to distract you from how uninteresting it is.

It starts with old Dr. Winchester in his office - he's an Egyptologist, and his office and the rest of his lavish house is filled with ancient artifacts. He receives half of an old tablet in the mail, and pieces it together with the other half that he already had - presumably, he's been waiting to put the two pieces together for a long time. Just as he does that, there is some spooky whooshing and he is attacked by an unseen assailant, and goes into a coma.

January 21st, 2015 - Dawn of the Mummy (1981)

Dawn of the Mummy is essentially a zombie-by-way of mummy flick, as you may be able to guess by the mash up of titles.  It doesn't offer anything especially new or exciting, and is pretty slow for the first half, but it's decent enough if you're a fan of slightly corny early 80's horror.

It starts off in 3000 BC in Egypt, with a group of marauders on horseback running rampant through a village, whipping people and kidnapping young boys. I couldn't tell you why. Cut to the interior of a tomb/pyramid, where a priestess is performing a mummification ceremony. (Complete with gross but not too gross effects, which will be par for the course for the rest of the film. Think real animal organs, just sort of set on top of someone and then lifted off.) And you get the requisite Curse. The twist here? All of the people who helped build the tomb and perform the ceremony will be killed by poisonous gas to keep the location of the tomb a secret. They seem okay with this. If the Curse ever comes to fruition (it will), the helpers will also rise from the dead to take revenge along with the Mummy, whose name I have surely misspelled as Saabernon.

November 5th, 2014 - The Mummy (1932)

Ah, another Universal Monsters jam.  I already wrote in my entry of The Invisible Man about the issues inherent on writing about these films from the 1930s, so I won't go into that here.  Suffice to say that there's a different scale that you grade these on, you're wearing a different hat as a viewer.  You feel more detached, and I think it's impossible to ignore the decades and decades between then and now.   The films are not inherently better or worse, just... different.  I would say that The Mummy was less of an era-shock (a term I just made up) than The Invisible Man. Looking at it with my 2014 sensibility, dealing with a creature/plot from the ancient past was a better fit with the 1930's mentality as opposed to The Invisible Man - who really is more or less from the future. (Science!)  And even though I had some fears going in, it's another great entry in the Universal Monsters canon.

The movie starts with several British archeologists gloating about their latest find - the remains of the high priest Imhotep, who was mummified alive for breaking all sorts of holy ancient-Egyptian rules. He's just kind of propped up against the wall in the back... I guess they felt okay treating their priceless finds like that. Also amongst their findings is an ancient scroll that has the power to bring the dead back to life. The archeologists, being science-first folks, scoff at the idea that the scroll has any real-life power. The brashest young archeologist waits until he is alone and reads from the scroll. Our mummy begins to stir, and the young man freaks out and starts laugh/screaming, and doesn't stop. When the others come to see what the fuss is about, the mummy has vanished and the young man has gone totally mad. We later find out that he "died laughing, in a straight jacket." It's a pretty solid way to start the movie, and was already scarier than anything from The Invisible Man.