Wrapped

On Karl Freund's The Mummy

The atmosphere of The Mummy is so thick and vivid, the mood so
enveloping, that it seems to proceed less by narrative logic than by poetic
logic. There’s a mumbo-jumbo plot with Boris Karloff as an ancient Egyptian priest brought back to life to discover that the princess for whose love he was put to death has been reincarnated in the person of a young Arab-British socialite (Zita Johann). The Mummy, which was made in 1932, is far stranger and more exotic than the other horror movies made at Universal in the same period. It features no jump scene. Like Karloff’s Imhotep, the movie operates by casting a spell rather than by using force (only once does Imhotep go in for the kill—and then it’s off-screen). When this ancient wants to command obedience, he simply raises his ring and fixes his subject with his hypnotic gaze. The effect is placid, the tremors of subdued unease nearly subterranean. The Mummy may be the most quietly seductive horror film ever made.