Raiders of the Lost Mummy

Rating: 6/10 (12 October 2018)

Since its beginnings, Universal's Mummy franchise, like the resurrected corpse in this one, has often found vitality in sucking the life force from other films. The 1932 "Mummy" starring Boris Karloff did so by reusing the plot and many of the details from the 1931 "Dracula." The 1940s Kharis series adopted the aesthetics of serials and B-picture adventures. Distributed by Universal, Hammer studios reworked these prior Mummy movies in its pastiche of 1959. The latest version of 2017 tried to imitate comic-book superhero movies. And, this "Mummy" of 1999 went full circle by borrowing, as plenty of others have pointed out, from the Indian Jones franchise, which in turn the Kharis series in particular has been credited as an influence on, along with other classic adventure films. Parts of the prior Universal mummy movies are also reworked here, though, and the 1999 version put a new twist on things with CGI--well before the 2017 Dark Universe debacle did likewise.
Besides adopting and reworking the most popular aspects of Ancient Egyptian history and myth--the Book of the Dead, a hidden Valley of the Kings, the curse of King Tut's tomb and Old Testament stories of Jewish slaves and plagues--the basic story here is taken from the earlier "Mummies," with treasure hunters searching for a lost Ancient Egyptian tomb, unleashing a curse, and the Mummy seeking a living female vessel to restore life to his ancient forbidden love, a princess. This Mummy has the same name as Karloff's, taken from the historical pyramid architect, Imhotep, and both characters don't like to be touched, which they explain is "a silly Eastern superstition." There's an Egyptologist curator who secretly guards against the discovery of the tomb like in "The Mummy's Hand" (1940), including by partially destroying evidence of its location--pottery in the original and a map here. The cutting off the tongue business, I think, is from the 1959 Hammer version. And there's an ancient flashback scene, which is placed at the beginning here, which isn't as interesting as the self-reflexive pool visions in the 1932 film, which two Kharis pictures later cannibalized.
The 1932 "Mummy," which is otherwise the best of the bunch, suffers from creaky sound, deathly-slow pacing and stiff acting. This "Mummy" solves that problem by adopting the mix of action and comic relief from the Indiana Jones movies. Beyond that, it also replaces "Bugs, I hate bugs" for Indiana's fear of snakes; the assortment of booby traps and secret passages; and the Biblical-level revenge upon those who trespass. At the least, taking the Indian Jones formula and infusing its classic monster story with CGI alleviates any problems with dullness, movement and pacing. As a horror film, however, the repetitive gaping mouth thing is more yawn-inducing than frightening. It could've done without the silly cat business, too.
Despite its flaws, one can only wish that Universal's recent attempts at launching the Dark Universe, with its superhero action-movie antics in "Dracula Untold" (2014) and the 2017 "Mummy," had someone as competent as Stephen Sommers at the helm. Besides integrating Universal's mummy property into an Indian Jones framework, he created the monster-rally "Van Helsing" (2004), which blended elements of James Bond, "Moulin Rouge!" (2001) and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine with Universal's traditional Dracula, Frankenstein and werewolf monsters.