Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed (1999)

Director:

David J. Skal

Writer:

David J. Skal

Stars:

Rudy Behlmer, Paul M. Jensen, John Balderston Jr.

Cast

Credited cast:
Rudy Behlmer	...	Himself / Host
Paul M. Jensen	...	Himself
John Balderston Jr.	...	Himself (as John Balderston)
Sara Karloff	...	Herself
Rick Baker	...	Himself
David Del Valle	...	Himself
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bud Abbott	...	Peter (archive footage)
Ramsay Ames	...	Amina Mansouri (archive footage)
John L. Balderston	...	Himself (Screenwriter) (archive footage)
Leon Belasco	...	Ali (archive footage)
Paul E. Burns	...	Banning Caretaker (archive footage)
John Carradine	...	Yousef Bey (archive footage)
Lon Chaney Jr.	...	Kharis (archive footage)
Virginia Christine	...	Princess Ananka (archive footage)
Eduardo Ciannelli	...	High Priest (archive footage)

Storyline

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Genres:

Documentary | Short | Horror

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 November 2002 (Finland)

Also Known As:

Rakas muumio

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Studios Home Video

Technical Specs

Runtime:

30 min

Color:

Black and White Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This documentary is featured on both the Classic Monster Collection and Monster Legacy Collection DVDs for The Mummy.

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Connections

References The Wolf Man (1941)

User Reviews

interesting documentary about The Mummy, weaker on information about the sequels

This is an interesting documentary about Universal's classic Mummy series of movies. It concentrates the most on the first one, providing information on how it came to be, about its director Karl Freud, its main stars Boris Karloff and Zita Johann, and makeup man (or sadist?) Jack Pierce.

There are interviews with film historians, and relatives of some of the people involved with the film, such as Karloff's daughter. Relatively little attention is paid to the sequels, but they are covered.

I found it interesting how The Mummy started off as being about the Italian historical character Cagliostro! Also interesting to see was how The Mummy copies certain formulas and scenes from the Universal Dracula film, which they illustrated by showing some of these scenes one after another. A similar thing happened with The Invisible Man copying Frankenstein, as the documentary for The Invisible Man notes.