Hey, Boris Karloff is in it, so the Mummy should be large and in charge and looking for chickies.
Well, this is The Scroll of Thoth. Basically, it’s about rising from the grave. OK, sold.
Field Expedition Season 1921 British Museum (9 Deuce)
Sir Joseph is one of the guys working on this. Then there’s Dr. Muller who is analyzing the Mummy. Sir Joseph also has a younger dude working as his assistant, Ralph Norton. Ralph just hypothesized that the Mummy got to gay with the vestal virgins in the temple. . Sorry, but I have a very immature sense of humor and I like to picture a gay mummy. So what? “Death, eternal punishment” for anybody who opens this casket. That’s a helluva curse. Joseph suspects that the Scroll of Thoth, but is it worth the curse dude? Yeah, I guess it probably is. Muller and Joseph go talk outside, and Ralph’s dumbass opens the box. So, what’s in the box? Cue Brad Pitt. Sure enough, it’s a scroll.
Muller tells Joseph to just bury this where he found it, and Joseph is like, come on buddy. Ohhhh shit, the Mummy’s eyes are opened and his arms are moving. Good job Ralph. The Mummy has a sweet ring. The Mummy takes the scroll and scares the hell out of Ralph who just laughs maniacally. Ralph has lost his damn mind. See ya, Imhotep.
11 Years Later
Frank, who is Joseph’s son, is with Professor Pearson. They get talking about Joseph’s discovery and talk about a queer story. SORRY, but I am just working with what they give me. It was a queer story about Ralph going crazy. He died laughing in a straight jacket. There’s a knocking, and that’s Boris I think, who is also Imhotep, but going by the name of Ardath Bey. Ardath shows them a sweet location to dig up Ankh-es-em-amon’s tomb. That’s some sweet singing by the Arabs. Ankh is a princess. It sounds like Sir Joseph is coming back to oversee this.
Muller is talking to Helen, who is the daughter of the governor of the Sudan. Yup. Sir Joseph sees Ardath Bey in the museum, invites him to his office. Ardath won’t shake hands, doesn’t like to be touched, and he won’t accept Joseph’s invitation to visit his home. Ardath is doing a chant of the princess’ name, and Helen ends up in a trance saying Imhotep, and trying to get into the museum, then collapses. Some museum guard dares bother Ardath and gets choked out. Dumbass.
Frank bring Helen back to his place. Frank is smitten with Helen and they end up making out. Ardath makes it in to where Helen is by using some mind trick on the guard. She wakes up to see him staring down at her. Helen is half Egyptian, and she looks familiar to Ardath. The guys come out to talk to Ardath, and they tell Helen to go home, but she and Ardath are just staring into each other’s eyes.
Oh shit, they now know who he is, but they can’t hurt him, and he wants his scroll. That was an intense scene. Ardath leaves, and he is cursing Sir Joseph and causing him to die of a heart attack I believe, but at least he destroyed the scroll. Muller puts the ashes in an envelope, and he and Frank are going to meet up with Helen. Ohhh, he only burned a newspaper, and Ardath has the real scroll. That’s what I thought but got confused. Muller gave Frank some necklace for protection to help when they fight this creature.
Ardath has Helen at his place, and he is asking if things look familiar to her because she is very similar to the princess and whatnot. He shows her visions, as he had knelt at the princess’ death bed. We see after she died, he stole the scroll of Thoth to bring the princess back to life, but he was caught while reading from the scroll. His dad sentenced him to a shitty death, wrapped like a mummy while still alive. That’s pretty dark. They put him in this nice casket. He gets buried in an unmarked grave, the soldiers killed the slaves. Then the soldiers were killed. That way, nobody knew shit. Wow. So his attempt to resurrect her cost about 10 lives. Ardath then wakes Helen up from her “dream”. A white cat killed Helen’s dog, and Frank suspects that it was Bast.
I think Ardath just took out Frank. He has Helen with him now, and she is buying what he is selling. They can’t start loving quite yet. He needs Helen’s soul to revitalize the mummy it sounds like. She doesn’t want to die so that they can be reunited. Well, he got buried alive and screwed over because of her. So stop being ungrateful, lady. Frank is alive and woken up by Muller who now gets the plan that Ardath wants to make her a living mummy. Right.
The guys make it there before Ardath can make the stab. She is praying to Isis. An Isis statue raises her arm, emits a beam of light that destroys the scroll. With the scroll destroyed, Ardath/Imhotep is nothing but bones.
End film.
This was the weakest in some ways, and yet it felt epic. I am kinda torn. The story as a whole is actually really good, but it takes some patience and whatnot. This isn’t for everybody as it’s not totally spoon-fed like the others, but it’s still really good and re-watchable. Karloff is winning me over, no doubt.
Final rating: 6.0
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