4.29.2007

The Mummy




Christopher Lee walks like an Egyptian in The Mummy (dir. Terence Fisher, 1959).

More Eastmancolor fun from Fisher and the Hammer folks. Best thing in this one: the tense encounter between Peter Cushing as a British archeologist and George Pastell as Mehemet Bey, a modern-day worshipper of Karnak, a "third-rate" pagan deity. From one perspective, it's imperialist nostalgia indulging in the fantasy of the dangerous Arab other, and from another, it's a witty indictment of "civilized" western complacency. But the scenes with Lee as an Egyptian high priest are just plain outrageous.

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