Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet! From tombs beneath the scorching desert sand, it's a four-way battle to the death! Which movie endures the curse and earns the right to be called The Mummy?
Contender 1: The Mummy (1932). Boris Karloff, fresh off of his sensational performance as Frankenstein's monster a year earlier, has become THE theatrical attraction for Universal Pictures! So why not dig up another role for the uncanny Karloff? But since Bela Lugosi had already delivered as the world's most famous vampire, how about a Dracula-like tale of another cursed creature who rises from a tomb?
Contender 2: The Mummy (1959). Not to be outdone, Hammer Films were on a roll with their own interpretations of colorful classic monsters. Their early horrors seemed most effective when starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, which should be a given. But the behind the camera pairing of director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster owe a great deal to the quality and success, as well.
Contender 3: The Mummy (1999). We jump ahead forty years, to an Indiana Jones-inspired adventure movie, with 90s-perfected CGI special effects. But how well do those visual effects hold up more than twenty years later? It does seem as though the new millennium era cast of attractive young faces, led by Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and Arnold Vosloo, may be the only visuals that many viewers are concerned about.
Contender 4: The Mummy (2017). It was supposed to be a new launching point for Universal's attempt at a classic monster-filled cinematic "Dark Universe." But even the star power of Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe could not prevent this from becoming a critical and financial failure. Is this new tale, which seems to want to incorporate some of the 1999 film's adventure elements, with the wrinkle of a female mummy, really as bad as its reputation would have you believe?