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From the 1930s into the ‘50s, Universal brought the horror genre some of its greatest icons. Dracula. Frankenstein’s Monster. The Wolf Man. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Invisible Man. The Mummy. The studio has returned to these characters multiple times over the decades. But the one that has had the most successful revival was the Mummy, who was brought back to the screen in a family friendly adventure film in 1999. A film that mixed monsters with Indiana Jones style action… and became a blockbuster that’s now seen as a beloved classic. So let’s take a look back at the making of The Mummy ‘99 and find out What the F*ck Happened to This Horror Movie.

To properly cover The Mummy, we first have to flash back to 1922. That’s when the discovery – and the opening – of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb captured the world’s imagination.

Following the release of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff, at nearly 45 years of age and having spent twenty years as a professional actor, became an overnight sensation. As the film was still raking in its rewards, Universal signed him to a star contract and immediately began searching for a property for him. As it turned out it took nearly a year, between his outstanding commitments to other studios and Universal’s inability to find a suitable script, for Karloff to appear in his first starring role for the studio. The film was a decidedly different, but no less remarkable, from Frankenstein. Instead of being quickly paced and sensationalistic, The Mummy was deliberately plotted with a slowly unfolding story, but its restrained direction and masterful performances made it a unique entry in Universal’s growing library of horror cinema of the early 1930s.

Writer and journalist Nina Wilcox Putnam was tasked by Universal...

For the last week or so, FanGirlTastic has been going "Back to Basics," examining movies from horror's past to discern what relevance they have in the present. So far, we've looked at Dracula and Frankenstein, the first two major films from the golden age of Universal Studios.

These movies not only helped form the foundation of modern horror, they also feature two of the most enduring horror icons. Coincidentally, both of these flicks are also based on novels that are classics of the genre. That The Mummy managed to join Dracula and Frankenstein in that vaunted horror hierarchy is something of a mystery, because The Mummy is easily the weakest film of this diabolical trinity of terror.

When all the sand has cleared, I suppose the staying power of The Mummy is most likely explained by the haunting dual performance of Boris Karloff, who plays Imhotep, a lovelorn ancient Egyptian...