Monday, February 11, 2013

Cult-TV Theme Watch: Mummies



A mummy is the preserved corpse of an animal or person.  The preservation may be due to use of chemicals, or unintentional, caused by freak environmental factors.  The mummy remains one of the most famous monsters in the horror movie pantheon, and as such has appeared on cult-television throughout the decades.

On classic Doctor Who (1963-1989) mummies made an unusual appearance in the beloved 1975 serial “Pyramids of Mars.”  There, an alien god, Sutekh the Destroyer, used mummy servants -- robots -- as his hands on Earth.  His plan was to escape entrapment on Mars.


The legend of the mummy was re-cast in a humorous light for Steven Spielberg’s 1985 anthology series, Amazing Stories (1985 – 1987).  “Mummy, Daddy,” by Earl Pomerantz aired on October 27, 1985, and featured a movie actor dressed as a mummy in bandages.  The actor learned that his wife was going into labor, and had to cross the countryside to reach her at the hospital.  In the process, the actor was mistaken for a real mummy, and pursued by torch-wielding villagers right out of James Whale’s Frankenstein.

In Tales from the Crypt’s (1989 – 1996), “Lower Berth,” written by Fred Dekker and directed by Kevin Yagher, the Crypt Keeper revealed his twisted origin story this tale of a circus freak who found love with the mummified corpse of a long-dead princess.  The episode aired on HBO for the first time in July of 1990.



One of the best episodes of She-Wolf of London (1990), “The Bogman of Leitchmour Heath,” written by Anthony Adams and directed by Roger Cheveley, aired in syndication in October of 1990.  The episode concerned a mummy found in a small, rural farm town in England  Under the auspices of black magic, the bog-man (Atticus) was being used to kill the enemies of a local necromancer when Randi (Kate Hodge) and Professor Matheson (Neil Dickson) investigated.


Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003) featured a mummy in its second season entry, “Inca Mummy Girl (October 6, 1997), which involved Xander (Nicholas Brendan) falling in love with an exchange student who was actually a Peruvian mummy.  The mummy, Ampata (Ara Celi) could maintain her appearance as a teenager only by absorbing the life-force of other Sunnydale students. 

On the original Ben 10 (2006 – 2008), one of Ben’s enemies is called “BenMummy.”  Two of the hero’s other enemies are BenVictor (The Frankenstein monster) and BenWolf, a werewolf.  All of these Universal-ish Monsters ulatimately find their way into Tennyson’s omnitrix.

1 comment:

  1. The mummy, as a movie monster, may be the most filmed monster of all time behind the vampire. The first depiction was a short film in 1899 (Cleopatra's Tomb) which was made 16 years before 'The Golem' and 23 years before the classic 'Nosferatu'. Now admittedly, the mummy, as a monster itself, is about as scary as the rabbits from 'Night of the Lepus'. But the mummy can sit beside the vampire, the wolfman, & the Frankenstein monster as a stellar part of horror film history.

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