Egypt, 1895: An expedition led by archaeologist Stephen Banning unearths the last resting place of the ancient princess Ananka, but the old man is driven mad by something else hidden within the tomb. Three years later, a mysterious Egyptian, who has sworn vengeance on the members of the expedition for their act of desecration, arrives in rural England, bringing with him a large crate of “relics”. The crate is lost when it falls from a cart into a bog and sinks, but that night the Egyptian returns to the scene and, unrolling a papyrus, begins to intone the sacred words of the Scroll of Life…..
Production Details
A Hammer film production released by Universal Pictures
Copyright MCMLIX by Hammer Film Productions – All rights reserved
MPAA Approved Certificate
RCA Sound Recording
Produced at Bray Studios England
Eastmancolour processed by Technicolor 88 mins
Filming Began: 23rd February 1959
UK Release: 2nd May 1957
Studios:
Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire
Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey – Princess Ananka’s Funeral
Stills from film
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Original Poster
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Footnotes
This is the only Hammer film in which their three most prolific actors, Michael Ripper, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, appear together. Their only other appearance together was in Tigon’s The Creeping Flesh 1973.
The Mummy had originally been made in 1932 from a screenplay by John L. Balderston, with Boris Karloff in the title role. Following the success of Dracula (1958), Universal were more than happy to hand over the script of their old classic to Hammer for similar treatment.
The scene in which Peter Cushing plunges a spear right through the body of the mummy was not in Jimmy Sangster’s original screenplay. It was added at Cushing’s suggestion after he had seen the artwork for the film’s poster, which showed a beam of light shining through a hole in the creature’s stomach.
Actor Eddie Byrne was no stranger to horror films. In 1958, he was in Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman’s Jack the Ripper and later made two movies for Tom Blakely’s Planet Films – Devils of Darkness (1964) and Island of Terror (1966, with Peter Cushing and directed by Terence Fisher).