Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed Page #5

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and very much a part of his soul."

And she said "I never intruded."

"He was always a perfect gentleman,

he always knew his lines."

He never complained about, possibly, one

of the most arduous make-up experiences

he would ever have at Universal,

under the hands of Jack Pierce.

Back in those days

they did not have 12-hour work days,

and they would sometimes

work until dawn.

And The Mummy

was an exhausting picture.

But Zita relied on the occult powers

of her faith to keep her going.

You will not remember

what I show you now,

and yet I shall awaken memories

of love and crime and death.

The most famous sequence in the picture

is probably the one in which

Zita and Karloff look into the pool

and she experiences her past lives.

And during this sequence, Zita -

because of lack of food

and working till late, late hours, and the

problems she was having with Freund -

she passes out.

And she claims she had what was

one of two near-death experiences.

She said "I could see myself

leaving my body."

And, of course, the first thing she sees

when she opens her eyes is Boris Karloff,

completely in make-up,

but out of character,

saying "Zita! Zita, darling!

Are you all right?"

And she, of course,

didn't want to let any of the crew know

that she had been on another plane.

The Mummy took Universal

to a new box-office plane,

as audiences thrilled to its unique

mixture of horror and romance.

Beyond the excellent performances,

careful art direction paid off handsomely.

The detailed re-creation of Egyptian

murals and hieroglyphics,

supervised by the noted

Hungarian artist Willy Pogany,

lent an unusual air of authenticity

to an otherwise fantastic story.

Technically and artistically,

it was one of the studio's most

accomplished fright films to date.

The best scene, perhaps, in this film

is the coming-to-life

of the mummy at the beginning.

But what is so remarkable

about that to me

is that they went to all the trouble to

make up Boris Karloff from head to foot

in the mummy wrappings,

in the extreme make-up,

and yet they just show his face a little bit,

they show his hand a little bit,

they move down the chest

as the hand moves,

but they don't show him walking around.

There's even a still of the standing Karloff

in the make-up reaching to take the scroll.

But they didn't have that shot

in the movie.

And what self-discipline

there must have been

to go for the implication

and the suggestion and the hint

rather than the blunt statement.

And as for Boris Karloff,

he was an actor who could very easily

be seen to be overacting.

His looks were so striking,

his voice was so distinctive,

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