Several people commented during our Avatar contest that they would like to see us  review The Mummy (1999). I happen to have a unique perspective on this movie, as it has somehow wormed its way into an odd place in my life. I first saw it in college, and while I didn’t hate it, I felt no interest in sitting through it ever again. Steven Sommers’ obsession with mindless spectacle and pointless deaths was enough to ruffle even my then-adolescent feathers.  I put The Mummy from my mind, and didn’t even bother to check out the over-hyped sequel in the summer of 2001.

Seven years later, I got married, and I learned that The Mummy was one of my wife’s all-time favorite movies. Since it had been so long, and out of affection for her, I gladly endured one more screening. The problem is, one was not enough for her. For the last two years of my life, every time there’s laundry to fold or iron, The Mummy goes in the VCR. I usually try to busy myself in some other room, balancing the checkbook or something, whenever she watches The Mummy. Despite this, I can still hear it, and have learned all the screams of the movie by heart.

So, what’s in The Mummy? We start around 1200 B.C. when Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), high priest of Pharaoh Sethi I, and Ank Su Namun, the Paraoh’s concubine (Patricia Velasquez, above) conspire to murder Sethi. They take turns hacking him with swords, causing him to go “Aaaggh!” “Eeee!”  “Aaaaa!” Ank Su Namun then kills herself to avoid punishment for the murder. Imhotep later tries to resurrect her, but Sethi’s guards stop him. He is sentenced to be mummified alive for his crimes. (Just for the record, that’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. In real life, you’d be dead halfway through step one.) Some priests cut off his tongue, resulting in a scream that is really more of gasp. Imhotep is then buried alive, and placed under a curse that says, should he be resurrected, he would return as a pestilence to destroy the earth.

Before Scott Evil can jump up and say “Why don’t you just kill him and be done with it?” we are transported to the 1920s. We meet Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz), a British librarian and Egyptologist, who emits an “Eeeek!” when her brother, Jonathon (John Hannah), makes a mummy pop out of a sarcophagus, startling her. Jonathon has found an artifact that intrigues Evie, and she begins assembling a team to travel deep into Egypt to find the lost city of Hamunaptra. They are joined by Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser), an adventurer from the States, and four treasure hunters, along with many other nameless pieces of monster fodder, destined to emit screams.

On the journey, their ship is attacked by fighters who protect Imhotep’s tomb called the Medjai. O’Connell sets one on fire, who jumps off the boat, screaming “Hoo, hoo, hoo-aaaaah!” (splash) Once they arrive at Hamunaptra, three Arabic-speaking guides are melted by acid in a booby trap,

Aaagh!

Aaagh!

Owwie!

A warden has a golden beetle come to life, burrow into his foot, then up his body and into his brain, causing him to go mad and run screaming down a corridor into a wall

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Smack

And finally, Evie reads from the Book of the Dead, bringing Imhotep back to life. “Noo! You must not read from the book!” As soon as she does, a storm of locust comes up, forcing the adventurers inside the ancient temple that is now stalked by Imhotep. One by one, all the extras are killed either by Imhotep, the beetles, or booby traps, resulting in screams to numerous to transcribe.

They return to Cairo but the Mummy follows them. Four treasure hunters are under a special curse for opening Imhotep’s organ chest, and he kills each of them before moving on to the rest of the world. While the first one dies screaming “No! Please, please, please …” the rest of them go out with more of an “Aaaeeeiiieck*” as Imhotep drains them of their life. Each time he does so, he partially regenerates, until he looks like a living man. Which raises some questions: what would he have done if fewer than four had opened the chest? If no one had opened the chest, but Evie had read from the book, would he have just destroyed the world as a walking corpse? For that matter, since he plans on destroying the world anyway, why bother with these guys?

The Mummy; half-way through his curse victims, so ... 50% regenerated?

The answer is, you have to think like Steven Sommers. For Sommers, making sense is nothing; spectacle is everything. Nothing goes into the “plot” of this movie unless it will lead to either a fight scene or a horrific, screaming death (although the deaths involve an implausible omission of red liquid to keep that all-important PG-13 rating). The curse on Imhotep’s organ chest is nothing more than an aside, crammed into the movie to give Sommers an excuse to kill four more guys.

Frankly, the rest of the movie is pretty much the same thing. More screams, people dying by the hundred, and inane scripture quotations with no meaning. Beth eventually showed me the sequel, and I actually liked it a little better, though I think it was mostly because I had lower expectations. If you’re interested in Sommer’s work, or in Universal Studios monsters, your time would be better spent checking out Van Helsing (2004). It has all the same stupidities as The Mummy, but at least has cooler characters, awesome action scenes, and some really wicked gadgets.

To summarize my impression of The Mummy:

Sitting through it once: “Eh.” (In other words, *½~~~ (1.5/5))

Being subjected to it over and over:

“Aaaggh!” “Eeee!”  “Aaaaa!”

“Hoo, hoo, hoo-aaaaah!” (splash)

Aaagh!

Aaagh!

Owwie!

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Smack

“No! Please, please, please …”

“Aaaeeeiiieck*”

Well, what can be said about Legion? It’s a bit too nonsensical for me to call it good. On the other hand it isn’t really badenough for me to talk about that either. It’s not remotely accurate to its subject matter, but it’s not irreverent enough to be offensive. Ultimately, when the lights go on and you’re walking away from this one, scratching your head, what you’re most likely to remember about the movie is exactly what you saw on the poster: an Archangel with a machine gun. And if that by itself isn’t worth a “hell, yeah,” it’s got to be at least worth a “heck, yeah.”

The movie opens with the text of Psalm 34:11, and actually builds on that theme pretty well. For all its faults, Legiondoes make God seem pretty scary. Fed up with man’s wickedness, He dispatches His angelic legion to exterminate us. However, the Archangel Michael (Paul Bethany) refuses to give up on man, and possibly refuses to believe that God has really given up. He drops into Los Angeles on Dec. 23 and hacks off his wings with a combat knife. He then breaks into and loots a gun store, steals a police car, and drives to a trailer park in the middle of nowhere called Paradise Falls.

But wait. It gets better.

At the Paradise Falls diner, we meet a motley crew of characters from different walks of life who either work in the diner or have had the misfortune to get lost/break down there. Most notably, we meet Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), a seemingly insignificant, poor, unwed mother to be, and Jeep (Lucas Black), her live-in boyfriend. Not only is Jeep not the father of Charlie’s child, but she has slept with just about everyone in town except him. Nonetheless, he loves her and offers to help her raise the baby.

Why sneak out the door with the guns when you can blow something up?

There follows an unintentionally comical scene, in which a little old lady (Jeanette Miller) orders a rare steak, uses the c-word, bites a guy on the neck, and then climbs the wall ala The Exorcist, before being shot to death by Kyle (Tyrece Gibson), the token gangsta of the film. Then we see a swarm of bugs that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Then Michael shows up and shoves sub-machine guns into everyone’s hands, telling them more like the old lady are on their way.

Michael explains that the deformed maniacs now assembling around the diner are possessed — not by demons, but by angels! He has come to protect Charlie, because her child is humanity’s hope for survival.

Yep. The male child of an insignificant, young, single girl, born on Dec. 25 in the middle of nowhere is humanity’s hope. Ever hear a story like that before? Other than a vague reference to the child “leading mankind out of darkness,” no explanation for Michael’s assertion is ever given. From there, Legion shifts from The Exorcist to Night of the Living Dead, as the Possessed try to fight their way into the diner.

The whole ordeal raises a lot of questions. If God has truly despaired of humanity, why is He committing so many resources to killing this child? And if He hasn’t, why not let the child live? Why do the Possessed sometimes exhibit a survival instinct and other times not?

What are the rules on angels? Are they truly immortal, or just tougher than humans? Do they lose their powers if they cut their wings off? The movie never seems to make up its mind. If humans possessed by angels can’t come near the child, why can Gabriel (Kevin Durand) walk right in the door? And when we see that God has apparently resurrected Michael and given him a new set of wings, just in time to save the day, are we to assume that Michael somehow changed God’s mind, or that this was what God had in mind all along?

Such questions matter not to director Scott Stewart. I don’t believe there was ever a hope on his part to do anything more than make a cool, scary action movie.

And action there is. Bethany gets a few fight scenes that would make Chuck Norris jealous. Near the end, there is a scene where Michael and Gabriel go one-on-one in the diner and tear the place apart. This scene, if you will pardon my technical jargon, is probably the most freakin’ awesome action sequence I have seen since Spiderman 3. It’s worth sitting through the rest of the movie for.

I can’t say I recommend this movie, but I definitely recommend searching YouTube for the angel smack-down scene. Can I get heck-yeah?

**~~~ (2/5)

So why do a review of a movie that turns 50 this year? Because every so often there is a movie so great that it transcends time; a classic. None the less, due to the shear volume of material put out by Hollywood, great films can be forgotten just because they didn’t come out in the last year or two, or because audiences get comfortable with different styles. To put it simply, greatness should not be allowed to die.

The Ten Commandments was directed by savy Hollywood operator and professing Christian Cecil B. Demille. The fact that some of Demille’s movies were based on parts of the Bible automatically drew some criticism. One contemporary accused Demille of making “small-minded movies on a huge scale.” The “huge scale” part definitely applies to The Ten Commandments. Demille had to employ a cast of thousands of extras to recreate Pharo’s army and the mass Exodus of Hebrew slaves. The story spans 85 years and takes 3:39 to unfold, and every scene – nay, every line of dialogue – drives the story. And of course, then-revolutionary techniques were used to make the Red Sea sit up and beg, making movie history.

One of the temptations that Moses brushes off like dandruf. Heston must have taken a lot of cold showers.

But small minded? No one can take an honest look at this film and seriously hold that belief. This is one of the most compelling and thoughtful pictures ever made. The early story happens during a politically volatile period in the (speculative) history of ancient Egypt. Pharo Sethi I is nearing the end of his life and his throne must naturally pass to his biological heir, the ambitious Rameses II. Yul Brynner is absolutely brilliant in this role. You don’t like him and yet you’re compelled to respect him. Driven by his desire for the crown and for the beautiful Nefretiri (Anne Baxter), he puts force that few actors can into every scene he appears in. Sethi has nearly equal force, however, and superior power. Like most old men who’ve spent their lives being waited on, he has begun to worry about his legacy. He prefers his sister’s adopted son, Moses, who never stops building tributes to him, as a successor. Rameses begins hatching plots to undo this adopted brother.

Nefretiri, a hormonal adolescent girl with the power of a princess, plays her own game. Madly in love with Moses, she can’t bear the thought of being wed to Rameses. She constantly praises Moses and sweet talks Sethi. One scene between her and Rameses is one of Hollywood’s more memorable scenes. It’s a reminder that movies were much more powerful when the sexual tension was kept below the surface. Nefretiri is not passive, however, her passion drives her to extreme lengths, including murder. There are an assortment of other wily characters with their own motivations to add interest.

All of this is superbly done, and plenty for four stars. But so far, all this political maneuvering and forbidden romance could be in The Godfather, The Good Shepherd, or any number of intrigue movies. What makes The Ten Commandments different? The protagonist. Moses never criticizes the other characters; he simply passes through the politics and back-stabbing as if he doesn’t notice it.

Prophet, priests, and king.

Differences between Moses and the others begin to show right after Nefretiri has killed her hand maiden. Moses is knocking at her door. After a minute of romance, Moses learns that she has killed Memnet. He insists on knowing why, and drags it out of her that Memnet told her about his Hebrew heritage (unknown to him). She spouts typical Hollywood rhetoric, e.g., “I love you, that’s the only truth I know.” His reply is “love cannot drown truth.” Moses is favored above everyone else in Egypt, and its throne has now been promised to him. He has every comfort he could want and a beautiful woman madly in love with him. However, the revelation drives him to uncover his past, and he actually leaves the palace to work in the brick pits. His mother and Nefretiri urge him to stay, telling him that justice and truth are better served from a throne. This is just one age-old struggle the movie addresses; shouldn’t righteous men seek out power for the benefit of all? – and yet power so often rules the one who has it and makes him more wicked than any tyrant he replaced.

After Moses is arrested, Sethi asks him “Why are you forcing me to destroy you?” Moses replies “The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden … if there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.” Moses bears the fall from next pharo to condemned prisoner with remarkable grace, out of nothing more than an un-named conviction of what is right. How many of us have that kind of strength?

We are, of course, eventually directed to the “Power that has shaped Moses’ way,” as he puts it. The Ten Commandments does a number of things that contemporary audiences will be uncomfortable with, including overt references to Yaweh, the God of Abraham, as opposed to vague references to “God.” It’s unlikely DeMille would have taken the same criticism if the film wasn’t such an uncompromising statement of Biblical truth.

Still looks real.

If you haven’t seen The Ten Commandments for a few years, you owe it to yourself to at least rent a copy. If you’ve only watched it on TV, there is a part that is usually cut. No matter how many times I watch The Ten Commandments (don’t worry, I try to stay busy while I watch it), I can never bring myself to skip past it. In an unusual (possibly unique) move, DeMille addresses the audience face to face before the film starts. DeMille’s passion is infectious, and he brings the whole purpose of the movie into focus. The theme of The Ten Commandments, DeMille emphatically states, is “whether men are to be ruled by God’s Law, or by the whim of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the state, or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.” How true. We need only look at the history of the United States to see that, as our government and culture have progressively rejected the Law of God, we have seen not freedom, but an explosion of government invasion of everyone’s lives.

Everyone remembers the Red Sea scene from this film, but few remember the true climax of the story, after Moses has received the Commandments from Yahweh. He goes back down the mountain to find the people worshiping the Calf and reveling in depravity. Dathan (Edward G. Robinson), a rabble-rouser, declares “We’re gathered against you Moses. We’re free!” Moses shouts “There is no freedom without the law!” What more is there to say? I guess there’s still the Gospel. But DeMille tried to force that into the 1920s version of The Ten Commandments, and it ruined it. One movie can only do so much. But this one does all that one can – and then some. The Book isn’t bad either.

***** (5/5)