The Mummy (1959)

Disturbing the dead invites consequences that no amount of scholarship can prepare you for. Hammer Studios' greatest nemeses, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, once again square off in Terence Fisher's "The Mummy," a reworking of Universal's mummy series with elements of "The Mummy's Hand," "The Mummy's Tomb" and "The Mummy's Ghost" thrown in for good measure. Cushing stars as archaeologist John Banning, whose expedition to find the lost tomb of the Egyptian princess Ananka uncovers untold treasures but leaves his father, Stephen (Felix Aylmer), a raving madman and marks the rest of the company for death. Lee is Kharis, a former high priest turned gauze-wrapped guardian of the tomb, a veritable Golem sent on a mission of vengeance by Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), a devoted follower of the ancient god Karnak. The scenes at the archaeological dig and the flashbacks to the ancient burial are stagebound and cheap looking, but Fisher is back in familiar territory when the action relocates to the misty swamps and Victorian mansions of rural England. The towering, 6-foot-5 Lee makes the most terrifying mummy to date. He covers ground in giant strides, smashes his way into rooms with heavy Frankenstein-like swipes of his arm and takes shotgun blasts with barely a twitch, yet he melts from rage to calm at the sight of Banning's wife, Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux), a dead ringer for his long-lost princess. Following Hammer's hits "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Horror of Dracula," it completed the studio's trio of colorful remakes of classic Universal monsters. The film is still most famous for its tongue-removal scene, discreetly hidden from the camera but nevertheless shiver inducing.