Customer Reviews

The Eyes of the Mummy

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There really is no "Mummy" in this movie, so the title is a stretch probably to lure the would be Egyptologists of the day. In fact very little Egyptian stuff is in the show...not even the pyramids or the sphynx are shown. just a little pretend Egyptian stuff in the one scene and an apparently egyptian market scene. In fact the story could stand on it's own without the Egyptian stuff, and it's simply thrown in to give the film an escoteric feel...and possibly justify the outcome. No doubt back then Egyptian or much of anything foriegn was looked on as a bit beneath the modern civilization of the Europeans.
The most distracting part of the movie was the music...it did not match or follow the mood of the movie as it played. And some of it was definitly not "original". some of the music was quite nice on it's own but I had to turn down the sound as it just detracted from the movie.
The story: well it was a forgone conclusion that the two tomb dwellers would meet again, but it was interesting to watch the remeeting unfold, and it had you wondering if it was plausable. I think that it was quite plausable. there were some editing flaws as the story didn't quite flow and you had to extrapolate, but it wasn't inderscipherable. The ending was abrupt and it wasn't clear at first until the last words were spoken...as...thankfully, graphicness was not a flaw the classics stooped to.
Part of my admiring of the old silents is the ornate speech cards. Sadly the original speech cards were not used, as the original movie is German so new screens were used with more modern English script and black backgrounds. I suspect as an early scene would indicate, that they could have created backgrounds for the text portions but were probably too lazy to recreate them, so the "flavour" of the silent is incomplete. there is a spot where a letter is shown, I couldn't read it and I suspect it is an original German script, but the content of that letter is made reasonably clear in context immediately after seeing it.
The story was captivating enough to be enjoyed even by todays standards.I found it curious that this movie from 1922 predates the big Egyptian find of 1925 and it spoke of similar things said to have occured from the 1925 find.