All 4 Movies Called ‘The Mummy,’ Ranked

Just as there are several movies called Halloween, and a trio of movies that are all called Godzilla, so too are there a bunch of movies literally called The Mummy. They’ve all been sufficiently spaced out that it was all pretty much gotten away with, without confusion, unless you’re looking back at the series and want to compare all those movies with identical titles. Putting the year is naturally the best way around it, or you can say “it’s the one with x person in it” or something. And when one came out less than a decade after the one that came before, it did get a clunky (and technically different) title: Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026). No one’s going to make any kind of mistake about who directed that one, you know… a little like how the 1982 version of The Thing sometimes gets called John Carpenter’s The Thing, as in officially. Not like an informal thing, or Thing. And he directed the first Halloween, so hey, look at that: we’ve come full circle.

So, of the four Mummy movies actually called The Mummy, here they all are, more or less ranked. There’s one very easy pick when it comes to crowning the worst, and then with the other three, there are different things to like – and be a little disappointed by – in each. This is a bit of a strange ranking in that none of these movies are absolute masterpieces of the supernatural horror genre (and a couple, admittedly, are pretty light on actual horror elements), but three have something to offer. And only one The Mummy is kind of terrible. No points for guessing that…

4

‘The Mummy’ (2017)

Image via Universal Pictures

…It’s the 2017 one. Yep, the one that’s probably responsible for the 2026 film having to be called Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, as there might be, like, two or three people that still remember this 2017 movie, and thereby might get it confused with the newer 2026 release. The Mummy (2017) can also be referred to as “the one with Tom Cruise,” or maybe even “one of the biggest and most noteworthy duds Cruise has ever been in.” Well, that’s less catchy. But it’s true. And because this version of The Mummy is quite awful, and also awful for interesting reasons, there’s probably more that can be said about it than the various other movies that share its name. It tries to do an action/adventure thing in line with the 1999 blockbuster, but set in the modern day, while all the other movies that’ll be talked about in a bit are set either at the end of the 19th century, or near the beginning of the 20th century. Oh, other than the inevitable flashbacks to explain the central antagonist’s backstory, of course, since the main foe in each of these movies was buried in Ancient Egyptian times, and gets resurrected in one way or another some millennia later.

The modern-day setting isn’t the problem, and Tom Cruise isn’t really, either. Like, he doesn’t give a great performance here, but no one could give a truly good performance with the material provided. It’s an awkwardly paced and plotted movie that tried too hard to launch something much greater than itself: an entire cinematic universe that technically only lasted one movie, and that one movie was this one. The whole saga and failure of the Dark Universe is the kind of thing you could probably devote a whole non-fiction book to, or maybe a BlackBerry (2023) style historical dramedy, since trying this hard to make a massive franchise right out of the gate proved farcical. And sure, cinematic universes were all the rage in the 2010s, and a couple that were going strong at that point are still going, to some extent, in the 2020s, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the MonsterVerse. Also, the original The Mummy belonged to what was pretty much the original cinematic universe, dubbed the Universal Monsters franchise, albeit it had fewer true crossovers than most modern-day shared universes. Still, there was precedent for it working decades ago, and other studios were making cinematic universes work at the time, but the desperation for The Mummy to lead to countless other movies and spin-offs (including new Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Invisible Man films) was nakedly visible from the outset, and ultimately off-putting. The failure of The Mummy (2017) is admittedly kind of fascinating, but actually trying to sit through the movie? Much less so.

3

‘The Mummy’ (1959)

Image via Universal-International

If you’ve only ever seen one classic Hammer-produced film before, there’s a good chance it was 1958’s Dracula, which starred Christopher Lee in the titular role, and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. Both were in a good many Hammer horror movies, often together, like in 1959’s The Mummy, which does a similar thing casting-wise to Dracula (1958). Cushing’s the rather ordinary protagonist, and Lee gets to play the main villainous role again, here being the titular mummy, AKA Kharis. The makeup and design of the villain is such that Christopher Lee has to do most of his acting just with his eyes, and also body language, so he’s kind of limited in that regard, but at least the monster design’s decent. Lee gets more to do in an extended flashback, but the problem there is that the emphasis is on “extended,” and that part of the movie really drags, even if you’re getting the Ancient Egypt backstory exposition for the first time (as in, if this is your first Mummy movie, for whatever reason).

The pacing elsewhere is kind of shoddy, especially when the screenplay realizes – with less than half an hour to go – that it needs a female character for the Mummy to try and capture, and then it hastily introduces her. When things are being set up, it’s slow. When the backstory is laid out, things are really slow. And then when the Mummy actually gets to do a little rampaging around in the second half, things still feel pretty slow. This is just a half-hearted kind of horror movie, even for something as old as it is. There’s a certain vibe here that you get with most Hammer horror movies that might be kind of endearing, or cheesy in a good way to some, but the aesthetics are really all this has to offer. In most other ways, it’s a bit dull and disappointing, though its ambitions weren’t nearly as wild as The Mummy (2017), and it’s also, admittedly, not really within striking distance of totally striking out. It’s all just a bit blah.

2

‘The Mummy’ (1999)

The one that everyone really seems to like, you’re kind of putting yourself in a vulnerable position if you suggest The Mummy (1999) isn’t the best of all the movies in the Mummy series (if it can be called a series). Here it is, though, second to the original. Sorry. This is a fun blockbuster, and it does a good job at putting a more adventurous and spectacle-heavy spin on the same sort of narrative these movies tend to follow. It’s a crowd-pleaser, and it’s also old enough to have felt nostalgic for the past decade and a half, or maybe even the past decade. If you’re a millennial (I know, eww, millennials!), you probably feel obligated to like this, not to the same extent the pressure’s there for Harry Potter, but it’s almost in the same ballpark.

And it is good. It is a more than fine movie. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz make for a good duo, everything moves at a pretty quick pace, and there are some good one-liners and set pieces sprinkled throughout. The Mummy (1999) is a very likable movie, and, to its credit, it’s managed to endure as a late 1990s hit, even though it came out during a very crowded year for cinema. It also spawned two sequels, and there’s an apparent fourth movie on the way… again, not to be mixed up with The Mummy (2017), and also not to be mixed up with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026). It’s been a big decade or so for mummies.

1

‘The Mummy’ (1932)

Image via Universal Pictures

And now The Mummy (1932), which is obviously the first to have the name, and the original in what can possibly/broadly be labeled the Mummy series. Like the others, there’s a violent tragedy involving a curse, and the cursed mummy who was buried alive way back when rises again, yada-yada-yada. Maybe the most novel thing here, at least compared to all the already-mentioned movies, is that the runtime is a nice and brisk 73 minutes, so it doesn’t really have the same sort of pacing issues you get with The Mummy (1959).

It’s also the only one of the bunch to be in black and white, but certainly not the only Mummy-related movie filmed that way, since 1932’s The Mummy was successful enough to get a bunch of follow-ups released throughout the 1940s, and then there was Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955, which was far more of a comedy than a horror movie, albeit not as funny as 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Anyway, The Mummy (1932) was historically significant, and gets bonus points for being the first. Parts of it are pretty neat and decently creepy, and it gets the job done as an old-school horror movie. Also, the design of the mummy here is certainly iconic, and horror movie legend Boris Karloff undeniably makes a strong impression as said character.

The Mummy

Release Date

December 22, 1932

Runtime

73 minutes

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  Boris Karloff

  Imhotep, alias Ardath Bey

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  Zita Johann

  Helen Grosvenor / Princess Anck-es-en-Amon

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  David Manners

  Frank Whemple

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  Arthur Byron

  Sir Joseph Whemple