Towards the end of Hammer horror movie run in the mid 70s it seemed like there was enough love for the studio that it garnered an entire magazine dedicated to the films. Published by the UK arm of Warner Communications, Hammer’s House of Horror (which would eventually be renamed a plethora of times including the below Hammer’s Hall of Horror) specialized in adapting the films into comic book form as well as providing essays and breakdowns of the various flicks. They also on occasion created sequel comics for movies that never had official sequels as well. In 1978 the magazine (issue number 22) focused on this week’s Crestwood House film, 1959’s The Mummy, with both a short article and an adaptation of the film into a comic, so if you’re curious to “read the film”, here’s your chance…
I love that the comic features the movie credits front and center, and that they do not shy away from acknowledging that the script by Jimmy Sangster was an adaptation of the Universal 1932 Mummy film by John L. Balderstone. Taking it further, Hammer’s script was then again adapted by writer Steve Moore and artist David Jackson.
One of the big shifts between the Universal and Hammer Mummy movies was how they portrayed the titular character of Kharis (Imhotep/Ardeth Bey in the Universal film.) One of the strengths of Universal’s original film was the fact that Imhotep could shapeshift back to a normal visage, which added a sense of mysticism and immense power to the character. It was stall kind of a shame though that this choice only left us with one very brief glance of the character as a “shambling” decrepit, yet preserved, mummy, because that creature makeup is both intense and amazing.
When it came to hammer to adapt the story they chose to basically devote a full third of the film to flashbacks of Christopher Lee as the human Kharis, but in the main story-line they kept him as the fully monstrous mummy used as a tool by Mehemet Bey (effectively splitting the Karloff version into two separate characters.) So we kind of get the best of both worlds in their rendition.
The comic adaptation is a fairly faithful condensed version of the story that does not shy away from any mummies being shotgunned by Peter Cushing.
Considering at the time when these sorts of adaptations were being done there was no real home video market to speak of yet, I love that folks were taking this amount of effort to keep the story of these films alive for repeat “viewings”. If you didn’t catch these films on network TV and you missed them in the theater, this was basically your only way of experiencing the story. They might seem quaint and dated now, but I’ll always appreciate that this level of film adoration existed well before the internet fandom of today.
Included in this issue of the magazine was an overview of the Hammer Mummy films…
