The Mummy on Screen: Orientalism and Monstrosity in Horror Cinema

This book explores the history of the Mummy movie, a genre hitherto largely overlooked, marginalised or maligned in critical work on horror cinema. As prolific in screen appearances and as established in the public consciousness as virtually any other screen monster, whilst additionally having a longer history than any of them, the Mummy has nevertheless been dismissed again and again in books on horror as the star of a repetitive and derivative genre, making the Mummy as misrepresented and misunderstood as any figure in the history of horror and cinema itself. This book reveals that the Mummy, far from being maddeningly repetitive, has instead been a refreshingly diverse figure and the Mummy's myriad on-screen incarnations have evidenced continued novelty and inventiveness. With a focus on the Mummy’s development from the silent screen, through Universal Studio’s iconic presentation of the monster, to Hammer Horror’s reimagining of the figure, the book offers a developmental analysis which uncovers that the Mummy genre needs to be understood in terms of changing discourses of race (in particular Orientalism), trangressive romance and monstrosity in order to appreciate its continued appeal to global industries and audiences in the face of critical hostility or indifference