When the name Bram Stoker is uttered, an instant and highly specific horror icon is summoned.
Over 200 movie adaptations and counting has that effect.
Yet the walking cadaver of the Carpathians may not be Stokers only contribution to enduring horror movie icons.
And too few realize he mightve spurred the imagery we now associate with nearly every mummy movie.
One such crucial figure in Stokers formative years was Sir William Wilde, father of the tragic-brilliant Oscar.
And it was the former who introduced Stoker to an obsession with Egyptology.
Ever since Napoleon blundered into Egypt in 1798, the following 19th century saw Europeans taken with Egyptomania.
Hundreds of stories were subsequently published about Egyptian curses and mummies run amok.
Egyptian queens and princesses in particular became romanticized (and eroticized) due to the appeal of preserved beauty.
During the novels original and frankly sacrilegious ending, everything goes horribly wrong.
Could there be anything more cataclysmic for the world of modern man?
That 1932 film came one year after Carl Laemmles studio struck genre gold in the one-two punch ofDraculaandFrankenstein.
Also like Tera, he slaughters at least one of his archeological grave robbers upon waking.
Although, the Universal Picture has the supposedly happier ending as Imhotep is thwarted.
If then the Old Gods held their forces, wherein was the supremacy of the new?
He even describes her as New Margaret.
Malcolm most fears the experiment will take her away from him.
Malcolm compares it to an ivory statue of antiquity.
None of the other men are so respectful to Tera/Margarets wishes.
What does that matter?
Sex is not a matter of years!
A woman is a woman, if she has been dead five thousand centuries!
Intentionally or not, 2017sThe Mummyreturns to the specter that haunted Stokers Egyptian ghost story.
And indeed, he seems to have combined Imhotep and Ankh-es-en-Amon right down to their names merging into Ahmanet.
Im going to remember that.
Just ask Bram Stoker.
