Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 112

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Popular Culture Review

culminating in her suicide and Imhotep’s burial alive. Later on, at Hamunaptra, the
American party uncovers the box hiding the book containing the incantation that
will bring Imhotep back from the dead; but it is Evelyn whose curiosity leads her
to steal it from the Americans’ Egyptologist, open it, and unknowingly read aloud
the passages that bring Imhotep to life, ‘i t ’s just a book,” says Evie. “No harm ever
came from a book.” This statement proves wrong when it is discovered that not
only has Imhotep been brought back, but his curse will unleash various plagues
upon the descendants of those who tormented him.
The film’s conclusion also casts Evie in an apparently feminist light, for
she finally finds and reads aloud the incantation from the book of the dead that
sends Imhotep back to the afterworld. However, a close look at the scene shows
that Sommers is suggesting that Evelyn’s knowledge is of little value without men
to do the heavy work and get the Job done. Rick is responsible for keeping Imhotep
occupied, displaying an impossibly high threshold of pain while he alternately
mugs for the camera and finds himself flying across the funerary room as a result
of Imhotep’s inhuman strength. It falls upon Evelyn’s lowlife brother, Jonathan
(John Hannah), to steal the key to the book of the dead from Imhotep so his sister
may find and read the words that make Imhotep mortal and allow O’Connell to kill
him. With the help of the men, Evie has redeemed herself for setting Imhotep loose
in the first place. At this point, the story takes on a faux Indiana Jones wrap-up as
various traps are set off that lead to Hamunaptra’s destruction and the happy ending
with O ’Connell, Evelyn, and Jonathan riding off into the sunset unknowingly
possessing some of the treasure Beni had sacked away in the camels’ saddlebags.
Thus, as Fry notes about this type of story, the invader has been repelled and the
female saved so she may find her man and contribute to the continuation of the
species, thus affirming the traditional view of the female’s role in society the film
pretends to downplay.
Another aspect of Sommers’ script that this writer finds irritating is his
tendency to repeatedly follow his frightening scenes immediately with comic relief
While this type of narrative development is a Shakespearean staple, it pays homage
more to the Abbott and Costello films than its Karloff-starring predecessor. With
Brendan Fraser’s incessant mugging establishing the visual tone for these scenes,
their heavy-handed use shows that Sommers has little respect for his audience as
he also over-indulges in shock cuts to make the viewer Jump. Indeed, this film
often displays scenes that cry out for its director to throttle back the hammy acting
evinced by many of the characters.
In addition to Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell, this acting style is also
exemplified by Kevin J. O’Connor’s Beni, Imhotep’s version of Dracula’s Renfield.
Equal parts con-man, coward, opportunist, and thief, Beni vacillates between comic
relief and life-threatening evil as his quick-wittedness and dumb luck manage to