“A sinister and unholy figure from the distant past, brought into the 20th century with the unwitting help of a poor chap driven insane by the experience, rises from his grave and sets out to draw a beautiful young woman into his bizarre world of the undead, unless the girl’s beau and a scholar wise in the ways of the supernatural can stop him.” That, in an earlier MFF article, is how I described the basic storyline of Universal’s sanguinary 1931 shocker Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi in the title role and also featuring Helen Chandler, Dwight Frye, David Manners, and Edward Van Sloan. Sharp-eyed readers and Baby Boom-era “Monster Kids” will recognize the above synopsis as also being the basic storyline for another Universal shock classic, 1932’s The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff in the title role and also featuring Zita Johann, Bramwell Fletcher, and…David Manners and Edward Van Sloan. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say, but there are still other similarities between these two classic creature features…
*Both films are (loosely) based on works of Victorian British literature. Along with Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula’s script was culled from a 1924 Broadway stage production which was co-written by John Balderston. As for The Mummy, its concept was influenced by “The Ring of Thoth, a short story from Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. A screenplay by Richard Schayer and Nina Wilcox Putnam that centered on real-life occultist and magician Cagliostro was revised–with elements from the then-current discovery of King Tut’s tomb added in–by new screenwriter…John Balderston.
*Both films open with the same theme music, from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” (Universal was nothing if not thrifty; the same melody is heard in the title sequence of the 1932 Poe-based chiller Murders in the Rue Morgue, starring Lugosi and featuring Noble Johnson from The Mummy).
*As mentioned above, both films have the same male hero (David Manners) and the same older authority figure (Edward Van Sloan) in their respective casts. One has to wonder if anyone ever had the thought of bringing over Van Sloan’s Dr. Van Helsing over from Dracula to battle the revived Imhotep in The Mummy, thus helping to build the Universal Monsters shared universe well before the ’40s team-up films, or if the Bram Stoker estate would have objected.
*Count Dracula and Imhotep are both lovers of fine jewelry, as each has a distinctive ring which helps them focus their otherworldly powers of hypnosis and mind control (another shared trait).
*Both films mark the first and last time their respective stars played the role in a serious movie (sorry, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). While the Count and Imhotep were apparently turned to dust and/or bones (one of them off-screen) at the end of their debuts, Dracula would go on to be portrayed at Universal by Lon Chaney, Jr. in Son of Dracula and John Carradine in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, while Tom Tyler and Chaney would get all wrapped up to play the renamed Kharis in The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse. And, of course, both Dracula and the Mummy (once more redubbed Klaris) got to appear with the aforementioned Bud and Lou.
*Both films would inspire legions of remakes and reboots, most notably from England’s Hammer Films in the 1950s and ’60s and as part of Universal’s stalled attempts to assemble a shared “Dark Universe” à la the Marvel comic book movie franchises in the 2000s and ’10s.
What do you think, readers? Are these two fright faves beastly brothers from a different mother? What horror movies do you think knowingly or unknowingly borrowed from one another? Sound off and howl in the comments below.