Mummy Mondays are on pause for at least a week due to coronavirus quarantine (we are in the darkest timeline), but to keep the mood alive I’m going to be watching Mummy adjacent movies! This week it’s Frankenstein vs. the Mummy, a film that was way too long for what it was.
We essentially have 4 main characters: Victor F (seriously, the name “Frankenstein” doesn’t get said until the very end of the movie, as if it was some sort of big reveal), archaeologist/Egyptologist Naihla Khalil, the Frankenstein (I’m gonna keep calling it that), and the Mummy. Victor and Naihla are starting a relationship, and we see them go from their first date, to when she finds out that he reanimated a corpse and put a psycho killer’s brain in it, to when he performs a heroic sacrifice and tells her to burn all his notes. Victor is the one bringing the Frankenstein to the party, while Naihla is partly responsible for the Mummy being on a college campus. Although, the Mummy’s reanimation and bloodlust aren’t her fault, so she’s one up on Victor on that count.
The Mummy looked pretty good! It’s clearly some kind of mask, but I’ve seen far lazier attempts in recent weeks. The Frankenstein, however… he’s a bit of a mess. Bright yellow eyes, long stringy hair; he looks like a combination of Tommy Wiseau and Radu from the Subspecies films. And it’s… fine, I guess? It looks fine. It’s just disappointing when the Mummy looks great and his opponent looks like a Slipknot reject.
And what about the titular fight? Well hold onto your butts, because it happens one hour and forty-two minutes into the movie. Holy shit! Most other movies are done by that point! The film decided to show us the entirety of the Frankenstein’s (die mad about it) creation, the entirety of how the Mummy was reanimated, and also a good amount of time on Victor and Naihla’s love life. Sure, we get some cool gory deaths, but who was this really for? The gore would put off people more interested in the story, the largely pointless and excessive story would put off people looking for gore, and the bad pacing would put off both parties. The climactic fight is rather short compared to the rest of the movie, and I don’t think it was really worth it. But at least we know that a Frankenstein would win over a mummy. Place any future bets accordingly.
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