Editorials
5 Things ‘The Mummy’ Has Taught Us About the Dark Universe
Be forewarned, this article contains some spoilers.
As far as Universal’s Dark Universe is concerned, this weekend’s The Mummy is easily the most important film of them all. Since it’s the first one in the new universe (sorry, Dracula Untold fans), the Alex Kurtzman-directed film is surely going to be used as a gauge for fan interest in the ambitious project. Unfortunately, with pretty negative reviews across the board and scarily low box office estimates, the future of the Dark Universe is already looking pretty bleak.
But if Universal does get the chance to continue forward, The Mummy serves the purpose of being a pretty good indicator of what we can expect from subsequent entries. Going into this weekend, we already knew that Universal was playing with big stars as well as big budgets, and we also knew that the rebooted monster movies were going to be set in the present day. But what more have we learned about the Dark Universe, now that we’ve had a chance to see the first piece of the puzzle?
Here are five things The Mummy taught us about the (hopefully not already dead) Dark Universe.
1) SELF AWARENESS
Easily my personal favorite aspect of The Mummy, which I had a good amount of fun with, was its sense of humor. While hardcore fans of the Universal Monsters would probably have preferred that Universal got serious and scary with the Dark Universe (would have been nice, eh?), there’s something to be said for the self-awareness that is almost always at the forefront in The Mummy. Jake Johnson may be the comic relief as Tom Cruise’s sidekick, but even Cruise himself plays a goofy character who often feels like a parody of, well, a Tom Cruise action hero.
There are more than a couple sequences wherein our heroes do battle with freshly resurrected zombies that feel ripped out of a Sam Raimi film, and The Mummy as a whole is constantly having fun with the material and winking at the audience. Universal clearly isn’t taking themselves too seriously here, which proved to be a winning formula for Marvel’s superhero films. Will the Marvel blueprint help Universal create their own successful universe? The jury is still out on that one.
For now, a nude Tom Cruise suggests fun is the key ingredient here.
2) HORROR IS NOT BEING LEFT OUT
The biggest fear many had going into The Mummy was that Universal had completely abandoned the horror element that made their shared monsters universe a success in the first place, and indeed the film does have way more in common with the Brendan Fraser movie than it does the Boris Karloff one. If The Mummy is an indication, the Dark Universe films are going to be packed with adventure and action… but that doesn’t mean the roots of these monster movies are being left out in the cold.
It may not exactly be scary to most of us, but there’s a good deal of horror present in The Mummy, which is darker than the Fraser movies. As the advertising materials suggest, she spends much of the film as a beautiful woman, but the titular villain begins her reign of terror as a gnarly creature that just might inspire some nightmares in younger viewers. In order to restore her former beauty, Princess Ahmanet must first suck the life out of a handful of human hosts, which makes for some nasty sequences wherein heads are literally drained down to the bone ala the “wanna suck face?” scene from Elm Street: Dream Master.
Ahmanet also resurrects the dead and uses them as her own personal zombie army, so that horror element is present even when the title character is more sexy than scary.
3) THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE
How exactly does Universal plan on bringing all of their iconic monsters together into one shared universe? Many of the Universal Monster movies had no real connection to one another, so Universal had to get creative and form Prodigium: a mysterious multi-national organization devoted to tracking, studying and—when necessary—destroying the world’s monsters. We learn a whole lot about Prodigium in The Mummy, which spends a good deal of time deep within the bowels of the organization.
Russell Crowe is essentially the Nick Fury of the Dark Universe as Dr. Henry Jekyll (and Mr. Hyde), an iconic character woven into the fabric of the Universal Monster movies in a fun way for this new Dark Universe. Jekyll, who transforms into the murderous Hyde whenever he hasn’t had a shot of a special serum he’s created for himself, is in charge of Prodigium, and The Mummy teases that he’s already come face-to-face with certain creatures from black lagoons as well as vampires – as a fun nod to the 1999 version of The Mummy, he’s even got a copy of the Book of the Dead in the Prodigium library!
The Mummy doesn’t directly tease any subsequent Dark Universe movies (surprisingly, there isn’t a Marvel-style post-credits sequence), but it does a good job establishing that whole world without taking too much away from the individual story at hand. It seems that Jekyll will appear in each of the films, with Prodigium serving to connect all the different monsters together.
Speaking of which…
4) NICK MORTON IS OUR NEW VAN HELSING?
As we speculated going into The Mummy, it seems pretty clear that Tom Cruise’s Nick Morton is, like Crowe’s Henry Jekyll, one of the linchpins of the Dark Universe. In the final act, Morton becomes a vessel for, basically, Satan himself, but he’s got enough goodness in his heart that the evil inside of him isn’t always at the forefront. Like Jekyll, he’s able to keep the evil at bay, and it’s strongly suggested that Morton will be coming back in subsequent films as a Van Helsing-like character who helps Prodigium capture and kill off monsters like Frankenstein, the Wolfman, etc.
Morton has become a monster in his own right, but as Jekyll tells archaeologist Jenny Halsey, it sometimes takes a monster to defeat a monster. That’s a thread we expect Universal to pick up as the Dark Universe expands beyond The Mummy. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Van Helsing get a reboot in its own right, with Morton as a new take on the title character. Perhaps that’s the end-game of this whole thing: Morton vs. all the monsters – the Dark Universe’s version of The Avengers, so to speak.
Either way, we expect much more Cruise going forward.
5) NEW TAKES ON CLASSIC MONSTERS
Of course, the whole idea of the Dark Universe is to make old monsters new again, but one of the coolest things about The Mummy is the complete reinvention of Imhotep into a badass female character who’s classic yet completely different than what we’ve come to expect from these movies. Like the original Universal Monsters, she’s a tragic figure whose driven to do evil by her own internal pain, but she’s also a brand new horror villain who feels very much in line with today’s sensibilities – as Kalyn Corrigan noted in her review, she’s a “wickedly cool modern day fierce female character.”
Sofia Boutella is perfectly cast in the role, and the image of her as the bandaged-up Ahmanet is almost instantly iconic – she makes a pretty good case for standing alongside the greats of the Universal oeuvre. The studio’s monster movies were not exactly known for featuring strong female characters back in the day, so it’s pretty cool to see Universal leaning so heavily on, well, strong female characters. The Mummy is being followed by Bride of Frankenstein, so they’re launching the Dark Universe with not one but TWO female monsters. Pretty damn progressive, eh?
How will the other classic monsters be brought back to the screen? We have no way of knowing at this time. But if The Mummy is a preview of what’s to come, we expect that we’re going to be introduced to a new crop of monsters that share DNA with their predecessors while also being as original as rebooted characters can possibly be. It’s truly set to be a new world of gods and monsters.
Here’s hoping that Universal gets the chance to expand, hone and perfect the Dark Universe. The Mummy may not be the strongest start, but I’m fully on board for what’s coming next.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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