Spielberg’s first Indiana Jones adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) hinged on the search for the Ark of the Covenant in Egypt. Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster borrowed from Universal’s uneven sequels and adopted the moniker Kharis for the towering creature (Christopher Lee) having mistakenly presumed it was the name of a real Egyptian god. Hammer Studios brought the mummy back to fearsome life with Terence Fisher’s The Mummy in 1959, a film that honoured the original legend and recognised the creature’s romantic appeal by reinstating an Ankhesenamun figure named Princess Ananka, (Yvonne Furneaux). The idea of a mobile mummy would have been totally alien to the ancient Egyptians and goes against the entire concept of mummification, sought to preserve the dead for a still and peaceful afterlife. The Mummy’s Hand (1940) was the first in a reimagined but decidedly dumbed-down franchise. Despite popular belief, Karloff actually only appears as the titular bandaged being during the memorably unnerving 10-minute opening of the original film: it was only in the follow-ups that the revived creature became the lumbering threat we know today.

It took another eight years before the next mummy film from Universal surfaced.

Rise of the mummy movie