The Mummy

In 1899 film-maker Georges Méliès gave the world Cleopatre (a.k.a. Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb), in which the Queen of the Nile's mummy returns to life, only to be chopped into pieces by a pair of terrified tomb robbers.

Thus was the mummy movie born.

Now lifelong horror fan David Whitehead traces the first seventy-five years of mummy cinema, right through the Universal period and Hammer's quartet of movies to other less well-known entries from all across the world, bringing everything to life with behind-the-scenes stories, fascinating facts and biographical information on the various casts and crews.