Imhotep Mummy: Actor, Story and How He Dies

Imhotep is the cursed high priest at the center of the Imhotep mummy story, and the villain of the first two films in the Sommers era of the mummy movies. In the mummy 1999, directed by Stephen Sommers, Arnold Vosloo plays him, billed fourth. The film opens in ancient Egypt, where Imhotep and the pharaoh's mistress Anck-Su-Namun kill the pharaoh. She takes her own life, and Imhotep is mummified alive and sealed away under a curse. Thousands of years later, in 1926, the librarian Evelyn Carnahan reads aloud from a golden book at the ruins of Hamunaptra, and the mummy wakes.

The character is older than that film. Boris Karloff played him in the mummy 1932, directed by Karl Freund, where he is credited as Imhotep / Ardath Bey. In that version Imhotep is a priest buried alive for a sacrilege. An expedition led by Sir Joseph Whemple digs him up in 1921, and the young assistant Ralph Norton reads the Scroll of Thoth aloud. Imhotep returns to life, takes the scroll and walks out, and ten years later he reappears as a mysterious man called Ardath Bey. The 1932 film and the later pair tell different stories, so a plot point in one does not carry over to the other.

Was Imhotep good or bad? He is the antagonist in every film he appears in, driven by a love story that he is willing to pay for in other people's lives. Is Imhotep based on a real person? The films present him as a cursed high priest of ancient Egypt, and the curses and legends in them are plot material, not fact.

One naming warning is useful: "The Mummy" is three separate film titles and also the creature. Imhotep belongs to The Mummy (1932), The Mummy (1999) and the mummy returns. He does not appear in the mummy 2017, which follows Ahmanet. For the full cast list, see the mummy cast.

Imhotep's most important relationship is with Anck-Su-Namun, played by Patricia Velásquez, and every film version of him is shaped by a lost love. In The Mummy (1999) she is the pharaoh's mistress who dies in the prologue, and he wants her back badly enough to raise her through a sacrifice. In The Mummy Returns she has been reborn as the cultist Meela, and the cult leader Baltus Hafez, played by Alun Armstrong, is the one who resurrects Imhotep. The cast of The Mummy Returns also lists Aharon Ipalé as Pharaoh Seti I, a reminder that the series keeps Imhotep's story tied to the royal court he betrayed. For more on her, see anck su namun.

His chief enemies are the O'Connell group. Rick O'Connell, played by Brendan Fraser, is the adventurer who guides the Carnahans to Hamunaptra. Evelyn, played by Rachel Weisz, is both the person who wakes Imhotep and the person who later removes his immortality, and Imhotep targets her because he needs her as a sacrifice. See evelyn the mummy and jonathan the mummy for the rest of the group. In The Mummy Returns, Evelyn learns that she is the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess who was Anck-Su-Namun's old enemy, so the old rivalry follows them into the sequel. The Medjai warrior Ardeth Bay, played by Oded Fehr, has spent his life guarding against Imhotep's return.

In the 1932 film the relationships are different. Imhotep is opposed by Frank Whemple, played by David Manners, and by Dr. Muller, played by Edward Van Sloan. Helen Grosvenor, played by Zita Johann, is the woman he believes is his lost princess. In my opinion, the difference is telling: the 1932 Imhotep works through disguise and persuasion as Ardath Bey, while the 1999 version works through brute supernatural force.

In my opinion, Imhotep is at his best when the films let his rules do the scaring, and the 1999 version has the clearest rules of the three. He regenerates by draining life from the people he kills, so every victim is a repair job, and the plagues of Egypt give him a reach that goes well beyond the one man in the room. That is good creature design, because the audience always knows what he needs, and what he needs is Evelyn.

My favorite beat is the second book at the climax. It would have been easy to keep Imhotep unkillable, but the film gives Evelyn a way to take away his immortality, so that Rick can finally kill him. It could be argued that the twist works because the audience already knows the cost of waking him: the same kind of reading that starts the curse also ends it. The hero's weapon is the villain's own paperwork, which I find darkly funny.

The Mummy Returns earns a mention for the opposite reason. Imhotep arrives at the pyramid to find his powers drained, and in the end he lets go and drops into the underworld rather than being killed. Perhaps that is a better ending for him than the first one, because it gives the villain a choice, even if the choice comes late.

The 1932 film has the quietest scare. Imhotep, under the name Ardath Bey, works through disguise instead of a horde, leading the expedition to the princess's tomb and drawing Helen toward him, while he plans to kill her, make her a mummy and raise her. When Helen prays to Isis and the statue's arm moves, the film hands the finish to a goddess instead of a hero. Karloff's Imhotep gets a smaller death than Vosloo's, but it is a quiet one, and it fits the film.