To, ahem, wrap things up from the outset: With Mummy Movies: A Comprehensive Guide, Bryan Senn does it again!

Fresh from the slopes of 2022’s Ski Films, the prolific author unearths 138 mummy films in total after the applying all his filters: no shorts, no TV episodes, no hardcore porn, no fleeting appearances and no fakes. While that last qualifier smothers my hopes of reading Senn tear into The Mummy Theme Park, what’s left (read: a lot!) is sure to delight any fan of the subgenre. Horror naturally makes up a good chunk of that, but is hardly the stopping point.

After a brief introduction getting into the history of mummies in real life and popular culture (breakfast cereal included), Senn gets into the good stuff: excavating the films one by one. In Senn’s usual immersive style for such guides, the entries provide a proper balance of plot summary, behind-the-scenes information and critical review — explored in such depth and fully researched, each practically inches toward monograph status.

From Boris Karloff and Brendan Fraser to Christopher Lee and, um, Tom Cruise, all the highlights and their sequels are covered, exactly as you’d expect. But anyone could do that. What makes Mummy Movies worth your investment are all the other titles he takes great pains to incorporate, ranging from Mexploitation (Santo!) to animation (Yu-Gi-Oh!?), and from comedy to kung fu. The only thing crazier than the cheap cartoons is the bulging sack of erotica, movies that bring boredom along with a most anachronistic element: silicone.

Noting that a mummy is more than a “zombie wrapped in toilet paper,” Senn holds a lot of love for his subject. As do I. That’s why the book is useful as a reference work, too, because he calls ’em as he sees ’em. For example, should you spend your time with:
• the wrestling spoof Monster Brawl? Yes.
• the collegian-made The University of Illinois vs a Mummy? No.
• the John Carradine paycheck The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals? Hell, no.

The only piece of Mummy Movies giving me pause is the author’s use of the capital-M “Mummy” when referring to onscreen characters, and lowercase when not. It’s hardly worth bringing up … unlike, say, Ouija Mummy or The Sex Files: Ancient Desires, Senn’s lively entertaining pans of which already have outlived the flicks themselves. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or McFarland.