And man, were there enough stereotypes to go around or what (only The Mummy surpasses among live action movies of the last few years). The hot and spicy latino female lead, the blond, horny beach bum sound dude and his equally horny chick friend, the angry brutha from the hood, the spoiled artistocratic narrator and the grimy, no good South American Snake hunter (though I have to admit that Jon Voight was deliciously over the top and stole the show).

I imagine the spirit possessing this movie was the same one that lives in 50s B movies. In fact, replace trhe snakes and what do ya got? Creature form The Black Lagoon. Maybe some things are better left as history.

Plus, I can sit through any movie that has Kari Wuhrer in shorts like that!

And The Mummy was THE best film of 1999.

I remember going to see ANACONDA on opening day and being STARTLED to see that it was on THREE screens at a big Manhattan theater -- and ALL OF THEM WERE ALREADY SOLD OUT. You'd think it was THE PHANTOM MENACE, for God's sake. As much as the SCREAM films, the success of that one helped religitimize the horror genre for big-screen Hollywood. I just wish more of them were better.

Dex: I consider THE MATRIX one of the best movies of the last decade. THE MUMMY is good, but definitley not better than The Matrix.

np Cruel Intentions rejected (Ottman) *****

quote:

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Originally posted by HAL 2000:
The right balance of characters, creeps, action and humor . . .

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I like the fact that Kevin Bacon still sticks up for TREMORS (which really didn't do that well at the boxoffice, though it's done huge business on video, hence the sequel): "Excuse me," he said to a condescending Movieline interviewer, "but that was a VERY good movie." Glad he knows it.

Stephen Sommers, who made THE MUMMY, DEEP RISING and JUNGLE BOOK (1994) is a competent director, but I wish he wouldn't pretend to be a writer, although it would be interesting to see him turn his attention to a straight-out comedy. He DOES have a sense of humor and of timing --it's a bit mechanical, but you sense he's having fun with his stuff -- and I'm frankly just so irritated with this trend of making horror pictures that are really comedies in disguise that I'm hoping he recognizes what his real talents happen to be. (Although realistically, Sommers designed THE MUMMY as an action-adventure; it was Kevin Jarre, who got booted off it, who wanted to make more of a straight-out horror picture. Poor old Kevin Jarre -- no relation to Maurice -- he also got thrown off TOMBSTONE, and his vision of that was much darker as well, although I did love the lunatic quality of what Cosmatos and company did with it.)

Just realized something: Goldsmith was probably always fated to score this MUMMY, since most of the directors who were attached to it tend to favor him. Goldsmith would have scored Jarre's version of TOMBSTONE (or not -- he had to drop out even when another director who likes him, George Cosmatos, wanted to hire him -- that pesky scheduling. Goldsmith referred Broughton to them, as he also did when leaving LOST IN SPACE.) And Goldsmith would surely have scored Joe Dante's version of THE MUMMY as well (one of the older versions that was on the boards, dating back to '92 or so). And these would all have been massively different films and scores, in the end.

And Rocco - Just be thankful it wasn't the Clive Barker version of The Mummy that got made!

I suspect there was basically no role for Kevin Bacon in TREMORS 2 unless they could meet his full price. He IS a professional actor, he DOES have his expenses, and the second movie IS obviously a bit less costly than the first ... and Bacon is the more expensive actor than Ward (although I'm fans of both, and wouldn't say one deserves MORE money than the other -- but that's not how the system works, I'm afraid).