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Sommer felt insulted by Tom Cruise's 2017 Mummy remake as nobody reached out to him for consultation. Sommer's action-driven Mummy reboot in 1999 was a box office hit. Tom Cruise's 2017 Mummy movie failed critically and commercially, halting the planned The Dark Universe.

Stephen Sommers, the director of the 1999 The Mummy remake, reveals that he felt insulted by Tom Cruises 2017 reboot of the horror movie franchise. The original movie dates back to 1932 with the Universal Boris Karloff-led movie. The franchise received multiple reboots, including from Universal Pictures and Hammer Film Productions. Stephen Sommers brought the franchise to the modern era with three feature-length movies and, more recently, a Tom Cruise-led reboot that was meant to kick off The Dark Universe.

25 years after the release of Stephen Sommers The Mummy reboot, the veteran director revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that he felt insulted by the release of the 2017 The Mummy remake which Alex Kurtzman directed.

The Mummy franchise has deep roots in classic horror, with sequels and reboots establishing it as an iconic monster in cinema. While some Mummy movies struggle with recycled plot ideas, others introduce fresh concepts and stylish presentation. The Mummy's complex history includes both successful and failed attempts at establishing it within shared universes and franchises.

Like many classic horror movie icons, The Mummy has shambled its way through a great many films, with some doing the concept better than others. One of Universal's classic movie monsters, The Mummy character enjoys deserved recognition as an icon of scary movies, having stumbled into many other genres since its first film appearance in 1932. Of course, while Egyptian mummies existed in real life, the supernatural properties of a sandy undead beast have taken many forms over the years.

After the success of the original The Mummy, Universal was sure to capitalize on...

Universal Monsters films are classic cultural landmarks that are still considered some of the best in their genre, mixing gothic horror with campy fun. Many of the sequels and crossovers in the Universal Monsters franchise are not as strong or original as the original films, and some are considered the worst in the series. The Abbott and Costello crossovers inject comedic elements into the monster franchise, offering a fun and entertaining twist on the iconic characters.

With several monster films in development, it's a fantastic time to revisit the classic Universal Monsters films, though they drastically range in quality. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Universal Pictures developed thirty monster films, starting with Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Invisible Man. These classic movies became cultural landmarks that are still considered some of the best in their genre, mixing gothic horror with campy fun. By no means are they scary by modern standards,...

It’s the loose-censored early 1970s, and screen bandits shootin’ up the American movie landscape are no longer suffering the once-mandated automatic moral retribution. Walter Matthau launched himself into the genre with this excellent Don Siegel on-the-run epic, about an old-fashioned independent bandit who accidentally rips off the mob for a million. It’s great, wicked fun.

Charley Varrick

Region B Blu-ray

Indicator

1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 111 min. / Charley Varrick the Last of the Independents; Kill Charley Varrick / Street Date January 22, 2018 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £14.99

Starring: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andrew Robinson, John Vernon, Felicia Farr, Sheree North, Jacqueline Scott, William Schallert, Norman Fell, Benson Fong, Woodrow Parfrey, Rudy Diaz, Charles Matthau, Tom Tully, Albert Popwell

Cinematography: Michael Butler

Film Editor: Frank Morriss

Original Music: Lalo Schifrin

Written by Dean Riesner, Howard Rodman from the novel The Looters by John Reese

Produced by Jennings Lang, Don Siegel

Directed by...

Alec Guinness: Before Obi-Wan Kenobi, there were the eight D’Ascoyne family members (photo: Alec Guiness, Dennis Price in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’) (See previous post: “Alec Guinness Movies: Pre-Star Wars Career.”) TCM won’t be showing The Bridge on the River Kwai on Alec Guinness day, though obviously not because the cable network programmers believe that one four-hour David Lean epic per day should be enough. After all, prior to Lawrence of Arabia TCM will be presenting the three-and-a-half-hour-long Doctor Zhivago (1965), a great-looking but never-ending romantic drama in which Guinness — quite poorly — plays a Kgb official. He’s slightly less miscast as a mere Englishman — one much too young for the then 32-year-old actor — in Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), a movie that fully belongs to boy-loving (in a chaste, fatherly manner) fugitive Finlay Currie. And finally, make sure to watch Robert Hamer’s dark comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets...

By Lee Pfeiffer

The Warner Archive continues its string of burn-to-order releases of "Poverty Row"  B movies that were originally produced by other studios. The latest release, I Escaped From the Gestapo, is a real hoot that was originally produced by Monogram Pictures, which afforded budgets to directors and producers that were only slightly more extravagant than those spent on home movies. The film is primarily remembered as a would-be vehicle for actress Frances Farmer, who was not able to continue filming due to her legendary mental breakdown that resulted in her being institutionalized. Beyond that tragic association, however, the movie is a relentlessly upbeat, over-the-top propaganda film that afforded a rare leading role to Dean Jagger. The opening plot device is actually rather clever. It finds Jagger as Torgen Lane, a master forger and counterfeiter who is doing time in a federal prison. He finds himself the center of...