Video Scripts: Terrifier 3, Link, The Mummy Returns

Sharing more of Cody's JoBlo videos.

I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last few years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered 

- Frailty, Dead Calm, and Shocker 

- 100 Feet, Freddy vs. Jason, and Pin 

- Night Fare, Poltergeist III, and Hardware 

- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, and It's Alive

- Dark City, Mute Witness, and The Wraith

- Army of Darkness, Cannibal Holocaust, and Basket Case 

- Halloween timeline, The Pit, and Body Parts

- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and The Thing (2011)

- The Monster Squad, Trick or Treat, and Maximum Overdrive

- A Fish Called Wanda, Night of the Creeps, and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI

- Race with the Devil, Speed, and Romancing the Stone

- Maniac Cop 3, WarGames, and Night of the Living Dead (1990)

- The Rock, Witchboard, and Friday the 13th Part 2

- Intruder, Saving Private Ryan, and Big Trouble in Little China

- The First Power, Psycho (1960), and Hot Fuzz

- Cat People (1982), Bride of Re-Animator, and Con Air

- Moulin Rouge (2001), The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985), and The Stuff

- Children of the Corn (1984), Bone Tomahawk, and Fight Club

- The Departed, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and Ginger Snaps

- Silver Bullet, Last Action Hero, and Children of Men

- FleshEater, Christmas Vacation, and Lethal Weapon

- The Thing (1982), Monkey Shines, and Friday the 13th (1980)

- P2, Lethal Weapon 2, and Frozen (2010)

- Lethal Weapon 3, The Blob (1988), and Lethal Weapon 4

- The Fast and the Furious, Dance of the Dead, and The Rage: Carrie 2

- Puppet Master, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Castle Freak (1995)

- The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch

- Fast Five, Dog Soldiers, and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection

- Drag Me to Hell, 3D '80s Horror, and unmade Mission: Impossible sequels

- Sleepaway Camp, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, and 2001 Maniacs

- Gremlins, Furious 6, and Lone Wolf McQuade

- The Last Showing, Grindhouse, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

- Christmas Horror, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, and Furious 7

- Drive (2011), 1986 horror comedies, and Alien: Romulus

- Murder Party, Twisters, and Hellraiser

- Black Phone 2, Super 8, Red State

- Longlegs, The Mummy (2017), Dead-Alive

- Mission: Impossible 8, When a Stranger Calls (2006), MCU Blade

- Stardust, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Gladiator II

- Salem's Lot remake, Versus, Judgment Night

- Scream 7, Prom Night (2008), The Mummy (1999)

Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, one for the JoBlo Upcoming Movies channel and two for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel.

As I've noted before, the Everything We Know videos based on articles I write about different movies have a short shelf life, because eventually the movies are released and the information compiled beforehand doesn't mean a whole lot. Here's an example: I wrote an Everything We Know article on the upcoming slasher sequel Terrifier 3, resulting in the video embedded here... but Terrifier 3 reaches theatres this Friday, so this information is almost outdated:

Now, for something with a longer shelf life. For the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series, I wrote about director Richard Franklin's 1986 killer chimp movie Link, where the titular chimp is played by an orangutan: 

Link script: 

INTRO: What is the first movie that comes to mind when you hear the name Elisabeth Shue? Do you think of her as the Karate Kid’s love interest? The babysitter who went on an adventure through downtown Chicago? The Oscar-nominated prostitute from Leaving Las Vegas? Chances are, the movie that comes to mind is not Link. A horror movie where Shue shares the screen with a homicidal orangutan that’s passed off as being a chimp. Link isn’t very well known, but it should be. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.

CREATORS / CAST: Link was directed by Alfred Hitchcock devotee Richard Franklin. An Australian filmmaker who, for a while, looked like he could be one of the best sources for new Hitchcockian thrillers once the Master of Suspense had passed away. Franklin had even been friends with Hitchcock, having met him while attending film school in California. He got his directing career started in the ‘70s, making the Western sex comedy The True Story of Eskimo Nell and the softcore sex study Fantasm. Not to be confused with the Don Coscarelli horror classic. Then he shifted gears and started following in the footsteps of his hero. He teamed with screenwriter Everett De Roche to make the 1978 sci-fi horror cult classic Patrick. The following year, he optioned a short outline, presumably written by Tom Ackermann and future MacGyver creator Lee David Zlotoff, for a horror film. That would have been like Jaws, but with chimps. The story wasn’t entirely there, though. So Franklin set it aside and focused on making the 1981 thriller Roadgames, starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis. A project that came about when De Roche suggested making a version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window that would take place in a moving vehicle.

It was De Roche who cracked the story for Link. Not surprising, since he already had killer animal movie experience, having written the 1978 nature run amok film Long Weekend. He read a National Geographic article by chimp expert Jane Goodall that shook up everything people had believed about chimps. As Franklin explained to Fangoria magazine, Goodall saw “the cannibalizing of young chimpanzees by one particular mad female chimp. She observed actual inter-tribal warfare between two groups of chimps. The whole ’60s idea of man being the only animal to make war against its own kind was suddenly thrown out the window. That, to me, was a really interesting idea for a good thriller.”

The script De Roche wrote follows American zoology student Jane Chase, who attends the London College of Sciences. She gets a job working as assistant to anthropology professor Doctor Steven Phillip... Not at the college, but at his isolated home on the English coast. A house that sits on the edge of a cliff, in farmland that’s patrolled by dangerous wild dogs. Phillip has to do his work at home because the university won’t let two of his three chimps anywhere near the campus. Six-year-old Imp is okay. He seems to be gentle and harmless, despite his habit of killing birds and cats. But the mature female Voodoo is wild. And 45-year-old Link, who likes to wear clothes and smoke cigars because he used to be called the “Master of Fire” in a circus... Well, there just seems to be something off about Link.

Things fall apart soon after Jane arrives at Phillip’s house. The doctor makes a call about selling Voodoo because she can’t breed anymore. And having Link put down because the old boy is getting increasingly strange. Link doesn’t care about Voodoo, but he murders Phillip to protect himself. He dumps the body in the well, pushes the doctor’s car over the cliff. It takes a while for Jane to realize the doctor is dead. But it doesn’t take long for her to realize that Link is weird. He even likes to creep on her when she’s trying to take a bath. And soon enough, she finds out he’s dangerous. A killer. She needs to find a way out of this situation. Which is complicated, since Link has destroyed the phones and vehicles. And she can’t walk to town because of the wild dogs roaming the countryside.

Franklin was going to start filming Link in Australia in 1981. The funding was in place. But then, a major distraction: he was offered the chance to direct the sequel to the Hitchcock masterpiece Psycho. It was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. Psycho 2 turned out to be a better movie than anybody expected it to be. It was so well received, it led to Franklin and writer Tom Holland re-teaming on the spy adventure Cloak and Dagger. That one wasn’t a box office success, so Franklin circled back to Link. Which he hoped people wouldn’t compare to The Birds, so it wouldn’t look like he was just copying Hitchcock with every movie he made. He wanted his killer animal movie to be more rooted in reality than the fantasy of The Birds. But the two films do share a crew member: Ray Berwick, who trained the birds for Hitchcock’s movie, also trained the apes for Link.

The film was set up at Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment. Which was, during that period, headed by Verity Lambert. Known for being the founding producer of the Doctor Who series. Production took place in Scotland, although the story is set in England and that setting was very important to Franklin. He said that, “in mood, tone and look, it resembles Psycho 2, crossed with the English setting of Jane Eyre. ... The English setting to me was essential. I wanted to contrast the primitivism of jungle animals with Old World values, high culture, and civilization.”

Elisabeth Shue, fresh off The Karate Kid and the short-lived TV show Call to Glory, was cast as Jane Chase. Her first lead role in a feature film. Terence Stamp plays the ill-fated Doctor Phillip. Kevin Lloyd shows up as chimp dealer Bailey. With Steven Finch, credited as Steven Pinner, playing Jane’s boyfriend David. And Richard Garnett and David O’Hara as his friends Tom and Dennis. Who are just there to boost the body count. But aside from Shue and Stamp, most of the human actors have very brief roles in the film. And there’s still an hour left in the running time when Stamp makes his exit. So the majority of the film is carried by Shue and some apes. Imp is played by Jed, with Carrie as Voodoo. Then there’s Link, who is referred to as a chimp, even though he’s clearly an orangutan. This ape actor was named Locke. His fur was dyed a darker color and he was given prosthetic ears so he would look more like a chimp. It didn’t do any good. But it was better than the alternative. Throughout pre-production, Franklin was pressured to have the chimps played by people in costumes and makeup. He refused because he wasn’t making a fantasy film. This was meant to be rooted in the reality of what chimps are capable of. So he got to make the movie with actual apes.

Shue would go on to earn an Academy Award nomination for Leaving Las Vegas. But watching this movie will make you think the Oscars should have a category for Best Ape Acting. Because Locke turned in an incredible performance as Link. Of course, this is mainly the work of Franklin and his editors. Locke didn’t know what kind of story his trainer had him acting out. But he was able to give the filmmakers the movements and expressions that they built his screen performance out of. And when the camera cuts to Link, you can see the wheels spinning in his mind. He’s plotting. Scheming. Or perving, in the case of the bathroom scene.

BACKGROUND: There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t work with animals. But Franklin didn’t have much trouble working with the apes on Link. Production even went more smoothly than he was anticipating. The real problems didn’t arise until post-production. That’s when Franklin was informed that Cannon Films, the U.S. distributor, would be cutting eight minutes out of the film. It got worse when Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment went up for sale... and was purchased by Cannon. Now that they owned Link, they decided to cut out five more minutes. The film was now thirteen minutes shorter than the director intended it to be. Which may not have been the worst thing. Even at the final running time of one hundred and three minutes, Link feels slightly longer than necessary. Cannon really could have gotten a bit more out of it. But, as far as Franklin was concerned, his film had been compromised.

Before the Halloween 1986 release, Franklin was considering making another ape thriller. About an anthropologist getting caught in the middle of war between chimpanzee tribes in Africa. But it wasn’t to be. Link was not as well-received by critics as Roadgames, Psycho 2, and Cloak and Dagger were. And the box office numbers weren’t great, either. Made on a budget of six million dollars, Link earned less than two million in U.S. ticket sales. It made the video and cable rounds and got a bit of a cult following. In 2021, an extended cut that boosted the running time to one hundred and twenty-five minutes was released in France. But Link has never become as popular as it deserved to be. Even those who were involved with it wrote it off. Franklin dismissed it as an unsatisfying experience on almost every level. In a 2021 interview, Shue said her career wasn’t going well when she did “a not-great horror movie called Link.” But we have to disagree with her. Link is a great horror movie.

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: The set-up is perfectly simple. A young woman trapped in an isolated house with a dangerous ape. Dialogue in the early scenes let us know how much trouble she could be in. As we hear that chimps are eight times stronger than humans. And are told a story about a man being torn to pieces by a chimp who was just happy to see him.

Franklin does a great job of building the suspense as Jane gradually figures out what’s going on. And Shue did a great job of carrying the film for the long stretch where she’s alone with the apes. She was only twenty-one years old during production, just starting out in her career. And she proved she was capable of being a strong lead. Hopefully she’s proud of her work on the movie, even if she’s not a fan of it. 

There are plenty of other killer primate movies out there, and this ranks up there as one of the best. Along with the 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue and George A. Romero’s Monkey Shines. It’s unique in its approach to the concept, as it builds up Link in the same way it might if the character were human. He’s lurking around, a silent creeper. We know it’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens. We’re waiting for the moment when he’s going to fully snap. And once Jane comes to understand what Link is capable of, it kicks off a sequence that’s around thirty minutes of almost non-stop action and thrills.

BEST SCENE(S): That is, of course, the most entertaining section of the film. And judging by the way it was shot, it feels like Franklin was having a lot of fun bringing it to the screen. When Jane attempts to shoot Link through a door, there’s a cool shot of her through the hole left in the door. There’s a cave in the cellar that leads down to the sea. When Jane and Imp make it down to the water, you might think they have just escaped from Link. But Franklin lets us know the action is far from over. By cutting to a helicopter shot, the song “Apeman” by The Kinks kicking in on the soundtrack. As we fly over to the road that leads to the house to see that Jane’s boyfriend and a couple friends are about to arrive and meet Link for themselves.

Then we get to watch the body count increase as Link deals with the new arrivals. And Franklin was particularly pleased with a moment where he had Link pull someone through the mail slot in the front door.

Jane’s boyfriend David is injured by Link. She has to help him by putting a makeshift splint on his leg. Adding a humorous element to the final chase sequence as we watch this injured guy with a leg splint try to escape from Link. Getting tossed all over the place and probably injuring himself some more. The only questionable shot in here comes when Link chases Jane and David upstairs and they try to hide in Phillip’s lab. Which has a metal door. To follow Jane and David into the lab, Franklin has the camera going over the top of the wall. Breaking the reality and revealing this is just a set. This is something that’s done in movies all the time, but some may find it jarring.

PARTING SHOT: But a movie is doing pretty well when you’re only left questioning one shot. And whether or not a couple extra minutes could have been taken out. Overall, Link is an intriguing, well-crafted thriller with good human and primate performances. And a score by Jerry Goldsmith that is occasionally reminiscent of the work he did on Gremlins. This film proves once again that Richard Franklin was indeed a Master of Suspense. Unfortunately, it was the last movie he made in the ‘80s. And in the ‘90s, he decided to change directions. Rather than continue making genre movies, he moved on to the arthouse. He would eventually re-team with Everett De Roche on the 2003 horror film Visitors. His last film before he passed away in 2007. But that run he had from Patrick through Link really makes us wish we had a lot more Franklin thrillers to watch.

So if you haven’t met Link yet, head out to that isolated home on the English coast and spend some time with him. He’ll do some tricks for you: smoking cigars, setting fires, murdering people. He puts on a great show, and it’s definitely worth checking out.

And for the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series, I dug into the making of writer/director Stephen Sommer's 2001 film The Mummy Returns:

The Mummy Returns script: 

For over a decade, a reboot of the classic Universal Monsters property The Mummy languished in development hell. The project was originally intended to be a dark, low budget horror story. Then executives decided it should be a larger budgeted adventure film. So in 1999, writer/director Stephen Sommers delivered a version of The Mummy that was packed with action, adventure, humor... and some creepy mummy stuff. It was a massive box office success – so, of course, a sequel was put on the fast track to production. And now we’re going to look back more than twenty years to find out What the F*ck Happened to The Mummy Returns.

Getting the ‘99 Mummy to the screen had been a long, painful process. Many different writers and directors had come and gone before Stephen Sommers got involved. Getting The Mummy Returns made was much easier. And the process began on the first movie’s opening weekend. Made on a budget of eighty million dollars, The Mummy had to earn around two hundred to two hundred and fifty million at the box office to be considered a success. Sommers was keeping his expectations in check, hoping for an opening weekend of twenty million. But on Saturday morning, he got a call from the president of Universal, who told him it looked like they would have an opening weekend of forty-five million. So Saturday night, cast and crew got together for a celebratory steak dinner. They already had a hit on their hands!

And then it was time to start thinking sequel. The Mummy marched its way to a worldwide box office total of four hundred and seventeen million. Universal reached out to Sommers and the film’s stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz about coming back for another adventure... Sommers said, “When you decide to make a sequel, everyone has to agree on two things: it’s going to be better and it’s going to be bigger.” They all agreed that they would only make a follow-up if it could be an improvement over its predecessor. Fraser even held off on signing a contract, saying he wanted to see the script first. A decision that Sommers totally agreed with. He even directly told Fraser, “If I can’t pull off a script, use that excuse to get out of it.” And if Fraser wouldn’t agree to be in the movie, Sommers could use that as his escape hatch, too. Because he refused to make a Mummy sequel without Fraser. 

So Sommers spent six or seven weeks writing the first draft of The Mummy Returns. While doing research for the first movie, he had looked back as far as 1200 B.C. Looking for an idea for the sequel, he continued going further back into the past. And found inspiration in 3000 B.C: the story of a pharaoh called the Scorpion King, who had united Upper and Lower Egypt. Then he heaped a lot of fiction on top of the idea of someone being called the Scorpion King. So the story begins in 3067 B.C., when the Scorpion King led an army on a campaign to conquer the known world. That didn’t work out. They were defeated and driven out into the desert of Ahm Shere. Where they died, one-by-one, until only the Scorpion King remained. To survive, he made a pact with the dark god Anubis, offering his soul in exchange for the chance to get revenge on his enemies. Anubis saved him by creating an oasis in the desert. Then let him lead his army of supernatural jackal monsters. Once that army had conquered the Scorpion King’s enemies, they were all drawn back into the Underworld. There they have waited for five thousand years... But 1933 A.D. happens to be the Year of the Scorpion, when the Scorpion King will rise from the Underworld and use the army of Anubis to destroy mankind. 

In the seven years since the events of the first film, treasure hunter Rick O’Connell and Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan have gotten married. And they now have a young son named Alex... because annoying little kids are a common element of adventure movies. Evelyn has been having dreams and visions, glimpses from a past life. When she was Nefertiti, the daughter of Pharaoh Seti I – you know, the guy the villains betrayed and murdered in flashbacks shown in the first movie. Along with these memories, Evelyn is also gaining Nefertiti’s fighting skills, which is a nice bonus. The visions lead her to the Bracelet of Anubis, which can guide the wearer to the Lost Oasis of Ahm Shere. The place where the Scorpion King and his army will rise. Problem is, the bracelet gets stuck on Alex’s arm. So when the bad guys show up, they kidnap the kid so he can lead them to the oasis.

Disciples of the mummy Imhotep have resurrected him. The plan being to take him to the oasis so he can battle and defeat the Scorpion King. And then rule the world. One of these disciples is Meela Nais, who looks just like Anck-su-namun, who was Imhotep’s lover in ancient Egypt. He was going to sacrifice Evelyn in an effort to resurrect Anck-su-namun in the first movie. It turns out to be much easier to just transfer Anck-su-namun’s soul into Meela’s body. It’s a shame he didn’t meet her in the first movie, it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Rick and Evelyn follow Alex and the bad guys to the oasis. Accompanied by Evelyn’s con man brother Jonathan. Rick’s dirigible-flying buddy Izzy. And the Medjai warrior Ardeth Bay, a returning character from the first film. He was meant to die by the end credits of that movie, but Sommers decided to spare him during production. Then gave him an expanded role in the sequel. Everything leads up to a climactic battle where Ardeth Bay and the Medjai take on the army of Anubis. While Rick, Evelyn, and Jonathan have to deal with Imhotep,  Anck-su-namun... and, yes, the resurrected Scorpion King. Who is now a monstrous creature.

Sommers’ first draft was enough to get Fraser excited about the project. Fraser gave some notes – and when he saw the second draft, he officially signed on. The Mummy Returns was a done deal at that point. Weisz came back as Evelyn, with John Hannah returning as Jonathan. Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep. Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay. And Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun. The most prominent of the new cast members is nine-year-old Freddie Boath. Who had the chance to work on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as well, but decided to pass it up. He did some TV work after this, but The Mummy Returns ended up being his only film role. Now he works in marketing and advertising. Shaun Parkes was cast as Izzy Buttons. And another major new cast member was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. A professional wrestler whose previous acting credits were just a few TV appearances. 

Sommers told The Hollywood Reporter he had never heard of Johnson before he came up for the role of the Scorpion King. He said, “They sent me some footage of him, and he was just perfect. I had to shoot so fast with him because he flew into Marrakesh on Wednesday, and he had to be in Detroit for a WWE thing on Saturday. But boy, was he a trooper. As soon as the studio saw the dailies, the president of Universal was calling me up and saying, ‘You got to write a movie for him.’ Somehow over the next week or so, I came up with this idea that became the Scorpion King movie.” The Scorpion King prequel film was released in 2002. It only made half of what the Mummy movies made at the box office... But that was enough to launch a direct-to-video franchise consisting of four prequels and sequels. None of which starred Johnson.

Johnson was only on the set of The Mummy Returns for the opening sequence that shows the Scorpion King back story. When his character returns at the end, he’s entirely CGI... And not very convincing CGI. Viewers have been making fun of this computer-generated monstrosity ever since the movie reached theatres. As Fraser told GQ, “I never met Dwayne until after the premiere because he was a piece of tape on a stick that we referred to. Of course, they put him in CGI later. The guys who did the CGI of the Scorpion King, I saw them at the premiere and they were like, ‘Hey, how are you? We did the Scorpion King CGI. Yeah, we needed a little more time. It was very last minute.' Some of the charm of it now is… it could get remastered, I guess, but it wouldn’t be as fun if you didn’t see this janky video game character of Dwayne. It’s somehow just perfect how it works.”

Fraser said that, for the actors, working on The Mummy Returns was like returning for another semester of college with friends. They had just done the first movie, now they were doing the same things for this one. For Sommers, it was more difficult. By making the sequel bigger than its predecessor, he made it more complex to direct. As he explained to Fangoria, “There are a lot more special effects and computer-generated characters in this movie. Because I’ve learned so much, I know how to integrate them even more. But it was just more mind-bending, trying to cover sequences. Like you’ve got six actors and a bunch of invisible CG characters and you’re trying to figure out how to cover them with three cameras. We’ll be shooting a scene for nine straight days in every possible direction, and the only person who can keep it together is me. It’s like somebody’s given me this big pile of puzzle pieces and I have to put the whole puzzle back together with the help of a hundred people. But I’m the only one who knows what it’s supposed to look like at the end.”

The Mummy Returns filmed for one hundred and two days in Morocco and London. One of the most complicated sequences to film was the bus chase. Where characters fight off mummies while driving a bus through London, toward the Tower Bridge. Not only was it  freezing cold and pouring rain while they were shooting... but they could only shut down London traffic for fifteen to twenty minutes every hour. This was so disruptive, there was a chance the authorities would pull their filming permit and send them away. But they got the footage they needed.

While writing the script, Sommers made sure to bring back elements that viewers had enjoyed in the first movie. Soldier mummies for Rick and his cohorts to fight. Killer scarabs. Imhotep showing off his supernatural abilities – this time taking control of water instead of sand. And he also worked in new creatures. Like the army of Anubis. And a tribe of pygmy skeletons that attack the characters in one sequence. The pygmy skeletons were an idea he had when writing the first movie, but there was no way to work them into that one. So they get their chance to shine in the sequel. 

Sommers always likes to include a lot of humor in his films. This was evident in The Mummy, where there was so much humor in the script, the actors weren’t sure how to approach it. They were always wondering, “Is this a mummy horror movie or is this a comedy?” On the sequel, they knew the tone and how to play it. And while Sommers was aiming to make The Mummy Returns scarier and creepier, that doesn’t really come off in the finished film. It seems even goofier than the first movie. Like the humor was enhanced along with the action sequences.

By the time production wrapped, Sommers was tired to his core. He was ready to focus on making smaller movies. Comedies. And he was already saying that if there was a third Mummy movie, he would write and produce it, but not direct it. And that’s pretty much what ended up happening.

Universal Pictures brought The Mummy Returns to the screen on May 4, 2001. Three days shy of the first movie’s two year anniversary. And it surpassed the first movie’s worldwide box office haul. It was made on a budget eighteen million dollars higher than The Mummy’s; it cost ninety-eight million. And its box office was also eighteen million higher; it made four-hundred and thirty-five million. The opening weekend totals were record breakers. With twenty-three-point-four million on Friday and twenty-six-point-eight million on Saturday, it became the record holder for highest Friday and Saturday grosses. But it only held those records for a short time before other 2001 releases took them away. The weekend total of sixty-eight-point-one million made it the second-highest opening weekend of all time. Coming in behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park. That’s another record it lost long ago. But the finances were good, even if The Mummy Returns received more negative reviews than The Mummy had.

The monetary success was, indeed, enough to get a sequel greenlit. But the next one took longer to come together. Directed by Rob Cohen from a script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with Sommers on board as producer, the third Mummy film wasn’t released until 2008. In the meantime, we got two seasons of the O’Connells battling Imhotep in an animated series. And Universal got Sommers to set aside his idea of making smaller movies by giving him another monster project to write and direct: Van Helsing, a big budget adventure film featuring Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, Jekyll and Hyde, and werewolves. That one was not as well-received as his Mummy movies.

But while The Mummy Returns isn’t as popular as The Mummy, it does have a lot of fans. Because if you like the first movie, chances are high that you’ll find something to enjoy about the sequel. As Fraser said, “It was more of the same. People wanted more, so we gave them more of the same. We gave them more is more. Lucky for us, they responded!”

More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!