In Egypt, 1895, a trio of archaeologists—John Banning, his father Stephen Banning and his uncle Joseph Whemple—search for the tomb of Princess Ananka, the powerful high priestess of Karnak. The expedition is marked by a warning from an Egyptian guide, Mehemet Bey: stay away, or face a deadly curse. Undeterred, the team penetrates the tomb and unseals the sarcophagus of Ananka. When Joseph leaves to bring John the news, Stephen discovers the ancient Scroll of Life and reads from it. Outside, the rest of the team hears his anguished screams as Stephen is left in a catatonic stupor, a portent of a far darker fate to come.
Three years pass, and in a quiet English town, Stephen Banning emerges from his strange trance at the Engerfield Nursing Home for the Mentally Disordered. He insists that by reading from the Scroll of Life he unintentionally resurrected a mummified guardian named Kharis, the devoted servant of Karnak who had been entombed to protect the tomb’s sanctity. Stephen’s revelation sets off a chilling prophecy: Kharis will hunt down and kill anyone who desecrated Ananka’s resting place. Into this maelstrom steps Mehemet Bey again, now living under the alias Mehemet Atkil, driven by a fierce devotion to Karnak and a desire for vengeance. He arranges for the resurrection to be carried out using the Scroll, and enlists a pair of drunken carters, Pat and Mike (with a third minor helper played by Harold Goodwin) to haul a crate containing Kharis to his rented refuge. A reckless accident—drunken driving—causes the crate to plunge into a bog, seemingly ending the danger. Yet the Scroll’s power is not so easily buried: Bey commands Kharis to rise again, and the mummy stirs from the bog to begin its deadly mission.
When Kharis moves, the first victim is Stephen’s nephew, Joseph Whemple, who is murdered as John watches in horror. Peter Cushing—as John Banning—returns home to confront a threat that seems fantastical to the skeptical world. John’s attempt to stop the killer with a close-range pistol shot proves futile; the ancient guardian is impervious to conventional weapons, and the mystery deepens as the local police, notably Inspector Mulrooney, wrestle with the unreality of a living mummy. The inspector, a man of “cold, hard facts,” doubts the tale until more witnesses circle the strange events, and a striking clue emerges: Isobel, John’s wife, bears an uncanny resemblance to Princess Ananka herself.
As Mulrooney’s investigation advances, the city’s fear grows, and Bey accelerates his plans. He sends Kharis back toward the Bannings’ home with orders to complete the task Bey believes will secure Karnak’s will. When Kharis confronts Isobel, John’s pleas are heard, and his wife, using a desperate act to disrupt the spell, loosens her hair and breaks the mummy’s apparent control—causing Kharis to release John from his deadly grip. Bey, terrified of losing control of the creature, orders Kharis to kill Isobel, but the undead guardian refuses to carry out the command and turns on Bey instead, striking him down in a violent, desperate struggle.
The pursuit ends in a swamp, where Kharis — still clutching the unconscious Isobel — is pursued by John, Mulrooney and the encircling police. Isobel awakens and calmly requests that Kharis set her down, a small mercy amid a nightmarish chase. The mob fires, and the monster sinks into the quagmire, the Scroll of Life clutched in its grasp as the weapon of both doom and deliverance. The forces of superstition and modern skepticism collide, and with Kharis’s burial beneath the murky water and mud, the immediate threat at last comes to a close, though the scars of belief and fear linger in the English countryside.
The film blends classical horror with a tense, procedural investigation as John grapples with a terror that defies empirical explanation. The characters—brought to life by a distinguished cast—navigate a pendulum of credulity and dread: from the ancient rites of Karnak to a contemporary English town haunted by the shadows of a resurrected curse. The narrative unfolds with a careful balance of mood, menace, and revelation, ever keeping the central mystery in focus: whether science and faith can coexist in confronting a force as old as tombs and as relentless as the undead guardian Kharis.
Peter Cushing embodies John Banning’s determined courage and rational resistance in the face of a fearsome undead threat, while Yvonne Furneaux anchors the human cost of the mummy’s reign through Isobel Banning’s peril and resilience. The malevolent resurrection is rendered with a measured theatricality by Christopher Lee as Kharis, whose presence dominates each frame with silent, inexorable menace. The malignant mastermind, George Pastell, coordinates the supernatural scheme that sets the horror in motion, and the film’s quieter complexity is sustained by Felix Aylmer and Raymond Huntley as the elder scholars whose discoveries trigger a chain of deadly consequences. The supporting ensemble—Eddie Byrne as Inspector Mulrooney, Michael Ripper as one of the carters, George Woodbridge as the other carter, and Harold Goodwin in a minor role—helps to ground the supernatural threat in a tangible, lived world.
