20 Things You Somehow Missed In The Mummy (1999)
4. Where's the Blood?
Though The Mummy was intended to be an outright horror like the original, Stephen Sommers revised it, believing it would work better as a popcorn flick.
Of course, that doesn't mean this remake isn't filled to the brim with violence. In fact, some sequences are flat-out brutal. The movie depicts tongues being sliced off, eyeballs being plucked out, scarabs burrowing into brains, bodies being stripped to the bone, and people being burned alive. On top of that, many scenes involve a fleshless mummy shambling around, which is pretty gross.
Even with that in mind, though, The Mummy has next to no visible gore. Blood is nowhere to be seen anytime someone is shot or stabbed. Several kills, including both of Anck-su-namun's death sequences, are depicted in shadow. The majority of Imhotep's victims meet their end off-screen.
And yet, the minimal bloodshed didn't stop The Mummy from being scary. The scarabs are nightmare-inducing, despite the fact they're never seen drawing blood.
Even though horror productions often focus on over-the-top violence, The Mummy proves that a movie can be genuinely unsettling and gruesome without relying on excessive gore.