• Latest
  • Biography
  • Novels
    • Doctor Who novels
    • Other novels
    • Non Fiction
  • Short stories
    • Doctor Who short stories
    • Assorted short stories
  • Audio
    • Doctor Who Audio
    • Various Audio
    • Radio
  • TV
  • Comics
  • Contact

Curse of the Mummy

a horror novel
On a stormy night in 1924, a group gathers in a London museum for the latest fad, a spiritualist seance to summon the dead.
Lord Carlisle is using the event to conduct some unscrupulous business dealings, but there is some much older business that needs to be finished...
...and the dead who are summoned have been waiting a very long time...
A new version of the horror classic.
Based on the Imagination Theatre radio play.
NotesThis was the second of our Hammer-influenced horrors for Imagination Theater, following The Heart of Frankenstein. We always intended to do a Dracula story as well... we had two stories worked out - The Cult of Dracula and Night of the Vampyre. Maybe we'll go back to them one day.
Having done Frankenstein, our choice was either to do a vampire or a Mummy story. I had already done a vampire story in a different medium, and I'm slightly obsessed with Egypt (which Claire often points out - apparently I'm obsessed with Egypt and Woolly Mammoths) so I was keen to write for the Mummy. I wanted it to be something a bit different, not set in Egypt or in a country house. Claire and I started talking about various other things, include maybe doing a story about a ouija board or a seance. We didn't think Imagination Theatre would go for a ouija board but a seance, set in the past... that took us to the 1920s, when spiritualism was big news. We'd also talked about the Mummy being set in the 1920s... so what if we did a seance in the Mummy story? What if that was how the Mummy manifested itself in the 20th Century? BOOM! There it was. That was the story. Details had to be added, characters had to be fleshed out but that was our frame.
What surprised us during the writing was just how much emotion we wrung out of it.
When we were writing it, we cast it in our heads with Hammer stalwarts and wrote it with their voices in mind. Peter Cushing as Professor Wilton (Wilton was Cushing's middle name, by the way), Valerie Leon as the feisty daughter, Celeste (named after actress and singer Celeste Holm), looking to avoid a marriage to a villain based on... ach, that would be telling. If you ever hear it, try to work out who we had in mind for each of the parts.
DOCTOR WHO JAMES BOND SHERLOCK HOLMES ERIMEM COMMANDO KERIDES THE THINKER
IAIN MCLAUGHLIN
contact@iainmclaughlin.com
© Copyright 2023 Web.com Group, Inc. All rights reserved. All registered trademarks herein are the property of their respective owners.

We use cookies to enable essential functionality on our website, and analyze website traffic. By clicking Accept you consent to our use of cookies. Read about how we use cookies.

Your Cookie Settings

We use cookies to enable essential functionality on our website, and analyze website traffic. Read about how we use cookies.

Cookie Categories
Essential

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our websites. You cannot refuse these cookies without impacting how our websites function. You can block or delete them by changing your browser settings, as described under the heading "Managing cookies" in the Privacy and Cookies Policy.

Analytics

These cookies collect information that is used in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are.