The Jewel of Seven Stars
Bram Stoker · first published 1903
Stoker’s other monster. Filmed five times, and never once under its own name until late.
5 versions · 1971–2014
Hammer made it as Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb in 1971; Mike Newell made it as The Awakening in 1980. The book supplied the twentieth century with its second-favourite undead figure, and got none of the credit that Dracula did.
It also has two endings. Stoker’s publisher required a happier one for the 1912 reissue, and which version a reader gets still depends on the edition.
1903, in the middle of Egyptomania
Europe had been unwrapping mummies at parties for decades, museums were full of the results, and Egyptian antiquities were arriving in London faster than anyone could catalogue them. The idea that this might be an offence, and that something might object, was in the air long before Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened twenty years later.
Stoker’s publisher made him change the ending for the 1912 reissue, softening it. Which version a reader gets still depends on the edition.
On screen
5Film and television, earliest first.
- 1971 Blood from the Mummy's Tomb Seth Holt
- 1980 The Awakening Mike Newell
- 1986 The Tomb Fred Olen Ray
- 1998 Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy Jeffrey Obrow
- 2014 The Mummy Resurrected Patrick McManus
Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.