Ardath Bey

More like Ardath "Bae," amirite? (That joke works better for the 1999 character, but no one's making toys of those.) Ardath Bey is an Egyptian high priest mummified for trying to revive his lover in this tale of love transcending death. It's interesting how the progress of society can rewrite a narrative without changing a single word. When The Mummy came out in 1932, Ardath Bey was most likely seen as sort of the "dangerous, seductive, Arabian sheik" type of stock character, and thus inherently villainous; now that that's less of a thing, he comes across as almost a sympathetic character more than an outright force of evil. It's not like the story was doing him any favors: although the script is technically an "original" creation, wink-wink, it pretty much follows the story beats of Dracula one-for-one: mysterious foreign man meets white people, tries to steal their woman, turns out to secretly be the supernatural monster plaguing the land. He can be kept at bay by use of a religious symbol, has hypnotic power to make people do his bidding, and his ultimate goal is to spread his own form of immortality to the heroine so he can love her forever. The movie even cast the same two white guys as the male hero and the wise doctor! So the bones of the story may be Dracula, but the trappings are original, right? Well, the mummy-specific bits - a tomb cursed as a way to punish the occupant rather than anyone who opened it, a heroine who's reincarnation of a princess, hypnotic powers - all appeared in a 1903 novel called The Jewel of Seven Stars, which was written by... Bram Stoker? Again?! Can every bit of The Mummy (1932) ultimately be traced back to one source? When the average public thinks of the Universal Monsters Mummy, they're not actually thinking of Boris Karloff's version. A shambling, groaning, bandage-wrapped mummy? Karloff looked like that for about two minutes and then never again. The mummy who met Abbott and Costello and became part of the Universal Monsters pantheon was the version introduced in The Mummy's Hand, the 1940 reboot of this film. This look, as "Ardath Bey" (which anagrams to "death by Ra," but no idea if that's intentional or coincidence), is how he spent most of his new life, and yet the only company that's ever made toys of it before was Sideshow in the late '90s. Ardath's body was sculpted by Ray Santoleri, a professional film and tv makeup artist who's done work for NECA before (Tomb Raider, Twlight, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, that era). Ardie is wearing the robes seen in the second half of the film, with a tied collar, billowing sleeves, and sash belt with a lion's face buckle. The wrinkles hang naturally, and there are hints of a body that the cloth is hanging on beneath. The colors, though, are far from capivating: a mustard-tan robe, muted khaki sash, and white clothes underneath. Even the golden lion head blends in! And his skin is basically the same tone, too. If not for the red of the fez he wears, this might as well be a monochrome figure! I realize The Mummy is a black and white film, but colorized lobby cards from the period showed his outfit with a either a green/teal or a red robe, either of which would have done wonders for this toy on the shelf. I don't know if NECA (Jon Wardell and Geoffrey Trapp) chose this themselves or found some old studio reference material that said, "yes, this is what color he wore," but we'd have preferred something a bit more flashy. Even actual gray might have been an improvement visually... though perhaps not narratively. After all, by coloring every inch of him like sand and dust, you tie the character more to his ancient home. The robe also means the quantity of articulation is below average. He has a barbell head, barbell neck, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel/hinge elbows (singular, not double like before, because the sleeves wouldn't look right with them), swivel/hinge wrists, a balljointed waist, and balljointed ankles. Yes, the entire lower body is mostly solid, with the legs poking out of the underside. (There are swivels where that happens, as well, because NECA is better than Hasbro, but those are fairly unnecessary since the ankles alread have the range of motion covered.) There's some sort of plastic inside the robe where the legs would be, to provide stability that a fully hollow PVC shell wouldn't, but it's just a straight frame - not secretly hinged like McFarlane's Peely. You know what we really could have used? Swappable kneeling legs and crossed arms, for when he's performing his rituals. That would have made this figure Ultimate. It used to be, once upon a time, that NECA would actually announce their upcoming action figures. First on MySpace, then on Twitter... you know, sites at the time people went to and used. But now? Now nowhere. They haven't even updated anything on their own website since December 2023. So the only reason we knew Ardath Bey was coming was that back in July of 2024 Trevor Grove posted pictures of the portrait sculpts he did. In addition to the normal "human" head, we get two "decaying" ones as seen at the end of the film when he's defeated (not by Frank or Dr. Muller, incidentally; all they did was draw his attention for a second, giving Helen the opportunity to take him out by herself): the first alternate head has the eyes closed, and the face is getting more dried out and desiccated; and the other has the front of his skull showing, an empty nasal cavity and bare teeth. The heads actually swap at the base of the neck, instead of the top, so that little bit of skin there can match the head. That's not something we would have particularly cared about if it weren't here, but good for NECA for trying to be as complete as possible. The set even includes different hands to match the different looks: the "healthy" skin is brighter than the greying "dead" skin (the implication is that he's been coating himself with dust or powder or something so no one will notice he's dead - that's why he doesn't like to be touched, and that's why he leaves big conspicuous handprints whenever he does touch something), so there's a pair of gesturing mummy hands in addition to normal ones that are relaxed or shaped to hold accessories. Said accessories include the walking cane he used when he first appeared in the present day, the lamp he used while sneaking around the museum at night, and the rough stone dagger he was going to sacrifice Helen with. Finally, there's a paper that NECA identifies as the Scroll of Thoth, but it's not. The Scroll of Thoth came with the other Mummy figure, and this doesn't match it. Rather, this shows the same Book of the Dead section that was used on the backdrop included with the accessory set, just not flipped backwards this time. It's not anything that appears in the film, so what's it doing here? Presumably they didn't want to duplicate an accessory fans may have already had, but if you want to give us something, give us a sculpted scroll that's been set on fire, as in the story's climax. This isn't good. There are two ways to portray a mummy in pop culture: as a zombie or a lich. The zombie ones are the mindless husks, dragging their feet and moaning, with little-to-no will of their own beyond "must. Kill. Interloper," while lich ones are closer to looking human and usually have some sort of sorcerous powers. Karloff's turn as the latter wasn't the icon-defining take his Frankenstein was, which is why nobody thinks of Ardath Bey when they think of The Mummy; and yet, ironically, they do think of "Boris Karloff" and not "Tom Tyler"; go figure. It's hardly surprising there have been so few Ardeth Bey figures over the years, but that means NECA didn't have a lot of competition to outdo to be the best. -- 08/17/25 What's the best villain secret identity? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.