The dusty, shuffling dead don't have the sex appeal of vampires or the tragic dimension of werewolves. And yet the poor mummies are always with us -- if by "always" we mean since 1922, when British Egyptologist Howard Carter first peered into the long-lost tomb of fourteenth-century-BC pharaoh Tutankhamen and set the world's morbidly romantic imagination on fire. So brew up a pot of tanis tea, wrap yourself in a cozy blanket, and, whatever you do, don't read the ancient scroll of Thoth aloud, because the time has come to rank the ten greatest mummy movies in history.

10. The Cat Creature (1973)
Directed by Curtis Harrington, this unjustly forgotten TV movie pays homage to low-budget horror movies of the forties without being camp. Granted, once the Bast-worshipping Egyptian priestess is reincarnated in modern-day Los Angeles, the mummy looks just like Meredith Baxter in ugly seventies fashions, but, hey, she turns into a killer cat. And the supporting cast includes B-movie greats such as John Carradine, Gale Sondergaard, Kent Smith (Cat People), and David Hedison (The Fly).

9. Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1964)
Okay, not a good movie, but it's one hell of an entertaining Mexican-wrestler-monster mash. You get lushly built luchadoras, a crumbly mummy that turns into a bat, and an evil Fu Manchu type looking to steal some ancient treasure. What you don't get is a whole lot of mummy-on-mujeres action. Have a few more cervezas and you won't care.

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