he's alive. let me go! let me go! let me go! huh? huh? what'd i tell you? vinnie, that's a movie mummy. i'll be working on a real mummy. what do you think? wrap it around your face. the mummy will feel at home. i've got to meet dr. joanna fields at 9:30. the woman rips dead egyptians from their tombs for a living. she's bad company. she's one of the country's foremost archaeologists. did i say "curse"? did anyone say "doomed for eternity"? it's an honor the natural history museum chose eastman. when we cat scan this mummy,

its age, its sex. we can look at its bones and tissue, see what diseases it had. we can reconstruct what it looked like in real life. imagine getting to examine a body that's 3,000 years old. ooh, yeah. my dream come true. personally, i'd rather examine one in the 16-20-year-old range. you're remarkably limited. wait. before you go. ji jim? aah! good tip, vin. whatever i do, i won't call it jim. the museum acquired it through an antiquities dealer in san francisco, who had very little information about it except that a wealthy sacramento family owned it for 80 years. from the manner of painting and wrapping

suggests we're not dealing with an upper-class person, but we could be surprised. are we all set? yes, sir. everyone wearing their anti-curse amulets? o.k. let's go.

i heard the quake was 4.7. 4.3. the weird thing is-- [server] what'll it be? eggs tut over easy. anyway, i heard the epicenter is right here under eastman. seriously? nefertiti ziti. guys, it was a 3.8, and the epicenter was somewhere off the coast of malibu. um, sun-ra filet and a side of pharaoh fries. it was a natural phenomenon-- two tectonic plates press together, energy needs to be released, and you have an earthquake. yeah--right when the mummy's head goes into the cat scan. it is a little eerie. i didn't say i believe in the mummy's curse,

again? you haven't been feeling well for weeks now. a little nausea-- it comes and goes. it's probably just nerves. um, look, let me check you out, run a few tests. nausea shouldn't linger like this. o.k. the earthquake's not the only weird part. that's 3.75. i heard the finger the cat scan operator used to press the button broke out in warts. have a nice day. i do not believe this. and if you connected the warts with magic marker, they spelled "repent." admit it, doogie, when the mummy went into the machine and the earthquake started, weren't you a little freaked out? no. i wasn't. are you guys really seriously saying that an ancient inanimate artifact

diot believes in a mummy's curse? the facts cannot be ignored. at 9:30 you messed with the mummy, at 9:30 the earth erupted. mere coincidence or egyptian jinx? you decide. coincidence. but before you do, look at this. o.k... "1923--lord carnarvon discovers the tomb of tutankhamen." a few weeks later... dead! mummy material himself! and lord carnarvon's friend howard carter entered the tomb with lord carnarvon. a few weeks later, a cobra eats his pet canary. that bird abruptly changed his tune. it's all in here. 1912--the british museum has a cursed mummy. they ship it to america... on the titanic! that's a totally unsubstantiated rumor. look, we've worked on the mummy all afternoon

nothing. ow! it drew blood! i did it, vinnie, through my own impatience. it's a warning! ignore it at your peril! it rained the other day. the wood swelled. you're playing with fire, howser. it's like with my great-aunt nicolina. she toured the catacombs in sicily, sat on some coffin, mistaking it for an elaborate bench, and three weeks later-- she falls face-down in the street, dead! she was 96. she was a robust 96! these are stories from the old country... superstitions. you're in the 20th century, you're a college student. you have to break away from your past. i don't know. there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. you're afraid of this mummy because you don't know anything about it.

see, watching this isn't helping. here's what you're going to do-- tomorrow you'll come down to the hospital-- pay attention. you'll come down to the hospital, look at the mummy, talk to dr. fields, and once you see that it's just a historic object, you'll see it the same way you see a painting. [woman] aah! yeah... a painting from hell. i can't look! but i got to look. no! i got to look, and i can't look. it's like driving by a car accident-- part of me wants to look away, but the other part is mesmerized.

i got to! aah! [dr. fields] i've been amazed at how well-preserved the bandages are. it's really quite extraordinary under the circumstances. dr. fields, dr. katz... uh, this is my friend vincent delpino. he's a college student with a great interest in egyptology. mr. delpino... it's good to see you taking an interest in academic matters. so nice to meet a future colleague. an honor. a delight. you know, for a dead guy, he's surprisingly fragrant. they used aromatic herbs to embalm the body. i bet you're just dying to touch it. oh, yeah. i'm nuts to do it. go on, feel free.

through the bandages. oh, g-great. i was hoping to really feel the skull. isn't that something? oh, yeah. nice eye sockets. they didn't remove the eyeballs. of course, over time they've decayed quite a bit. have been very informative. we've learned that it's a male, probably in his late teens to early 20s. see the wisdom teeth? oh, yes. quite lovely. we also have a fairly good idea of how he died. look at this skull. notice anything? there's a hole in it. good. now what could that mean? well...

h a rock-- no, with an ancient hammer. i can picture him coming out of work after a long day at the pyramid, about to meet his illicit lover. just as he falls into her arms--wham! hit from behind by a husband crazed with jealousy. you could have a future in this. we've taken 66 cat scans of the mummy's skull at various depths, and nigel has input them into the computer. the computer stacks them together to create a three-dimensional image. then, using characteristic depths of tissue at various points around the skull, nigel has created a reconstruction of what our friend probably looked like in real life. wow... you can do that? science-- it's the wave of the future. are you still superstitious?

i got a future in this. i'm a man of science, reason, pure cold intellect.

it's all right. i'm a doctor. you're pregnant. i knew you were too young to be a doctor. no, phil, i have a hunch. you're wife's pregnant, isn't she? yeah, but nobody knows that yet. your body knows. you're experiencing a sympathetic pregnancy. get out of here. it's called the couvade syndrome. 60% of all husbands experience some form of it, although you've taken it to a fascinating extreme.

this is great. it's hard enough being a male nurse. now i got to be a... pregnant male nurse. so, how far along are you? four months. so what am i in for? with someone like you it's hard to say. the possibilities include varicose veins, stretch marks, and let's not forget hemorrhoids. ohh... i apologize deeply for my comment about your preoccupation with dead people. touching your mummy, i'd be deeply appreciative. apology accepted. i figure the hives will go away by the year 2,000. i was going to resign from the project to ease your mind. no, that's o.k. i'm staying. i want to be enlightened.

so, what rotting thing are we looking at today? we're going to examine the mummy's internal organs. shall we start with the stomach, the liver, or the large intestine?

? madness ? ? madness, ? they call it madness ? ? madness ? ? madness, they call it madness ? ? it's plain to see ? mean to me ? ? madness ? ? madness, i call it gladness ? ha ha ha! ? madness ? ? madness, they call it madness ? ? madness ? ? madness, they call it madness ? ? i'm about to explain ? ? that someone is losing their brain ?