Original subtitles

People ask, where do you get your ideas?

Right here.

All this is my magician's toy shop.

I'm Ray Bradbury, and this is...

Now, Charlie, you're old enough to knock.

Try it again.

I thought I told you to yell around the house.

Hey.

Look at that weather.

Oh, hell's bells. Don't you love the autumn, boy?

It's a fine, fine day.

Son,

you look as if your best friend left and your dog died. What's wrong?

School's starting next week, huh?

Yep.

Halloween not coming fast enough?

And nothing ever happens around here.

Charlie, it's Labor Day tomorrow.

Big parade.

Four cars afloat, fireworks, a mayor, Belgian sparks, a share of Belgian

whiskey.

How old are you, Charlie?

Thirteen, almost.

Thirteen. Well, things do tend to run down come thirteen.

Come to a dead halt when you're fourteen.

Might as well die fifteen.

Meanwhile, Charlie, what do we do to survive till noon this very day?

Only you know, Colonel.

Oh, son.

You know, I can move politicians, biggest prize hogs.

I can make locomotives run backward uphill.

But small boys on long autumn weekends are the bad case of the desperate

empties.

How's this?

I'll bet you six cans of pop against your mowing my lawn

at Greentown, Upper Illinois, population 5 ,062 people and 1 ,000 dogs

will be changed forever.

For the best, by heavens, sometime in the next miraculous 24 hours.

Is that a bet?

Yeah, a bet. I know you can do it. Oh, well, it ain't done yet, son.

This town is the Red Sea.

I order it to part.

Gangway!

Here we are, Charles.

Now... The graveyard?

Or... The junkyard?

Which?

Well... You hear that, Charles?

What's it say?

Well... Time, mostly it says.

Oldness, memory, dust.

Listen.

You let the autumn wind shake the skeleton of this house, you'll get true

talk.

Bombay snuffs, tomb yard flowers going to ghost.

Boy, Colonel, you ought to write for Top Notch Story magazine.

I did once.

God rejects it.

Lucky.

Boy.

Are you ready for me to birth you a real sock dollager on the spot mystery?

Yeah.

You know, the great thing about midwifing a mystery...

You don't have to boil water or wash up. Hand me those papyrus rolls.

And that's the poem on the shelf over there.

And that wad of cannonball cotton on the floor.

There we are.

Now... What is it?

What? Oh, thanks for asking.

He is, well, he was, a stand of papyrus left in an autumn field long

before Moses.

A paper mache tumbleweed blown out of time and long gone twilight dusks and

dawns. The chart of the Blue River Nile source.

He's a hot desert dust devil.

Under the old Sunday comic papers.

Stashed in the attic to spontaneously combust as I rub the shreds.

And circus books.

Shows long since petered out.

And dead by the road.

There. Shaping, huh?

Peel an eye, boy.

What does this commence to start to resemble?

Why... Yeah?

It looks old.

Yes.

Dead? Bullseye, boy.

Oh, well.

Well, now you may well ask, why does anyone want to build something that's

and dead?

You, Charlie.

You put me up to it.

Yeah. Go look out that attic window, boy.

You tell me, did you see anything happening out there?

Any murders being transacted?

Heck. Face it, Charlie.

Greentown, Upper Illinois.

It's the most common, mean, plain old ordinary bore in history.

If Napoleon had been born here, he would have committed Harry Carey at the age

of nine.

If Julius Caesar would raise here, he would have run into the Roman Forum aged

ten and stabbed himself.

Boredom.

And what do you do when you're bored?

Break a window in a haunted house.

Oh, good grief, child.

What else?

Hold a massacre.

Massacre? No massacres here in dog's years.

Charlie, there's a whole town out there faced with storks staring on weas and

lulls.

It's your last chance, Charlie.

What's it going to be?

A mummy.

Colonel, what are we going to do with the mummy now that we got him?

It ain't as if he could walk or talk.

No need, son.

Let folks talk.

You're in the mouth, is it, boy?

If you've recovered from your seizure of the desperate empties.

The whole town out there is afraid to rise every morning and find it's forever

Sunday. Now, who will offer them salvation?

Ramesses Cut the Third?

Lord love his son, yes.

What we got here is a giant seed.

Now, a seed's no good unless... We plant it?

And watch it grow.

Then what?

Harvest time.

Harvest time.

Well, if old Tom Tuppen isn't the laziest farmer west of the Ohio, he

finished his plowing, son.

Well, Charlie, I wonder what's going on. I wonder.

I was plowing the field this morning and bang!

Plow turned this up! Like I've had a stroke.

The Egyptians must have marched through Illinois 3 ,000 years ago and no one

knew.

Revelations! Ooh.

Blood the Nile and plant the Delta. Is or is not that a genuine Egyptian mummy?

Well, in its original papyrus and coal tar wrappings. It is!

Just look at him, sir.

did it. All that babble -talking uproar.

Hysterical gossip will last a thousand days.

Michelangelo could have done better. His boy David is a castaway lost and

forgotten wonder compared to our Egyptian secretaries.

Listen,

everybody.

Just found Chicago.

News folk, here tomorrow breakfast.

Museum folk for lunch. Glory, hallelujah for the Green Town Chamber of Commerce.

We do want this commotion to last, don't we? Sure.

Crack your brain. What does Simon say?

Simon says, go back too often?

Give that boy an A -plus and a gold star brownie. The Lord give it and the Lord

take it away.

But where to?

Where that autumn wind takes us.

going, Colonel?

Well, now everyone, including your folks, is back at the park, right?

Yeah. Final Labor Day speeches.

Someone will light the gas bag mayor and he'll sail up about 40 feet.

Firemen will set off the big rockets, which means the town hall, plus the

plus the sheriff sitting there with him, will be empty and vulnerable.

Then, then the second miracle will happen.

Ask me why, boy.

Why? I'm glad you asked.

Well, boy, the folks from Chicago will be jumping off that train tomorrow, hot

and fresh as pancakes, with their pointy noses and glassy eyes and 20 -20

microscopes. Those museum snoopers plus the Associated Press will rummage our

Egyptian pharaoh seven ways at Christmas and blow their fuse box.

That being so, boy. We're on our way to mess around.

You put it rather indelicately, boy.

Truth lies at the core.

Oh, child.

Life is a magic show.

At least it could be if people didn't go to sleep on each other.

Always got to leave a bit of mystery for folks, huh?

We have our place in history.

Greentown is at one with the pharaohs and the pyramids.

We unite the new world with the old, and the eyes of all the world are on us.

So enjoy yourself, folks, and prepare for fame tomorrow.

Oh, no, no, Sheriff. You just finish it off.

Finish.

Sheriff, do you believe in them old sayings?

What old sayings?

Well, if you read them hieroglyphics out loud, the mummy comes alive and walks.

Let me give you a reinforcement here.

Oh, oh.

Here,

thanks.

Now, come here, Sheriff. Just take a look here.

Fancy old Egyptian symbols.

Well, somebody stole my glasses.

Oh, you read it.

Do you make the fool money walk?

Well, let me see.

Oh, I see a jackal.

And number two is a hawk.

And number three is an owl.

And a yellow fox eye.

A fox eye?

Go on.

River horse.

Egyptian cat.

And a jungle ape.

It's a mummy, Sheriff.

It's going for a walk.

It can't be.

It can't be.

It is. It is.

Oh, good grief.

It's leaving.

Sheriff, I'll catch it, and I'll bring it back.

Good idea.

No, no, no, no, no.

Tell us what the mummy is now, Mr. Barrett. Any ideas at all? Please.

tell us what the mummy is now.

The Mummy Ramses that may have been kidnapped.

But the Chamber of Commerce will offer a reward for any information.

Any theory, Sheriff?

Must admit... Now, look, you guys and girls.

There's a lot of this iceberg still underwater, okay?

We need a bit of cooperation.

You know what I mean?

We are pursuing a line of inquiry and we'll keep you, believe me, fully

I'm sure he's not telling the truth.

Porter,

where are you now?

Boy, I can just see tomorrow's clarion headlines.

Priceless mummy kidnapped.

Reward offered.

Blackmail expected.

Boy, you do have a way with words.

I learned from you, Colonel.

What's he mean?

Well, boy, you were there.

You helped, you saw.

No, tell me, Colonel.

You want to know who he truly was, hmm? Once upon a time?

Well, he was everyone.

He was no one.

He was someone.

He was you.

He was me.

Well, his body.

Bodies made of crushed flowers.

New weddings and old funerals.

Ticker tapes.

Unraveled from gone -off -forever Egyptian pharaoh midnight trains.

Circus posters.

Torn -off seed barns in North Storm, Ohio and shuttled south toward

Texas.

All the things that are once need hope.

First nickel in the pocket.

Framed dollar on the cafe wall.

Printed there by odd old men and time -orphaned women saying, It'll happen

tomorrow.

Tomorrow it'll happen.

You believe, Charlie.

You made life start over.

Yeah. The minute you hollered outside my door, Yes, you said it.

It'll happen.

See, you went for the dream.

That's the meaning of old Ramesses here.

And right now, he's all yours, son.

Next week when this noise is over, we'll hide him in your attic.

And then about 30 or 40 years from now... What?

In a bad year that's so brimming over with boredom it just drips out of your

ears, you'll climb up to your rummage sale attic and you'll shake this mummy

of bed and you'll toss him into a cornfield and you'll watch new hellfire

break loose.

Colonel, what if, even when I get old, I don't need my own mummy to stir mobs up

with?

Hmm? What if I have a life where I'm never bored?

I find out what I want to do.

And do it. Make every day and every night count.

Wake up laughing and grow old still running fast.

Then what?

Well, then, son, you'll be one of God's luckiest people.

Because, Colonel, I've decided.

I'm going to be the world's greatest writer.

Lord, you will.

Yeah, I see it.

Charlie, let him tell you your future.

Let him start you on the story. Ready?

What's he saying, Charlie?

Everything.

Just everything.

Everything I always wanted to hear.

Honey, you're old enough to knock.

Try again.

Ramsey's tucked.

Another lost friend.