Movies That Suck/Franchises: Universal's Original Mummy Series. The Mummy's Curse (1944)

According to the book, Lon Chaney Jr.: Horror Film Star, 1906-1973, a critic from the New York Times had this to say about the ending of The Mummy's Ghost: "Oh, please, Universal, do not disturb their rest!" It's obvious that by this point, film reviewers were growing very weary of the continued antics of Kharis the Mummy, as was Lon Chaney Jr., but, unfortunately for both of them, there would be one more film before the character was mercifully laid to rest. As for my own first viewing of the film, it happened the day after I watched all of the other movies in the series in the Universal Legacy DVD set, as I had other things to do by the time I got through The Mummy's Ghost the previous evening. Needless to say, after those others, I wasn't expecting anything amazing; just another cheap but entertaining B-movie. Little did I know that I was about to watch what was, by far, the worst of these movies. While none of the other movies were classics by any means, all of them were at least entertaining in some ways and had genuinely good notes to them, especially The Mummy's Hand and The Mummy's Ghost. There is almost nothing redeemable about The Mummy's Curse: the characters are blander and less memorable than ever, Chaney has nothing to do except go through the motions, the story and concept have been stretched so thin that they've been virtually broken, and, most disparaging of all, this one, more than any of the others, has the biggest air of, "We don't give a crap. We're just trying to squeeze a couple of more bucks out of this." In short, it's a very tired, "by the numbers" movie, and one of Universal's weakest by far.

The swamp where the living mummy Kharis and his reincarnated, ancient love Princess Ananka disappeared into 25 years before is being drained by an engineering company but the superstitious Cajuns who live in the nearby town believe that the mummy still prowls the area at night, causing problems for Pat Walsh, the head of the project. One day, two scientists from the Scripps Museum, Dr. James Halsey and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab, arrive at the scene in order to find both mummies and taken them back to the museum, which further irritates the disbelieving Walsh. One of the workers, Goobie, arrives to tell Walsh that another worker who's recently disappeared has been found murdered in the swamp, stabbed in the back with a knife. When the scene is examined, the large imprint of a human body is found in the mud near the body, convincing Halsey that whoever killed the man also found Kharis and removed him. Later that night, Zandaab heads deep into the swamp and meets up with one of the workers, Ragheb: Zandaab is actually a High Priest of Arkham and Ragheb his disciple. Ragheb leads him to an abandoned monastery atop a large hill, where he took Kharis after killing the man who discovered him. Once up there, Zandaab instructs Raghed on the use of the tana leaves, tells him of Kharis and Ananka's history, and tells him of their mission, which is to help Kharis find Ananka so they can return to Egypt together. Kharis is revived by the fluid and immediately begins killing again, taking out the old caretaker of the monastery who discovers them. The next day, the excavation of the swamp manages to free Ananka, who emerges from the muck and, after wandering through the swamp, washes the mud away in a pond, revealing herself to be a very lovely young woman. A local, Cajun Joe, comes upon her and takes her into town, as she calls out for Kharis, which Ragheb overhears. Joe takes her to the local pub to be cared for by its kindly owner, Tante Berthe, but that night, Kharis, who knows that his beloved has risen thanks to Ragheb's telling Zandaab, tracks her down there and kills Berthe, although Ananka manages to escape. She's later picked up on the side of the road by Dr. Halsey and Walsh's niece, Betty, who are able to nurse her back to health. Although she regains her senses, Ananka suffers from amnesia and also displays incredible knowledge of ancient Egypt. Because of the latter, Halsey plans to use her as an assistant, unaware that he's putting himself and everyone else in the camp in danger of Kharis' wrath.

The final director for the Kharis Mummy series was English director, Leslie Goodwins, another journeyman would have nearly a hundred films to his credit by the time he was through. He started out writing and directing a number of theatrical shorts, particularly comedic ones, one of which, 1936's Dummy Ache, was nominated for an Oscar. He would continue making shorts on a regular basis up to 1938 and would return to the format in the late 40's and early 50's when his feature directing career began to slow down. Speaking of which, he began directing features in 1936, working mainly at RKO and, again, specializing in comedies; from what I can tell of his filmography on IMDB, The Mummy's Curse seems to have been his only foray into the horror genre. Speaking of which, it doesn't seem like that was the most harmonious of shoots for Goodwins, as he had problems with Lon Chaney Jr.'s drinking and former silent film actor William Farnum, who found it difficult to remember his lines of dialogue in his one scene. Virginia Christine, who plays Ananka here, once said that Goodwins was a nice guy but didn't help her at all when it came to her acting. Goodwins not only went back to directing shorts when his feature career hit a bump but he also, like many directors, began taking to television. He would occasionally go back and do a movie but television would dominate the remainder of his career, as he directed a good number of shows, some of the more notable of which were Lassie, Maverick, Sugarfoot, Cheyenne, My Favorite Martian, and Gilligan's Island. His last film was 1967's Tammy and the Millionaire, starring Debbie Watson and Frank McGrath and which he co-directed with Sidney Miller and Ezra Stone. He died in 1969 at the age of 69 from a combination of pneumonia and the Hong Kong flu.

James Halsey and Betty Walsh on the left; and yes, this is the

best image I could find of either of them. Pat Walsh is the

man on the left but there's a better shot of him down below.

It's like The Mummy's Tomb all over again, in that the cast is not only very bland (even worse here than before) but there's no true protagonist, as the film's focus jumps from one character to another as it progresses. And you want to talk about forgettable? Cardboard cutouts have more to them than these people, and finding images of them was such a nightmare that I had to resort to a bunch of group shots. The ostensible, and even that's a generous adjective, lead, Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore), does nothing meaningful in the plot except fight off Ragheb when he tries to have his way with Betty Walsh at the end of the film. Other than that, he's nothing but the typical bland scientist character who's trying to find Kharis in the swamp, running afoul of the grouchy Pat Walsh in the process, and trying to make the revived Ananka, whom he and Betty unknowingly save from Kharis, an assistant, which endangers everyone in the camp. Speaking of Betty (Kay Harding), her and Halsey's relationship comes out of thin air. The first time you see her is when the two of them first meet at the beginning when Halsey arrives and the next time you see her, they're driving together. And like him, her personality is virtually nothing, as the only significant things she does are refuse to send the telegram to revoke Halsey and Ilzor Zandaab's permit that her uncle orders her to and ending up as the damsel in distress when Ragheb takes her up to the monastery so he can force himself on her. She's nice enough to allow Ananka to stay in her tent when she shows back up after her disappearance but that's all I can say about. Her uncle, Pat Walsh (Addison Richards), is nothing more than a disbelieving grouch who thinks the stories of Kharis and the Cajuns' fear of him are nonsense and is sick and tired of them slowing up his work. His attitude doesn't improve when two archeologists searching for said mummy arrive on the scene, impeding his work even more. Betty, who has enough guts to call him out when she feels he's out of line, insists early on that her uncle is actually a pretty nice guy but you could've fooled me, as all we see Walsh do for the rest of the film is continue to snarl at Halsey, try to revoke his and Zandaab's permit to search for the mummies, and continue to disbelieve in the story even at the end since he never saw Kharis himself. His anger is understandable, given that he's got a job to do and things keep getting in the way, and he does show genuine concern for Betty's welfare when he's told she's been abducted, but, still, it's like, "God, man, chill!"

I've heard some praise for Virginia Christine's performance as the resurrected Princess Ananka (and it appears that she really is the princess, as no mention is ever made of her previous identity of Amina Mansori) but I don't see what there is to praise. She's definitely a lovely girl but I don't find her performance to be any better than Ramsey Ames' in the previous film: it's another bland performance that doesn't get me at all invested in the character. In fact, I find some of her line delivery to be very overdone and hammy, such as when she tells the doctor who treated her, "It's as though I were two different people. Sometimes it seems as if I belong to a different world. I find myself in strange surroundings with strange people. I cannot ever seem to find rest! And now Kharis!" Maybe you could chalk it up to Leslie Goodwins not giving her any direction or the way it was believed you had to perform in these types of movies back then but her acting is not much better than nearly everyone else's in my opinion. Maybe if more time was spent on watching her deal with the fear and confusion she has about who she is, where she is, and where she comes from, I could care about her more, but that's not possible in an hour-long movie that's not interested in that to begin with. And ultimately, there's no resolution with her either. After chasing her throughout the movie, Kharis finally manages to catch her and bring her to the monastery, where Ilzor Zandaab gives her the tana leaf fluid, which causes her to mummify again when the characters enter her chamber after Kharis has been vanquished. Honestly, the only memorable think about Ananka here is the scene in which she first emerges from the mud; otherwise, she's a very disappointing continuation of a character who made for an interesting and unexpected ending to the previous film.

A couple of the Cajun townspeople are the most memorable and likable characters in my opinion. One is Cajun Joe (Kurt Katch), a happy-go-lucky guy who is introduced at the beginning of the film when he's hanging out at Tante Berthe's pub, jokingly hitting on her and telling her husband he's not worthy of her. He doesn't believe in the stories of Kharis haunting the place at all, reminding everyone that it's been over twenty years since he sank down into the swamp, but he is serious enough about his job in working for the operation to drain the place, saying it'll mean good money for everyone involved and rushes to the sight when he hears that one of the workers has been found murdered. He's shown to be a really nice guy as well, as he takes the confused Ananka to Berthe's room in back of the pub after finding her roaming around the swamp and tries to get a doctor for her, but he and the doctor arrive to find that Berthe's been killed by Kharis. He himself is killed by the mummy when he looks for her after she disappears from the camp. Tante Berthe herself (Ann Codee) doesn't have much screentime but she definitely leaves an impression as a very happy and energetic old broad, always singing and dancing around her pub and trying to make everyone smile. Like Cajun Joe, she's also kind enough to try to help Ananka when he brings her to her room, but she isn't able to do much for her except try to stop Kharis from taking her, which gets her killed but gives Ananka enough time to escape. One last memorable townsperson is Goobie (Napoleon Simpson), an African-American who's really frightened of the legends of Kharis and is typically heard saying, "The devil's alive and he's dancing with the mummy!" or the other way around whenever he's onscreen.

If nothing else, at least this time, the current High Priest of Arkham, Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe), doesn't fall in love with the female lead, be it Ananka or Betty, and tries to become immortal with her. His disciple, Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), kind of fills that subplot but only in the sense that he tries to satisfy his lust by coming on to her when they're by themselves in the monastery. It's also noteworthy that this time, instead of the current High Priest passing on the title to his disciple and sending him on a mission involving Kharis, they both undertake it, Zandaab continuing to teach Ragheb the ways of the order along the way. So, if nothing else, they do change things up a little bit, but it doesn't make them any more interesting. Coe wasn't a bad actor but his performance as Zandaab is not as memorable or as entertaining as John Carradine's as Yousef Bey in the previous film. He's a pretty standard bad guy, without much charisma, and does little more than tell Ragheb of the history of Kharis, send the mummy out to find Ananka, and try to discourage any interference from the search parties who are looking for her. There is, however, something of an interesting dynamic between him and Ragheb, as the latter is on the inside, posing a workman for the drainage project, and is the more brutish one who gets his hands dirty by murdering anybody who comes close to discovering the secret, while Zandaab comes in from the outside and does nothing but give orders. Also, while Zandaab is firmly committed to his mission and the responsibilities of his position, Ragheb betrays them in order to satisfy his urges with Betty (something that comes quite out of left field and basically a case of opportunity for him). This angers Zandaab, who damns Ragheb for both betraying his duty and for putting their mission in jeopardy, saying that he'll pay with his life when Kharis learns of it. He orders him to kill Betty but Ragheb murders him instead and then tries to force himself on Betty, only to be interrupted by Dr. Halsey and killed when Kharis chases after him and smashes his way into a cell he's locked himself in, bringing the walls down on them both.

Although he was able to create sporadic instances of performance in the previous two films, Lon Chaney Jr.'s final bow as Kharis is the one where you can truly say he's nothing but a lumbering monster. Except for a moment where you see him react to Zandaab's news that Ananka has risen from the swamp, Chaney is unable to do anything but awkwardly shuffle around on his one good leg, with his left arm stretched out, strangle people, and whisk Ananka away up to the monastery. It's the most robotic of his performances and also the most undignified, as not only are the deaths as clichéd as ever, there's even a moment where Dr. Halsey and Betty Walsh never even see Kharis as he tries to grab them from behind as they place the unconscious Ananka into their car, even when he's a mere few inches away from them! That's like something you'd see in a parody of these types of movies, including Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy nearly a decade later, but this is in a real one! And what's more, Kharis goes out by doing himself in when he causes the crumbling walls of the monastery to cave in on him when he's trying to get ahold of Ragheb at the end. Laughable stuff like that is what makes you feel so bad for Chaney being forced to play this role so many times. The outfit and the makeup (a mummy face mask that Jack Pierce made for the film is owned by prop collector Bob Burns and is the only surviving example of Pierce's work), which are both virtually the same as the previous movie's, still look nice but they don't compensate for what an uninteresting, forgettable monster Kharis is here.

I think we can all agree that the real Mummy's Curse came

from a bottle rather than a tomb.

According to Don G. Smith in his book, Lon Chaney Jr.: Horror Film Star. 1906-1973, as he had on the previous films, Chaney was never shy about making his displeasure in being forced to play Kharis known. While Peter Coe said that he stood up for William Farnum when Leslie Goodwins began to grow his impatient with his problems in remembering lines (Farnum had been friends with his father) and producer Olive Drake insisted that his drinking never interfered with his acting, other cast members begged to differ. Virginia Christine said that Chaney, whom she compared to Errol Flynn in regards to his drinking, was absolutely plastered when he had to carry her up the steps to the monastery near the end of the film and that it was so apparent he was going to fall on top of her that Goodwins had to replace him with a double. She also mentioned an instance where Goodwins asked Chaney not to drink so much before filming, to which he replied, "Why? I have no lines, and I have to drag my butt through the mud." Martin Kosleck, who didn't like Chaney at all after having worked with him before on the Inner Sanctum movie, Frozen Ghost, got whacked in the face by him when he, drunkenly, turned around to face him too rapidly in one scene and claimed that Chaney loved stalking and threatening him during the climax, saying, "Why they had him as a star is beyond me. He was roaring drunk!"

The continuity errors continue in The Mummy's Curse and now, they're downright ridiculous. We're now back to boiling three tana leaves each night to keep Kharis' heart beating and nine lives to give him mobility... although apparently now, both quantities have to be given to him each night during the cycle of the full moon. I guess by this point, that warning from The Mummy's Hand not to give him more than nine leaves' worth of fluid has long expired. And instead of giving eternal life to others like they did before, they now cause Ananka to become a mummy again, with no explanation as to why that is other than the plot needs it to. Also, Kharis' history is back to the way it was originally given in the first movie, with no mention of his and Ananka's love being forbidden or their being buried together. The priests that protect and guide him are still referred to as the order of "Arkham" rather than "Karnak," so something from The Mummy's Ghost stuck, which is more than I can say for the setting. How in the name of God could Kharis and Ananka sink into a bog in New England and come out of one in Louisiana?! Did they get caught in some underground stream that carried them to the other side of the country over the years? I guess not, since they all talk about the account of him carrying her into that very swamp. And if your mind isn't already blown by that massive error, think about this: if it's been another 25 years since the events of The Mummy's Ghost, that means we should now be into the 1990's, but we're still clearly in the 40's, just as we still were after the thirty year skip between the first two films. The expression, "We just want to make money," comes to mind here.

That's the film's major problem: there was no care or thought put into this other than the desire to get a little more money out of this dying series. The previous films were certainly meant to be nothing more than programmers to fill up movie houses but you could still see a little bit of effort in them, despite their repetitive nature and continuity errors. This one, which I've read was shot in just twelve days, not only had no effort put into continuing on the story from its predecessor or creating characters that you could give a crap about but it also does nothing new with the concept at large. You're just watching the same basic set-up, setpieces, and climax that you've seen before, only much more stale and with little thrown in to break up the monotony. The film's cheapness is clear as well, as the bayou setting is uninspired and leaves much to be desired for, and the only major set, which was probably borrowed from another movie like the big temple in The Mummy's Hand, is the monastery where Zandaab and Ragheb keep Kharis hidden. There, the cinematography and lighting manage to evoke some semblance of atmosphere that the rest of the movie is sorely lacking, save for precious few nighttime shots here and there. And like The Mummy's Tomb, a good bit of the first twenty minutes are spent telling us stuff we already know when Zandaab tells Ragheb of Kharis' history. Here, we get a rare case of stock footage within stock footage, as we see the flashback from The Mummy's Hand that itself made use of shots from the flashback sequence in the original Boris Karloff film. The film also uses the foggy woods from The Wolf Man as the background for the opening credits, as far removed from the Cajun swamps as they are.

The most memorable scene in the entire movie has nothing to do with Kharis himself: it's the scene where Ananka emerges from the mud of the swamp after enough of it has been cleared away by a backhoe. It's the most well-crafted part of the movie by far and is the epitome of what you expect to see in old horror films like this. It starts off with a close-up of her hand emerging from the mud before she completely works herself out of it, unbeknownst to the workmen, who are leaving the site for the day. Covered from head-to-toe in the stuff, she struggles to get to her feet, apparently spurned on by the warmth of the sun on her face (later on, she tells Dr. Halsey that she loves the sun), and when she finally does make it up, she stumbles away into the swamp until she comes across a small pond, which she wades into in order to wash the mud off of her. After that is when Cajun Joe comes across her and takes her to town for help, as she calls out for Kharis. I used to be confused because I thought she was still mummified when she first emerged and became young and beautiful after washing the mud off, although I think now I thought that because of how the mud makes her look and the disoriented way in which she moves. In any case, while not an iconic scene of classic horror at all, it's still definitely a memorable one in an otherwise very forgettable movie.

I don't know what more I can say about the mummy kills in this film that I haven't said about the identical ones in the others: they're clichéd and it's often embarrassing to see how incompetent these people are at escaping such a sluggish monster. The first one happens shortly after Zandaab gives Kharis the tana fluid he needs to be revived. Michael (William Farnum), the old, torch-wielding caretaker of the monastery, catches them in the act and demands that they leave, citing what they're doing as sacrilegious. He obviously thinks Kharis is wrapped up in bandages as part of whatever "pagan" ceremony they're performing, as he can see him fine but pays no attention to him. As you can guess, this proves fatal for him, as Kharis lumbers up to him and chokes him, much of the murder shown by their shadows on the wall (not a bad touch, I might add). The second death is that of Tante Berthe in her bedroom in the back of her pub as she looks after Ananka. Kharis, sensing her location, silently slips in through the door behind Berthe as she's taking care of Ananka. Ananka senses that he's nearby and sits up in bed before looking behind Berthe and seeing him. As Kharis shambles toward the bed, Ananka quickly gets off it and runs to the corner of the room, prompting Berthe to turn around and see Kharis. She tries to stop him but screams in pain when he grabs her by the throat and chokes her as she struggles with him, giving Ananka a chance to escape (the people in the pub are singing and dancing, so they don't hear this commotion). Later on, when Ananka is staying at Dr. Halsey's research camp, she again senses Kharis approaching and runs to Dr. Cooper's (Holmes Herbert) tent, asking him for help. She tries to make him understand, when they hear the sound of footsteps outside. When Cooper looks, he sees Kharis approaching and ducks back in, backing up slowly as the mummy steps into the tent. Seeing Ananka, Kharis lurches towards her and Cooper tries to stop him by grabbing a chair to smash over him but Kharis is able to grab him before he can do so. Like Berthe, his slow strangling of Cooper gives Ananka a chance to escape. Kharis' last murder before the climax is that of Cajun Joe. While out searching for Ananka like everyone else, Joe spots her on the shore while he's rowing his boat out on the bayou. Coming ashore, he tries to get her attention, when he sees Kharis emerge from the bushes behind her. When he sees Joe, he lumbers straight for him, shaking off the blasts from his shotgun, and Joe, instead of running, stands there and yells, "No!" He appears to try to smack Kharis with the gun but he grabs it and tosses it aside. Now, Joe tries to run but Kharis quickly grabs him from behind and chokes the life out of him.

The last eleven or so minutes of the film make for a pretty slow and uninspired climax, the worse of any of these films. Kharis tracks Ananka down to Betty Walsh's tent, picks her up, and carries her out, knocking over the pole that's holding the tent up (Betty does nothing to help, by the way). Ragheb, who's been outside watching the whole time, takes the opportunity to get Betty alone up at the monastery and has her follow him, saying that he'll lead her to Dr. Halsey. Soon after. Halsey returns from the search to find the destroyed tent and Goobie, who tells him that there's no sign of Betty. Halsey tells Goobie to tell Pat Walsh what's happened, while he follows Kharis' trail, knowing from a piece of bandage that he found that he was there. Kharis arrives at the monastery with Ananka and places her in a coffin, while Zandaab pours some tana leaf fluid into her mouth to "free her" from her mortal form. Shortly afterward, Betty and Ragheb arrive, and when he tells her that Halsey is not there and the place is abandoned, he prepares to force himself on her. Zandaab, hearing the commotion, enters the room and, after cursing Ragheb for his betrayal and making it clear that Kharis will kill him for it, orders him to kill Betty to preserve their secret. Ragheb, instead, stabs Zandaab in the back and goes after Betty again, when Halsey arrives. A fight breaks out between the two men as Ragheb tries to stab Halsey as well but he manages to fight him off and knock him unconscious, making him drop the knife. Halsey is about to leave with Betty when he's distracted by the sight of Zandaab's dead body. Ragheb regains consciousness and attacks Halsey again, this time with a club. After a struggle, Ragheb shoves Halsey against the wall and is about to club him to death, when Kharis, having entered the room and obviously sensing his betrayal, grabs the club and drops it to the floor, before lumbering towards him. Ragheb backs away, trying to make Kharis stop by telling him that the secret of the tana leaves will die with him, but the mummy ignores him and pursues him towards an old cell, which Ragheb locks himself in. Unable to reach him through the door or the bars, Kharis tears right through the old, weak walls and the door, causing the ceiling and the walls to falling down on top of him and Ragheb. You must be a real loser of a monster to do yourself in, particularly in such an undignified manner.

I barely remember the music score which, this time, is mostly original material, even though you do still hear that same theme from Son of Frankenstein occasionally. It was composed by Paul Sawtell, who already had a good number of films to his credit and would musically involved with nearly 500 by the time of his death, and William Lava, who's better remembered for his television work and scoring the last batch of Loony Tunes cartoons in the 60's (which is not a good sign, as the music in those cartoons was really repetitive), but there's nothing I can really say about it, as it's so generic and forgettable, although I can say I don't care for the overly cheerful piece that plays at the very end of the movie. Even worse than the score itself, though, are the songs heard at Tante Berthe's pub. While I like the character, she opens the movie by singing a very corny and monotonous song called, "Hey, You!" to the hoards of people hanging out there. However, that song is nothing compared to this annoying tune that you hear in the pub when Kharis shows up and kills Berthe while trying to get Ananka. It can be heard during the entire scene, killing what little suspense there might've been, and continues even when Kharis chases Ananka outside. You have to hear it for yourself in order to understand why it's so bad but let me sum it up this way: it's one of the first things that come to mind when I think about this movie, making me dislike it even more than I already do.

There's no denying it: The Mummy's Curse sucks, plain and simple. Aside from a few characters I kind of like, one memorable set, a couple of instances of good camerawork and lighting, and a stand-out scene of Ananka emerging from the swamp, there is nothing redeemable about it. The cast is mostly forgettable, Lon Chaney Jr.'s last performance as Kharis is the most lifeless of them all, the kills are as predictable and embarrassing as ever, there's a moment that feels like it belongs in an Abbot and Costello-type parody rather than a serious movie, the movie does little new with this tired material, the film is pretty dull, even for how short it is, with a lackluster climax where Kharis does himself in, the music is forgettable, the pub songs are annoying, and, most of all, the feeling of the studio not giving a crap at all is plainly obvious, especially with the glaring continuity errors, chief among them the unexplained switch from New England to Louisiana and the screwed up timeline. No one would ever accuse the other movies of being high art but at least they had aspects that made them worth watching at least once, whereas The Mummy's Curse is the one Universal mummy movie, and one of their few old horror films period, that I can safely say I don't recommend unless you're a completionist.

Franchises: Universal's Original Mummy Series. The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Note the drawing of Lon Chaney Jr.'s real face

underneath the image of Kharis.

I always remembered this title above those of all the other Kharis Mummy movies when I read up on them at the library when I was a kid. It had a very intriguing sound to it: The Mummy's Ghost. Much like The Ghost of Frankenstein, it got my young imagination working, as I wondered why it was called that. Did Kharis actually become a ghost in this one? It sounded like a cool idea. But, like all of these films, I wouldn't see the movie itself until many years when I was in high school and by then, I'd learned that they just pulled these titles out of thin air, regardless of their relevance to the plots. In fact, the title, The Ghost of Frankenstein, has some relevance to that film since there's a scene where Dr. Frankenstein's son is visited by the spirit of his father. It's random, yeah, but it makes the title relevant, which is more than you can say for The Mummy's Ghost, where it simply comes down to the fact that Kharis wasn't destroyed by the fire at the end of The Mummy's Tomb. The plot has an element of reincarnation in it but that doesn't really match up with the "ghost" part of the title either, so its relevance is anybody's guess. In any case, in his book, Lon Chaney Jr.: Horror Film Star, 1906-1973, Don G. Smith suggests that the film, despite its faults, is probably the best of the ones where Chaney played Kharis and, after watching it again, I'm not inclined to disagree with him. While it's still very much a low-budget, quickie B-movie, made with no other purpose than to wring a couple of more bucks out of this repetitive, formulaic series, and has a number of continuity issues with its predecessors, as well as a growing sense of, "Been there, done that," it is on par with The Mummy's Hand as far as entertainment value goes, maybe even a little more so. It benefits greatly from the presence of John Carradine, Chaney manages to overcome the cumbersome makeup and outfit to give Kharis even more of a personality, like the others, it moves quite briskly through its one hour running time, and has a shockingly ballsy ending that you don't see that often in these old horror films. It is, on the whole, slightly above average for this series.

In Egypt, Yousef Bey, next in line to receive the title of High Priest of Arkham, meets up with the aging current High Priest, who tells him the legend of Princess Ananka and Kharis, whose forbidden love doomed the former's soul to being cursed when she died. He then tells him of how Ananka's mummy was taken to the United States thirty years before while, at that very moment, in Mapleton, Massachusetts, Prof. Norman is telling a classroom of college students of Kharis' reign of terror there, which ended when the mummy was believed to have been destroyed in a fire at the Banning house. Norman, who had examined a piece of Kharis' wrappings before, also tells his class of the tana leaves that keep the mummy alive, a large quantity of which were handed over to him by the investigators for scientific study. One of the students, Tom Hervey, meets up with his girlfriend, Amina Mansori, after class. Amina is a lovely young woman of Egyptian descent but, whenever the subject is brought up, she's filled with a strange, uneasy feeling. Back in Egypt, Bey is told of his mission: to journey to the United States and bring both Kharis and Ananka's mummy home. After swearing to Amon-Ra that he won't rest until his mission is accomplished, Bey is instructed to brew nine tana leaves each night during the cycle of the full moon in order to bring Kharis out of hiding. The cycle has already begun in Mapleton and Prof. Norman, having translated the hieroglyphics on the case containing his own quantity of the leaves, follows its instructions and boils nine himself. Able to sense this from a great distance, the still-living Kharis makes his way to Norman's house, killing him before drinking the fluid. On his way there, Kharis happened to pass by Amina's house, his presence having a strange effect on he,r as she got out of bed and followed his path in a trance-like state before collapsing to the ground outside of the murder scene, with a strange mark now visible on her wrist. When the police investigate the scene the next day, Sheriff Elwood and the coroner realize that the strangulation and the gray marks on Norman's throat mean that Kharis is back. Because of her presence outside the house, Elwood questions Amina, who can't recall anything about the night before, and while he remains suspicious, he's unable to find a concrete link between her and the crime, although he warns her not to leave the area. Fear grips Mapleton as news of the mummy's return reaches the newspapers, as Yousef Bey arrives and boils nine leaves to draw Kharis to him. Kharis does find him, but not before causing Amina more distress and killing another man. The following evening, the two of them head to the Scripps Museum, where Ananka's body is kept, but just when they think their quest is at an end, the mummy suddenly disintegrates when Kharis touches it: Ananka's soul has been reincarnated into another form, as Bey realizes. Now, they must find the princess' earthly vessel, which is much closer than anyone could imagine.

Another prolific director, Austrian-born Reginald Le Borg, was the one hired to helm the latest Mummy flick. Like his predecessors, Le Borg had a long career, managing to direct 68 films from 1936 all the way up to 1974. The first seven years of his directorial career were spent making theatrical shorts, with his first feature being Calling Dr. Death, which happened to be the first entry in Universal's Inner Sanctum series, starring Lon Chaney Jr. Around the time of The Mummy's Ghost, for which he was credited by the critics for making good use of his small budget, he directed other horror films, like Jungle Woman, which was the sequel to 1943's Captive Wild Woman, and Weird Woman, another Inner Sanctum film where he again worked with Chaney, as he would a decade later in 1956's The Black Sleep, which also featured John Carradine, Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson. The year after that, Le Borg worked with Boris Karloff on the film, Voodoo Island, and with Vincent Price in 1963's Diary of a Madman. Despite all of his horror films, his most successful movie was a comedy, San Diego, I Love You, starring Jon Hall (who starred in Invisible Agent and The Invisible Man's Revenge around that same time) and Buster Keaton and released the same year as The Mummy's Ghost. Starting in the early 1950's, Le Borg began taking to television and, as the decade wore on, he began doing that more than actual films, directing episodes of Death Valley Days, Sugarfoot, Maverick, and, most notably, twelve episodes of The Court of Last Resort. One of the last features he was involved with, House of the Black Death (he co-directed it with Harold Daniels but was ultimately uncredited), was another re-teaming with Chaney and Carradine. His last film was So Evil, My Sister in 1974, after which he retired. He died of a heart attack in 1989 at the age of 86, while on his way to an awards ceremony where he was to be honored.

Unlike the bland cast of The Mummy's Tomb, the characters in The Mummy's Ghost have a little more to them, including one of the two young leads. While he's still not exactly the complex character imaginable, Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery, who would go on to play Batman in the second 1940's serial based on the character) is still portrayed as a pretty likable guy, especially when it comes to his relationship with his girlfriend, Amina. Other than a small moment of angry jealousy towards another guy over something he says about her, Hervey is portrayed as a rather good boyfriend who cares for Amina. Although he doesn't understand why she acts so weird whenever the subject of Egypt is brought up and does sometimes get impatient with it, he remains supportive of her, especially when Sheriff Elwood grills her over a possible connection between her and the murder of Prof. Norman since she was found lying right outside his house and tells her not to leave Mapleton. Eventually, seeing the negative effect news of the ongoing murders is having on her, Hervey plans to go against the sheriff and take her up to his home in New York (he's also itching to marry her, something that Amina isn't so sure of). But, the night before they're to leave, Amina is abducted by Kharis and, despite his and everyone else's best efforts, Hervey is unable to save her as she becomes mummified from the curse and both she and Kharis sink into the swamp.

Acquanetta, whom Reginald Le Borg had worked with on Jungle Woman (she also starred in Captive Wild Woman, the first in that little known series), was originally meant to play Amina Mansori but, when she fainted on a real rock and seriously hurt herself during the first day of shooting, she was replaced by Ramsay Ames. Ames is definitely very lovely to look at and looks especially nice with those white streaks in her hair as she begins to morph into Princess Ananka throughout the film (it looks more like she's becoming the Bride of Frankenstein, doesn't it?), but acting-wise, she's a little stale. Both her and her character's circumstances remind me a lot of Zita Johann's role of Helen Grosvenor in the original Mummy in how she has a lot to go through in playing the part but her execution of it doesn't do much for me. In fact, I think Johann did a better job in this regard, as Ames does little more than go through the motions in acting confused, uneasy, and frightened. Seeing this normal young woman thrust into something beyond her comprehension, as she's revealed to be the unwilling vessel for Ananka's soul, should be very affecting but Ames is so bland and B-movie in her portrayal that it's not, especially the over-the-top manner in which she walks around in a trance and wakes up with a scream during the moment where the soul is reincarnated within her. As a result, I'm not exactly on the edge of my seat when Kharis abducts her, and while it does get to me a little bit to see her completely mummify, which is a good bit of makeup by Jack Pierce, and sink into the swamp with him, it's mainly due to Hervey's devastated reaction upon seeing this and the fact that you don't often see this kind of ending in these old horror flicks.

The reason for Amina's gradual aging and mummification, which suddenly goes into overdrive during the latter part of the third act, is never explained. Furthermore, you don't know why she has the odd connection with Princess Ananka that she does even before she's reincarnated into her. Again, like Helen Grosvenor in The Mummy, the only reason seems to be because she's of Egyptian descent but even that doesn't explain why she, of all people, is chosen as Ananka's living vessel and why she has the feelings of foreboding that she often does and is drawn to Kharis even before it happens. At least it was made clear that Helen was Princess Ankh-es-en-amon's reincarnation from the beginning; here, it just happens randomly when Kharis touches the mummy in the Scripps Museum. Going back to my original question, why does she mummify and why does it happen so quickly during the last bit of the movie? Does it have something to do with Yousef Bey's warning to her, "For those who defy the will of the ancient gods, a cruel and violent death shall be their fate, never shall they find rest unto eternity,"? Is this a punishment for trying to deny her destiny to return to Egypt with Kharis? And, again, why does this start happening to her even before Ananka becomes reincarnated in her? This is not the type of movie that you should think too hard about, as we'll see later on, but still, to quote Bruce Wayne, "It just raises too many questions."

From left to right: Sheriff Elwood, Inspector Walgreen, and

Dr. Ayad.

The blandest characters in the film are some of the authority figures investigating Kharis' activities, particularly Inspector Walgreen (Barton MacLane), who heads up the investigation after the scene in the Scripps Museum and the death of the night watchman there, and Dr. Ayad (Lester Sharp), a scientist at the museum who's been there ever since Ananka's mummy was brought there. There's nothing to say about Walgreen, who simply follows Kharis' trail back to Mapleton and attempts to set up a trap to catch him, and while Ayad has a little more to him in how utterly baffled he is at the disappearance of Ananka's mummy and his annoyance at Walgreen's disbelief of some hieroglyphics inside the mummy case that he asked him to translate, he does nothing other than get dragged along to Mapleton and has to act as bait by sitting in Prof. Norman's home office and brew tana leaves in order to lure Kharis into the trap. Sheriff Elwood (Harry Shannon), the previously unnamed sheriff of Mapleton, is more memorable, again due to his gruff persona when he questions Amina about why she happened to be outside Prof. Norman's home around the time he was murdered and tells her to remain in Mapleton, which causes him and Tom Hervey to butt heads. He's also smart in that he knows that the evidence is a sign that Kharis is back and tries to do what he can to keep the town safe. I really like the way he comforts Hervey at the end when he sees Amina's mummified body sink into the swamp, saying, "Hang on, boy." Speaking of Prof. Norman, Frank Reicher returns to the role that he played before in The Mummy's Tomb, first seen telling a disbelieving class of college students of Kharis' reign of terror on Mapleton and how the tana leaves somehow keep the mummy alive. While studying the leaves and the case containing them at his office at home, he translates an inscription as instructions to boil nine leaves, an act that seals his fate when Kharis arrives and strangles him before drinking down the fluid (in real life, Lon Chaney Jr. went overboard and almost seriously injured Reicher while filming this scene). Before his death, Norman's wife (Claire Whitney) tries to get him to come up to bed and she remains distraught about his murder for the rest of the film, although she is able to give the police and Dr. Ayad a hint that leads them to figure out what they must do to lure Kharis to them.

The best casting decision that the studio made with any of these films was John Carradine as Yousef Bey, Kharis' guardian and master in this film. As many know, Carradine was an actor who should've been in much better movies than he was, as his elegant and powerful way of delivering his lines helped give whatever he was in a touch of class and this is no exception. When he's praying to Amon-Ra, asking for guidance in his mission, to have the gods lead Kharis to him, and to give them a sign so they can find Ananka's reincarnated body, he really makes it sound like he truly believes what he's saying. Like the High Priests before him, Bey has a single-minded determination to complete his mission set, no matter the obstacle, including said sudden reincarnation of Ananka's soul. One of my favorite scenes with him is at the Scripps Museum when this happens. He's shocked upon seeing the mummy disintegrate with its bandages, saying, "Amon-Ra, oh might god, thy wrath is far-reaching. By thy will, her soul has entered another form," and when Kharis begins destroying everything in the display room in a rage, he manages to calm him down, telling him, "The gods have chosen to make our task more difficult. So be it. In whatever form Ananka's soul has found refuge, it will not escape us. Our mission will be fulfilled." After that is when he has his best moment in the whole film, when the museum security guard, hearing the commotion, runs into the room, seeing Bey but missing Kharis, who's hiding in a corner behind him. When the guard draws his gun on him, Bey confidently proclaims, "I am a priest of Arkham. I fear only the great wrath of Amon-Ra, not the little angers of an infidel," and he watches with a wonderfully smug smile as Kharis sneaks up behind the guard and strangles him. So, Bey is the best character in the film and one of the best in this whole series... until we get to the climax when Kharis abducts Amina and brings her back to an old mill he and Bey have been hiding in. After having tied her down, Bey prepares inject with her something (I thought it was tana leaf fluid, at first, but that turns out not to be the case) when, guess what he does? Seriously I want you to take a guess what he does. He decides to forsake his mission in order to make both her and himself immortal with the tana leaf fluid and make her his bride. This is a big reason why these movies are so repetitive. I couldn't believe that they recycled the same subplot three times in a row, as well as that here, it comes out of nowhere, whereas before, it had been established early on. Unfortunately for Bey, Kharis overhears his plans, decides he's not having it, and knocks out the mill window to his death.

Even though Andoheb clearly died after passing on the title of High Priest to Mehemet Bey in The Mummy's Tomb, George Zucco is here again as another aging High Priest, who now passes it on to Yousef Bey. They never say specifically if he's meant to be Andoheb again, as he's just referred to as the "High Priest" in the closing credits, and I hope he's not, as that's far too blatant a case of the writers not giving a crap even for these movies (I wouldn't have a problem with it if this film was in a different continuity than the previous one but since it isn't, it gets really tricky). Regardless of his identity, Zucco serves the same purpose in his small appearance here as he did before, telling Bey of the legend of Kharis and Princess Ananka, sending him on a mission to the United States, and instructing him in the use of the tana leaves (the instructions are different here than they have been before, as I'll get into). Also like before, he's wearing a really well-designed, old age makeup courtesy of Jack Pierce.

Speaking of Pierce, he tweaked the design of Kharis in terms of the head, actually applying makeup to Lon Chaney Jr.'s face this time instead of using a rubber mask (it was still used for the long shots). While I prefer the way his face looked in the mask, since here, I think he mainly looks like a guy who's got dried clay and dust all over his face rather like than an ancient creature, it's still a pretty classic look for a mummy. But, better than that is what I mentioned in the introduction: Chaney manages to give his best performance in this very thankless, cumbersome role. In the close-ups of his face, you can really see the anger and rage in him when he's going in for the kill on someone, gripping his fingers in anticipation, and when Yousef Bey is praying to the gods for assistance, there are moments where, if you watch carefully, Kharis appears to bow his head in prayer as well. While most of the kills are still clichéd in a bad way, there's an offscreen one where Kharis jumps a farmer inside his barn and right before it, you see a shot of Kharis readying himself to attack that's pretty effective. However, his best moments are in the scenes involving Princess Ananka's mummy and her reincarnation. When Bey directs him towards the museum display case containing the mummy, Kharis' body language shows the poignant happiness he has of being reunited with his beloved princess and he eagerly shuffles over to the case in order to touch her. But, when the body suddenly disintegrates, Kharis is overtaken by angry frustration, which you can see on his face, and then, full-on rage as he smashes everything in the room. Near the end of the film when brings Amina to the mill, Kharis reaches his arm out towards her in a longing way when she looks at him, and I love how, when he overhears Bey's plans to become immortal with her, he's like, "Oh, no! We're not doing this again!", and, for the first time, turns on his would-be master. After killing Bey, Kharis, in an apparently desperate act to be with his beloved Ananka again, picks the rapidly-mummifying Amina up and carries her into the swamp, an act that makes him feel much more akin to Boris Karloff's Imhotep than he ever had before.

The shorter man with the brush is Jack Pierce.

Chaney made his displeasure of being forced to play Kharis very vocal during the making of this film. In addition to his rough treatment of Frank Reicher and an incident where he smashed his hand through real plate glass during the Scripps Museum scene (an act that Chaney claimed was to show Reginald Le Borg that he had the guts to do it), he gave an interviewer with a United Press reporter where he complained about the makeup, saying that it burned his face if it wasn't kept cool, and said that he thought people were crazy for wanting to go see these movies (that latter comment did not sit well with Universal, who, according to Don G. Smith, were slowly but surely beginning to tire of Chaney's antics on both these and other movies). Again, it's not hard to understand why Chaney was so prickly, given the thanklessness of the role and the uncomfortable nature of his makeup and outfit, the latter of which was made up of more than 400 yards of gauze, forcing him to go into his dressing room and lay on the floor in front of the open refrigerator in there during his lunch breaks in order to try to keep cool. Note how, in that behind-the-scenes picture here, he's looking at the photographer with an expression of, "Please kill me." Like I said before, can you really blame him, especially when you look at all that junk wrapped around him?

Let's now get into the continuity issues that this film has with its two predecessors. In addition to Andoheb possibly still being alive after his death upon passing the mantle to Mehemet Bey in the last movie, you have the order now being referred to as the High Priests of "Arkham" rather than "Karnak." Why that change, I don't know. Makes about as much sense as changing the surname of Wallace Ford's character of Babe from Jensen to Henson. We're also told for the first time that the love affair between Princess Ananka and Kharis was a forbidden one and that Ananka's soul has been forever cursed for it. Granted, it's not that big a deal, considering Ananka was little more than a MacGuffin in The Mummy's Hand and wasn't mentioned much at all in The Mummy's Tomb, but it's odd to bring this up three movies in. More significantly, though, they now say that Kharis was buried alive with Ananka, making it feel like it was punishment for their forbidden love rather than sacrilege for trying to resurrect her with the tana leaves. Speaking of which, that's the most glaring continuity issue. It's still the thing that keeps Kharis alive but here, Yousef Bey is told to brew nine leaves each night in order to draw him out, since he'll know where it is. So now, instead of needing to be administered to him by another in order to allow him to get up and move, it's something that Kharis needs to actually seek out if he's to sustain himself (it seems that he finds it by smelling for it, too, as he can be seen sniffing the air!) How did he manage to stay alive during all those months in-between this film and the previous one? Are we to assume that it actually has only been a month in-between them? They don't specify how long it's been but I always assumed it'd been a couple of years, at least. Plus, the three leaves necessary to keep his heart beating aren't mentioned at all. And there's also the ongoing issue of what the time period is, as this is still clearly the 1940's even though, given what we talked about in the previous review, it should be the 1970's, but I'll let it go here because the next movie has major problems on that score.

One thing this film doesn't have is the atmospheric photography and the mood that the previous one did. The cinematography in The Mummy's Tomb was fairly Expressionistic, with lots of contrasts and deep shadows, and there were nighttime exterior scenes in the cemetery and the woods around Mapleton that were quite creepy, with a soft but audible breeze in the air and the dark forest surrounding Kharis as he stalked the night. Here, director of photography William Sickner creates a much more average look, with little contrast or shadows, save for some of the scenes in the mill before the climax. Even worse, the nighttime scenes are obviously shot in the "day for night" style, making the movie feel much more cheap and the sets and the setting less special than they were previously. It shouldn't be surprising, considering the budget and how these movies were meant to be nothing more than quick, cheap programmers meant to fill movie houses and very little real thought were put into them, but it makes you wish that they would've tried a little bit harder with what they had.

The mummy attack scenes are still pretty embarrassing, for the most part. Prof. Norman's death occurs when he follows the instructions of the hieroglyphics on the case of tana leaves that he has and brews nine of them, which attracts Kharis to his house. He stands in the outside doorway, where Norman spots him, and Kharis then goes in for the kill, with Norman, like Steve Banning in the last film, doing nothing to escape, backing away until he corners himself, allowing the mummy to choke the life out of him. The second, and much more effective kill, occurs when Kharis tries to find Yousef Bey, who's brewing some leaves to draw him out, and it takes him through a barnyard. He attracts the attention of a dog there, who loudly barks at him and tries to tangle with him, forcing Kharis to take cover in the nearby barn. The woman of the house, Martha, sticks her head out her bedroom window to see what's going on as her husband, Ben, arrives home after having been on a neighborhood watch for the mummy. Ben follows the dog into the barn, pumping his shotgun, and the next shot is Kharis readying himself before charging towards the camera. We don't see what happens, as the film cuts to back outside the barn, but we do hear Ben firing, and as Martha runs outside to see what's happening, the sound of the dog yelping can also be heard before she follows the sound into the barn and finds her husband's body and the large hole in the wall Kharis smashed his way through. At first, it seems like the old museum guard's (Oscar O'Shea) death is going to be akin to that of Jane Banning's in the previous film, as Kharis sneaks up behind him, but in this instance, the guard turns around in time to see him. He empties his gun into Kharis, which doesn't stop him, and instead of trying to get away, the guard, like everybody else, allows himself to be cornered, as Kharis grabs him by the arm, slams him backwards through the glass in the door, and then slowly chokes him. As for Yousef Bey's death, he barely has time to know what hit him. Just as he's about to pour the tana leaf fluid down Amina's throat, Kharis comes up behind him and smacks the bowl out of his hand. Backing away, Bey tries to talk Kharis down, saying that he will keep his promise, but Kharis grabs him by the throat, flings him against the edge of the open window, and bashes him across the face, sending him tumbling out to his death.

The climax to this film can hardly be called spectacular but it's affecting in how utterly hopeless the situations becomes as it goes on. After dispensing with Yousef Bey, Kharis shambles down the tracks leading up to the mill to face Tom Hervey and his little dog, Peanuts (who looks a lot like Toto, I might add), the latter of which has been leading Hervey by following Amina's scent. After witnessing Bey's death, Hervey stupidly confronts Kharis with a puny stick, which the mummy easily breaks before knocking Hervey down, sending him tumbling across the tracks and off the left edge. Peanuts runs up to his unconscious master, while a mob led by Sheriff Elwood heads towards the site after being told by Amina's guardian, Mrs. Blake (Dorothy Vaughan), of her abduction. Sensing them nearby, Peanuts leads the men to Tom, and when Kharis looks out the window and sees them, he unties Amina, picks her up in his arms, and climbs down the ladder just out of sight, as the mob heads up the tracks to the mill after being pointed that way by the revived Hervey. Kharis manages to slip into the nearby marsh with Amina while the men investigate the empty mill and almost gets away, until Peanuts chases after him, prompting the mob to follow. The remainder of the film is nothing more than Kharis slowly shambling through the swamp with Peanuts, Hervey, and everyone else chasing after him far behind, intercut with close-ups of Amina's mummifying arms and legs. He eventually walks into a bog and slowly sinks down into the murky water with Amina, who's now a mummified corpse. Hervey, ignoring Elwood's warnings not to go into the swamp, tries to save her but is completely helpless and watches in agony as both she and Kharis vanish into the swamp. The movie ends with the mob dispersing and a final shot of the swamp, with the voice of the old High Priest proclaiming, "The fate of those who defy the will of the ancient gods shall be a cruel and violent death." As I've been saying, it's a pretty shocking ending, but its impact is lost in the next and final film, The Mummy's Curse, which royally drops the ball in carrying on from it.

While you do still hear the familiar pieces from Son of Frankenstein, much of the film's music comes from the score for The Wolf Man. Just about every recognizable piece from that soundtrack is heard here in re-orchestrated forms, from the attack and chase themes to that piece you first hear in that movie when Larry Talbot awakens in bed the night after being bitten, which plays several times when Hervey is following Peanuts to the mill, the ominous themes, and even the sadder ones for the ending when they've failed to save Amina. While I'm not really complaining, since I really like that music (The Wolf Man is one of my favorite horror films ever, for those who don't know), it's always weird to hear music that I associate so strongly with one movie pop up in another. A distinct, raspy chord is also heard when you see the close-ups of Amina's mummifying limbs during the climax, laid over the music that continues to play. I'm not 100% sure but it wouldn't surprise me if I've heard that in other Universal horror films.

After watching it again, I would say that The Mummy's Ghost is definitely an improvement over The Mummy's Tomb and could possibly surpass The Mummy's Hand as being the best in this series. There's a lot to recommend it: the cast is better than the previous one, with John Carradine, in particular, being excellent and Lon Chaney Jr. managing to give a respectable performance as Kharis, the direction by Reginald Le Borg is pretty well-done and makes good use of the low budget, the movie, again, moves very well through its short running time, the recycled music is good and is used well, and the ending is surprisingly dark and downbeat for this type of movie. There are still some problems, like some more bland characters in the cast, the film not being as memorable in its cinematography or as effective in its atmosphere as its predecessor, and the unnecessary continuity problems with the mythology that's been established before, but they don't hinder the entertainment value all that much. All in all, I'd say I recommend this one more so than the two before it.

Franchises: Universal's Original Mummy Series. The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

Why the hell is this called The Mummy's Tomb when, a), there is no tomb, and b), it doesn't even take place in Egypt? Why not The Mummy's Revenge or The Mummy Returns (I'm surprised that there wasn't a movie called that before the 2001 film) or other titles that would become real movies, like The Mummy's Curse or Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (the latter of which is a Hammer film)? I think it's obvious that the people at Universal had such an attitude about these movies being nothing more than cheaply-made programmers that they couldn't have cared less what they were called because, when you really think about the plot, The Mummy's Hand is the one that could have been called The Mummy's Tomb. Regardless of its title, like its predecessor, this is another film that can hardly be called a classic on par with a number of Universal's other horror flicks and feels even cheaper than that film, for more reasons than one. Clocking in at just an hour, it still kind of drags at points, mainly because it lacks the interesting characters that The Mummy's Hand did, as the scenes with these people are often very flat. But, at the same time, it also has some things that movie lacked, such as atmospheric sequences with very moody lighting, a creepier look for Kharis, as well as a bit more of a personality, and a climax that, while still nothing spectacular, is bigger and more exciting. So, it's a very weird case of a movie. Ultimately, I wouldn't say it's not as entertaining a B-movie as the previous film but is still one I think people could get something out of in the right state of mind.

It's been thirty years since Steve Banning led an expedition to the Hill of the Seven Jackals and encountered the living mummy, Kharis. Now an elderly gentleman living in the town of Mapleton, Massachusetts, Banning recounts the story to his son, John, and his girlfriend, Isobel, as well as his disbelieving older sister and a family friend one evening at his home. Upon finishing his story, says that he's happy to have been able to destroy Kharis and rid the world of his curse; little does he know that both Kharis and Andoheb, the High Priest of Karnak who watched over him, survived their encounter. Now, just as his predecessor had, the old and dying Andoheb appoints his young successor, Mehemet Bey, as the new High Priest and, after instructing him on how much tana leaf fluid must be used to keep Kharis alive and mobile during the cycle of the full moon, tells him that he must take the mummy to the United States in order to exact revenge on the Banning family for violating Princess Ananka's tomb. Andoheb then dies, praying to the Egyptian gods to give Bey the strength to resist the same temptations that almost destroyed him. Bey journeys from Egypt to America by boat, arriving in Mapleton to use his cover as the new caretaker of the local cemetery to carry out his mission. As the cycle of the full moon begins, Bey gives Kharis the fluid of nine tana leaves and sends him out to begin his revenge, sneaking into the Banning house late at night and murdering Steve, although not without being glimpsed by several townspeople. Soon afterward, Banning's sister, Jane, and his old friend, Babe Hanson, who arrived in Mapleton upon hearing of his friend's death and fails in warning John and the authorities of Kharis' existence, fall prey to the mummy's wrath, while the Banning's employee, Jim, is so frightened by the sight of the monster that he falls into a coma-like state from shock. However, while John and the sheriff try to uncover the murderer's identity, Bey, who has become infatuated with Isobel after spying on her and John, has Kharis abduct her and bring her to him so he can make the two of them immortal as husband and wife.

Just as The Mummy's Hand had been directed by Christy Cabanne, another journeyman director, Harold Young, took over the reigns for the follow-up. Like Cabanne, Young started out in the silent age, working as an editor, particularly on a number of shorts starring George O'Hara. He moved up to director in the early 1930's, with his most notable early work being on The Scarlet Pimpernel, which proved to be quite successful in Great Britain, where it was filmed, and is considered to be his most prestigious film. Among his number of programmers and B-movies throughout the 30's and 40's, another notable one besides The Mummy's Tomb is 1945's The Frozen Ghost, an entry of Universal's Inner Sanctum series and which also starred Lon Chaney Jr., who plays Kharis here. He also directed the live-action sequences of Disney's The Three Caballeros (a movie I watched a lot as a kid). In the late 40's and into the 50's, Young became an occasional actor in films and on television, including a TV series adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel. His last credit is directing a 1961 TV movie called Witchcraft. Young died in 1972 at the age of 74.

Besides their lack of depth, a big problem with talking about the characters in The Mummy's Tomb is knowing who to start with, as there really is no true protagonist or hero. The one whom you would expect to be the film's lead, Steve Banning's son, John (John Hubbard), has virtually nothing do that's of significance, except find a piece of Kharis' body-wrapping that leads Prof. Norman to deduce that it came from an Egyptian mummy. Otherwise, all he does is spend time with his girlfriend, Isobel (Elyse Knox), and try to figure out who killed his father, although we don't see him doing much of that other than looking over his records to try to find anybody who could've possibly hated him. As more killings occur, he lends his medical knowledge to the police here and there, determining what's happened to Jim after he goes into a comatose state after his encounter with Kharis, but other than that and a telegram that informs him that his wish to become captain of the medical corps has come true, his profession as a doctor has very little baring on the story. Personality-wise, John is just, if not more, bland as his father, with little to him other than an apparent nice relationship with him and respect for his profession, which Steve feels most medical men don't, and something of a happy-go-lucky personality (a little too much so for somebody whose father was recently murdered!) And as for John's girlfriend, Isobel? I have absolutely nothing to say about her, as she has no character whatsoever. She's nothing more than John's ever-smiling, happy beau, whose beauty and impending marriage to John, which will happen sooner than expected because he's going to take her oversees with him, are the only significant things about her, as they're what prompts Mehemet Bey to go against his mission and have Kharis abduct her to try to make her his bride. Like Marta before, Isobel becomes the damsel in distress that John must save from Kharis during the climax.

Dick Foran returns as the now elderly and widowed Steve Banning (Marta is said to have died year before, the cause of which is never mentioned), who spends most of his brief screentime during the movie's first quarter recounting his encounter with Kharis to John, Isobel, and others his nice house in Mapleton. And yet, believe it or not, as brief as his role is, Steve manages to have a little bit more of a personality here than he did when he was young man, although that's mainly due to the affectionate ribbing between him and his older sister, Jane, and the relationship he has with his son and friends. Too bad none of that can protect him from Kharis, as he has one of a couple of embarrassing deaths in the film when the mummy corners him in his upstairs bedroom. Wallace Ford also returns as Babe (whose last name has been changed from Jensen to Henson, for whatever reason), although his performance here is absolutely serious, with none of the humor he had originally. His more dour personality makes sense, though, given the news of his friend's murder and his suspicions that Kharis has returned, as well as the frustration that he feels when he tries to warn John and the police but they refuse to believe him. In fact, he gets so irritated by it that he tells his story to a bunch of reporters at a local bar, but unlucky for him, Mehemet Bey is there and when he overhears Babe's saying that he knows what's going on, he sends Kharis after him (a death that's more clichéd than Steve's). And as for the elderly makeup Jack Pierce applied to both him and Foran, it's okay but a little too subtle for the desired effect. Plus, I think you can tell that Ford is wearing a not too convincing wig. Finally, George Zucco, despite being shot full of holes and sent tumbling down a flight of stone stairs in the previous movie, returns very briefly as an elderly Andoheb (we're supposed to buy that the only injury he sustained was a shattered arm!) Incidentally, his elderly makeup is much more effective, and probably needed to be more overt since Zucco had a very youthful look, even though he was almost 60 at this point. Andoheb serves the same purpose of Eduardo Ciannelli's High Priest of Karnak in the previous film, in that he bestows upon Bey the responsibility of being Kharis' guardian, instructs him on how to use the tana leaves to keep him alive and mobile, and, most significantly of all, gives him the responsibility of punishing those who defiled Ananka's tomb 30 years before. I don't know why he waited so long to do so (maybe he couldn't find a suitable replacement before then) but whatever. And right before he dies, he asks the Egyptian gods to protect Bey from the same temptations that almost got him killed.

Even though he's referred to as Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) in the credits, this character is never actually given a name in the movie but, since he's a major part of the cast, I'm referring to him as such to make it easier. In any case, when I was planning on doing this review, I was originally expecting to say that Bey actually gives the best performance, mainly because of the conflict he feels between his mission and the infatuation he develops for Isobel but, after watching the movie again, I've decided that he's about as bland as everybody else. There's only one part where he see him torn by his desire for a person who, I think, was meant to be one of Kharis' victims, seeing as how he didn't seem to even know of Babe until he overheard him in the bar, and that's when he's praying to his gods after he first sees her. When he gets a glimpse of her again later on, he decides right then and there that he wants to take her as his wife, a decision that he justifies by saying it is to ensure a continuing line of High Priests of Karnak to watch over Kharis for eternity. Ample potential to make Bey an interesting, conflicted character, but this movie, being what it is, isn't concerned with silly things like that. Other than that little plot-point of history repeating itself, as his desire to become immortal with Isobel as his bride costs him his mission and his life, the same as it almost did with Andoheb, Bey is another character who's little more than a prop to move the story along. He does get some memorable, mystical lines, "The moon rides high in the sky again, Kharis. There's death in the night air. Your work begins," but his delivery is pretty flat and while he does have something of an air of charm to him, he interacts with the other actors far too little to make much use of it. Really, the most notable thing about him is his exotic look, which makes him far more believable as an Egyptian than the other High Priests of Karnak in these films (although, Turhan Bey was actually Austrian).

Among some other noteworthy characters, you have Jane Banning (Mary Gordon), Steve's older sister often chides her brother, calling his tales of archeology boring, asking who cares about something that happened 3,000 years ago (which does not amuse Steve) and at one point makes a comment about how he should have been in bed long ago, which happens to be the last time they see each other before he's murdered. But, all that said, it's clearly a friendly and loving type of ribbing. After his death, she encourages John to stop spending so much time torturing himself over who his father's killer was and to spend time with Isobel. Also, her death is the most plausible one, as Kharis sneaks up behind her and strangles her, giving her no opportunity to get away. The local sheriff (Cliff Clark) is a pretty gruff guy in both his looks and in his personality, as he grouchily dismisses a call in the middle of the night over a creepy-looking shadow a couple says they saw outside of their house. However, he's also practical, eventually having to resort to telling the newspaper reporters about the townspeople's claims of seeing a creepy shadow before Steve's murder, feeling that they might be able to give him a lead. Like John, he's initially dismissive of Babe's claims that an ancient mummy is the killer but, when evidence is uncovered that proves it, he has no choice but admit to the townspeople that it's the truth, albeit in a memorably corny line: "A creature that's been alive for over 3,000 years is in this town, and it's brought death with it. We've got to run it down." Frank Reicher, who played the character of Captain Englehorn in King Kong and The Son of Kong, has a brief appearance here as Prof. Norman, whom John takes the piece of Kharis' wrapping that he found to in order to figure out its origin and, upon examining it, verifies that it came from an Egyptian mummy, proving to John and everyone else that Babe was right. Finally, I have to mention the Bannings' dog handler, Jim (Paul E. Burns), who becomes so frightened by Kharis that, after he shoots him three times with a shotgun and it has no effect, he falls into a comatose-like state from the shock and is last seen lying in bed, his eyes wide open and a look of fear on his face. A newspaper clipping mentions that he'll probably die soon, but his fate is left a mystery, as he's never seen again.

For me, the most interesting thing about these later Mummy movies is Lon Chaney Jr., not for his performance but rather all of the behind-the-scenes stories surrounding him. Aside from the Wolf Man, which was a role that he created and maintained throughout the decade, Chaney didn't think much of his turns as the classic Universal monsters, but he loathed the role of Kharis, for a couple of reasons. One was that he and makeup artist Jack Pierce did not get along at all (Pierce, for all his genius, seems to have been a pretty unlikable guy) and he absolutely hated his uncomfortable techniques and appliances. The get-up Pierce created for Kharis, in particular, was one of the most arduous, as Chaney had to be completely wrapped up in gauze and bandages, a process that took up to eight hours. Unlike Tom Tyler before him, though, I think the headpiece here was always rubber mask (it sure looks like it) but even that didn't make it any less unpleasant for him. But, what really got to him about the role of Kharis was how utterly thankless it was. Really, Universal could've had a stuntman or anyone of considerable size playing the character, as all it entails is a bunch of shambling around, strangling people with one arm, and carrying young ladies around. But, because Chaney was their hot new horror star thanks to the success of The Wolf Man, they wanted to get as much mileage out of him as they could. It had to have been a very frustrating and unfulfilling situation for Chaney and, even worse, because of his contract with the studio (which, incidentally, they renewed right before saddling him with the role of Kharis), he would have no choice but to go through it two more times, making it the role he played the most next to the Wolf Man.

Despite how restrictive the role was for Chaney, I think he managed to come out of it better than Tyler did in the previous film. For one, I think the makeup and wrappings work on him better. While Tyler undoubtedly looked good in his full makeup and costume, I've always preferred the way Chaney looked in it, especially in this film. For some reason, I think he looks creepier, a lot of which I think I can credit to his being photographed better than Tyler, with more shadows and contrasts, as well as in spookier environments. The sight of Kharis lumbering through the cemetery and the dark woods around Mapleton on a windy night is much more effective than when he was stalking around a camp in the desert or shuffling through a brightly lit Egyptian temple. And while he certainly couldn't do much acting (he was more expressive in his turn as the Frankenstein monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein, which he did right before this, and even that wasn't exactly Oscar-worthy), Chaney does manage to give Kharis more emotion... not much, God knows, but some. For instance, in the close-up of his face as he closes in on Steve Banning in his bedroom, the murderous look in Chaney's one visible eye is more unnerving to me than Tyler's blacked out eyes, although it's still not as creepy as Tyler's wild eyes in the trailer for that film (again, they should have just left his eyes alone). But the best bit of acting from Kharis is when Mehemet Bey tells him of his plan to have him abduct Isobel so he can make her his wife. His slouching body language upon hearing this shows that he's not happy with Bey's decision at all and he even starts to go for a stranglehold on him, only to relent when Bey reasserts himself as his master and tells him to go, which he does. And when he's carrying Isobel during the climax, if you look closely at his face and watch his movements when the mob comes at him from all sides, you can see that he knows he's trapped and is trying to find a way to escape. It's little moments like that which make this mummy feel more alive, whereas the previous one was a mindless thing who simply did whatever he was told and only to satisfy his desire for tana leaf fluid, which he didn't try to quench completely until after his master was out of the way.

Don't worry if you happen to see this movie before The Mummy's Hand, because the first ten minutes consist of Steve Banning telling his son and other family members the story in an almost complete recap, with extensive footage from the previous film that includes the discovery of Kharis' tomb, the death of Dr. Petrie, and the climax. On the one hand, I can understand why they did it (besides saving money, of course), as there was a two-year gap between films and, since there was no video or television back then, some people might have missed the last one and needed to be caught up. But, on the other hand, it's distracting in that it takes up a sixth of this hour-long movie and goes into such detail about what happened in the previous film that it's easy to forget that what you're actually watching is the sequel, especially if you watched that movie not too long beforehand (as was the case when I first ran through the Universal Legacy DVD set with these films). That's not only the borrowed footage that the movie makes us of, though. If you're a big connoisseur of Universal's classic horror films like me, you may get a sense of deja vu during the climax where the mobs are after Kharis, and that's because a lot of the shots of them are taken from the mob scenes in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. It's another cost-cutting measure on the studio's part but forgivable given the low budget and the fact that the previous film featured stock footage from The Mummy.

One noteworthy thing about the "Kharis" films is how convoluted their timeline is. Since it's set thirty years after the events of The Mummy's Hand, that would mean that if that film were set in the year it was released, 1940, then this one is set in 1970 and yet, they did nothing to make it look even vaguely futuristic, as the vehicles, clothing, and John Banning's telegram notary of beginning his term in the military proves that this is indeed 1942. You could try to make the excuse that the previous film was set in the year 1912 but, like this one, that was very clearly a 40's era film. However, this is nothing compared to the mistake the last of these films makes, taking place not only a couple of more decades after its predecessor but moving the action to a completely different part of the country from where the one before it ended! Obviously, continuity was not much of a concern for Universal when they were churning out these movies (think of how arbitrarily they matched up the timelines for the Frankenstein movies and The Wolf Man in order to make Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and all their other monster meet-ups).

As I mentioned in the introduction, one component The Mummy's Tomb has that its predecessor was lacking is atmosphere. It's still far from scary and I wouldn't count it among Universal's moodiest films but its cinematographer, George Robinson, shoots it in a much more contrasting, Expressionist-like style, with lots of darkness and shadows in the scenes inside the temples and tombs and especially in the exterior nighttime scenes. Again, Kharis has a creepy feel to him when you see him wandering around old cemeteries (the one here reminds me of the set that was later used in the excellently moody opening of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man; it could be the same one, as a matter of fact) and through the dark woods around Mapleton at night. The scene where Mehemet Bey first sends him out to kill Steve Banning is one of the best in the whole film, in that it's set on just such a dark night, complete with an eerie breeze in the air, and you see the terror that several townspeople feel when they get a glimpse of Kharis' shadow as he passes by them, particularly a woman who sees it pass over her from outside the window in the yard while she's in bed. There's one particularly nice distant shot of Kharis walking down a road, with the dark woods all around him, and his mere presence stirs up nearby animals like horses, wolves, and the dogs at the Banning household. It's a great sequence that the film, unfortunately, never manages to recapture.

Another advantage this film has over The Mummy's Hand is that it doesn't take almost 2/3 of the movie for Kharis to finally get up and start doing his thing (with such a short movie, that couldn't have afforded it) and he does a lot more as well. However, we now get into one of the most laughable clichés of this series, which is how he easily he kills people who can't escape him, despite how slow he is. When he's sent out to kill Steve, he climbs up the trellis on the outside of the house and sneaks in through his bedroom window. Steve sees him almost immediately but, instead of running out the room, he just backs up, letting Kharis corner him and grab him by the throat, slowly strangling him to death. Yeah, Steve's elderly but he still looks like he was in good enough shape to at least try to escape, and while he was admittedly shocked to see that Kharis is still alive and kicking, you'd think he would have done something smarter once he got over it than let the mummy corner him. His second appearance at the Banning household in order to take out Jane is more plausible, as he frightens Jim so much after he takes three shotgun blasts at point-blank range that the guy collapses into a comatose state from the shock and he then sneaks up behind Jane, who's outside on the porch, calling for Jim, and grabs her, giving her no time to escape. But Babe's death is the most laughable in that, when he comes out of the bar in town and sees Kharis shambling towards him, he runs down a dead-end alley and tries to climb up over the wall until the mummy grabs him and flings him to the ground. He tries to fend him off by smashing a big chunk of wood on him but Kharis overpowers him and manages to choke the life out of him. All of the futile struggling to get away and yet, the alley was wide enough that he could have easily gotten around the sluggish Kharis. While Wallace Ford's acting does almost salvage it, it's still an undignified end to a character I really liked. And on top of those scenes, you still have a bunch of scenes where there's nothing happening but characters standing around and talking, and while there was a lot of it in the previous film, need I remind you that these people have nothing to them at all?

The climax to this film is exciting and, given the budget, fairly impressive. When Mehemet Bey is interrupted by the mob before he can inject himself and Isobel with tana leaf fluid, he has Kharis take her away until he can get rid of them, but his stalling and threats toward John result in him getting shot by the sheriff. Once Kharis is spotted, the torch-wielding mob chases him through the woods and countryside, ending up back at the Banning house (during one of these sequences where he's carrying Elyse Knox, Lon Chaney Jr., who was never far from a drink, accidentally whacked her head on a stone support!) Seeing them coming at him from all directions, Kharis climbs up the trellis, onto the balcony, and ducks into the house through the door to Steve's bedroom. John grabs a torch for himself and heads inside with the sheriff and another man, who guard the back stairs. Meeting up with Kharis at the top of the stairs, John is grabbed by the throat and shoved back down the stairs, just barely avoiding landing on top of his torch, and gets knocked unconscious. Kharis walks back onto the balcony with Isobel but when he gets out there, he sees that the house has been surrounded, and the men, following an order John gave them earlier, start throwing their torches up at him. He again retreats inside, only to run into John again as the house starts to burn in various spot both inside and out. He manages to grab John and fling him backwards onto the bed with his torch, dropping Isobel to the floor in order to go in for the kill, when John backs him away with the fire (I remembered seeing an image of this part in one of those Crestwood House books I read as a kid). Fending Kharis off, John gets Isobel to her feet and, after flinging the torch at the mummy, setting the drapes behind him ablaze when he swung it back, carries her outside onto the balcony. Kharis chases after them and catches up to them when they start to climb down the trellis. John tries to fight him off but Kharis grabs him by the neck and almost strangles him, when the sheriff and another man, having gone up the stairs, come out of the bedroom window and shoot the mummy. Distracted, he drops John and goes after them, giving the couple the chance to escape. The sheriff and his partner manage to get the upper hand on Kharis with a torch and get around him in order to climb down the trellis themselves. Kharis tries to follow them down but once the climbers are off, the trellis is set on fire, trapping him on the second story of the burning house, where he eventually succumbs to the flames.

Once again, the music for this film is comprised entirely of music from previous films. Not only do you once again hear cues from Son of Frankenstein, as the leitmotif for the High Priests of Karnak, but a lot of music from The Wolf Man is also heard, most notably the main theme, which is used for the opening credits, and the attack piece, which is used for some of the kills and extensively throughout the climax. Cues from The Ghost of Frankenstein can also be heard in many places, making it an interesting case of the score being comprised of music used in other films that also starred Lon Chaney Jr. In any case, despite being recycled, all of the pieces are used well in their respective spots.

Like its predecessor, The Mummy's Tomb is hardly a classic but, more significantly, it lacks some stuff that even that film had, as it feels even cheaper, with the first part being an overlong recap of the previous movie, the characters aren't as interesting, there are spots where it drags, despite the very short running time, and the kills that Kharis commits, while entertaining, are also often laughable in how easily he gets ahold of his victims despite how slow he is. However, on the flip side, it has more atmosphere in terms of its cinematography and settings, the way Kharis looks and is filmed is more effective, with Lon Chaney Jr. managing to get a tiny bit of personality out of the thankless role, the music, despite being recycled, fits well with the scenes it's put to, and the climax feels bigger and more exciting. In conclusion, I wouldn't go as far to say that it's as entertaining as The Mummy's Hand and, even at this point, things are starting to feel stale, but if you enjoy the Universal horror classics, I'd say check it out at least once if you need to kill an hour.