The Mummy's Curse (1944)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, the second mummy movie in the same year: The Mummy's Curse!

The Mummy’s Curse (1944) strays ever so slightly from the recipe established in the previous four Universal Monsters mummy movies, but mostly by adding the ingredients in a different order.  The obligatory scene where an Egyptian high priest recaps events happens later in the movie than usual and after there’s already been a murder.  It wasn’t even Kharis who committed this murder.

It’s 25 years after the events of The Mummy’s Ghost and the government is draining the swamp where Kharis carried the reincarnation of Ananka and sank to the bottom.  Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) arrive on the scene hoping to unearth the bodies to take back to the Scripps Museum.  However, Zandaab is really a high priest and has a man planted in the crew.

It’s this plant, Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), who murdered the man after he helped set up a makeshift tomb in an old monastery on the hill.  It’s the two men’s plan to revive Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.), have the mummy retrieve the body of Ananka, then ship them both back to Egypt.  Oh, and of course, kill anyone that gets in its way.

There is one unique scene in The Mummy’s Curse when Ananka rises from the dead.  She’s quite zombie-like as she first reaches a hand out of the ground and then slowly sits up.  She’s been mummified, I guess, and moves in jerky motions like we’ve become used to today in horror movies with special effects.  Drawn to the sun, she regenerates as she walks, becoming the lovely actress Virgina Christine.

Otherwise, it’s standard mummy nonsense for the rest of the movie.  There’s the bare hint of a romance between Halsey and Betty (Kay Harding), the niece of the crew’s foreman.  But it’s enough of a hint that they’re leaving the tomb hand in hand at the end of the movie.  She’s never threatened by Zandaab or Kharis, which I suppose could be considered a twist.

Kharis is buried when a wing of the monastery collapses, but Halsey mentions digging him out to take him to the museum.  There could easily have been another installment, but this is the last audiences would see of the mummy, unless you count his co-starring role with Abbott & Costello 11 years later.  You may want to, considering one of the most unintentionally funny monsters was then featured in an actual comedy.

Tomorrow: House of Dracula!

The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, an improvement over its predecessor: The Mummy's Tomb!

Although it spends the first 11 minutes using flashbacks to recap its inferior predecessor, The Mummy's Hand, the next 49 minutes of The Mummy's Tomb (1942) provides the best yet of the Universal Monsters mummy movies.  Yep, it's only an hour long, which is probably just about right for a creature that shuffles along at a snail's pace, yet always seems to get its moldy hand on a victim.

This movie attempts to explain how it always happens.  One victim is literally frozen in fear at its sight and another tries to run, but it's into an alley with a dead end.  If you extend the normal suspension of disbelief a little, it could happen.  It's harder to believe that an angry, torch-bearing mob could leave from one location and suddenly surround the rampaging mummy on three different sides.

I think the reason so much time is spent on the recap is that there's a little revisionist history going on.  Remember that The Mummy's Hand was practically a poor man's Abbott & Costello movie.  The flashbacks here focus on only the more dramatic moments; The Mummy's Hand is a return to the regular tone of a horror movie.

It's 30 years later and Stephen Banning (Dick Foran) has returned to the United States with Princess Ananka, but not Kharis, the mummy.  He's completely serious in his badly applied old age makeup reciting the tale to his son, John (John Hubbard) and sister, Jane (Mary Gordon), all who are targets of Kharis in seeking revenge for the desecration of the princess's tomb back in Egypt.

Kharis is brought to the United States by Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey), Andoheb's (George Zucco) successor to the throne of "High Priest."  After the recap and a fresh setup, it's basically the same movie as before, but with a less comedic tone.  Heck, even when bumbling Babe Hanson (Wallace Ford) shows up in his old age makeup, it's for the funeral of his old buddy, Kharis's first victim.

The Mummy's Hand is also a little more violent than not just for the other mummy movies, but for any of the Universal Monsters movies so far.  The camera lingers a little longer on the murder scenes and the creature is more savage.  It doesn't just grab someone's neck; it grabs it and shakes.  Part of this may be the performance of first-time mummy actor, Lon Chaney, Jr.

Chaney gives his mummy more personality than any of the previous actors.  He delivers more facial expression and is more agile and flexible.  He still mainly walks with one stiff leg and one that bends, one arm tied to the waist and one swinging by his side as loose bandages trail in the wind behind him.  The makeup still isn't as good as Karloff's, but the face has the illusion of one eye being a hollow socket.

I don’t think any mummy movie will be my favorite of the Universal Monsters, but by the time a man in the crowd shouts, "Get your torches," I'm enjoying The Mummy's Tomb as much as any other.  It's as efficient as a movie can be telling its story, keeping the action going throughout.  At the end, the creature of the living dead once again goes up in flames AND the leads still get married!  The headlines read:

Romance Scored Triumph Over Terror Reign

Tomorrow: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man!

The Mummy's Hand (1940)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, a sequel that may seem more familiar than the original... The Mummy's Hand!

The Mummy’s Hand (1940) is not a sequel to Universal’s 1932 hit, The Mummy; instead, it’s a variation of the tale that introduces some of the stereotypes about the monster that we’ve come to know and love today.  Unfortunately, it’s an inferior product in nearly every way.

Most egregiously, it plays like a test run for future Abbott & Costello movies.  The leads, tall straight man Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his squat, wisecracking sidekick Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford), yuk it up as “horror” unfolds around them.  They’re as poor substitutes for the real thing as Tom Tyler is for Boris Karloff as the mummy.

When you have a creation as great as Karloff’s mummy, even if visible for only a brief time, it’s criminal to give a cheap knock-off more screen time.  Luckily, The Mummy’s Hand runs only 67 minutes.  Let me tell you, though, it’s an interminable 67 minutes.

The movie opens with a dying High Priest (Eduardo Ciannelli) passing the torch to his predecessor, Professor Andoheb (George Zucco).  He relays the story of Princess Ananka and her lover, Kharis, who broke into her tomb after she died to steal forbidden tana leaves in order to bring her back to life.  For his crime, he was mummified and buried alive.

Well, that does sound pretty similar to The Mummy.  However, it differs in modern day Egypt.  Andoheb is instructed to dissolve three leaves every night of the full moon to keep Kharis alive.  If Ananka’s tomb is desecrated, he’s to use nine leaves to revive him.  He must never use more than nine, though, or it will become a monster.

You know her tomb is going to be desecrated or there wouldn’t be much of a movie; however, it takes more than half the running time to get to that point.  There’s way too much plot about Banning and Jenson hooking up with a magician, The Great Solvani (Cecil Kellaway) and his daughter Marta (Peggy Moran), to finance the archeological dig in the first place.

When Kharis/the mummy is finally shuffling ever so slowly through the desert, you’re cheering for him to kill the entire cast.  The Mummy’s Hand is the first Universal mummy movie to depict the monster carrying a passed-out damsel in his arms.  It’s a shame that great image came from such a slight movie.

Another flaw is that Andoheb is really the bad guy, just ordering the mummy to do his bidding.  As he places Marta on an altar, he tells her, “You’re so beautiful.  I’m going to make you immortal.”  He actually wants to use the tana leaves to make them both immortal.  It’s all rather sudden and has less meaning here when a single character like Imhotep from The Mummy is split into two characters.

Is it entertaining?  Barely.  I have trouble when mixing comedy into horror unless the movie is primarily a comedy.  The characters aren’t comic relief because there’s nothing scary about the movie.  However, I suppose it would be a good one for the kids to watch.  As much as it offends me, it’s really quite harmless.

Tomorrow: The Invisible Woman!

The Mummy (1932)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, a monster whose popularity escapes me... The Mummy!

Of all the wonderful elements in Universal’s The Mummy (1932), there’s one that’s largely absent: a mummy.  The cloth-wrapped version of (Boris) Karloff “The Uncanny,” with makeup by the great Jack Pierce (Frankenstein), is not seen again after the first 12 minutes of the movie.  We don’t even see him walk; we see only a lingering strip of cloth as he exits the tomb from which he was resurrected by the recital of an ancient curse.

This is great for the mystery and imagination, but how and where did we get the iconic mage of a mummy shuffling along, one arm outstretched or perhaps both arms carrying a beautiful woman into a swamp?  It must have been from a subsequent mummy movie, of which there are many (at least five more from Universal itself.)  Fortunately, we still have Karloff for the entire movie, as well as fantastically moody direction by Karl Freund.

A year earlier, Freund was the Cinematographer on Dracula.  In what is in essence a remake of Dracula, Freund calls the shots behind the camera and the result is a consistently more atmospheric and moody production.  He loves that strip of light across his creatures’ eyes; used so effectively in Dracula, he repeats the technique here.  It makes Karloff’s unwrapped character 10 years later in the story, Ardath Bey, even more sinister than Bela Lugosi.

Bey is really Imhotep, an Egyptian priest who was buried alive for trying to resurrect the woman he loved, princess Ankh-es-en-amon.  In modern Cairo, he encounters Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), who is the reincarnation of his princess.  He plots to kill her, mummify her, and then resurrect her so that she can be his eternal bride.  (“I was buried alive.  I ask of you only a moment of agony.”)  Sound familiar?  That’s often where the comparison to Dracula is made.

Having forgotten that The Mummy was largely mummy-less until I re-watched it recently, I now am a little more forgiving of Universal’s 1999 version, an action-packed epic masquerading as a horror film.  In retrospect, it does a pretty good job of harvesting the core elements from its predecessor.  I won’t say one of the elements in The Mummy (1932) is action; however, it is quite suspenseful and relies more heavily on supernatural forces instead of a particular monster itself.

I’m a little perplexed by the enduring popularity of the mummy as one of the evergreen monsters, along with Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man and/or the Creature from the Black Lagoon. What does a mummy actually do?  Sure, it’s a frightening image, and the dead brought back to life is usually scary.  But with the insane popularity of faster moving, hard to kill zombies, you’d think a creature that’s movements are restricted and can easily turn to dust would be rather ho-hum.

But I digress.  The Mummy (1932), regardless of the monster, is a worthy addition to the roster of Universal Monsters, within the context of their 1930’s origins.  It’s the first movie that’s mystery unfolds during the time it was made; Dracula and Frankenstein took place in the past.  It also gained huge momentum from the public’s fascination with mummies, as demonstrated following the discovery of Tutankhamun’s (King Tut’s) tomb in 1922.

Tomorrow: The Invisible Man!