THE MUMMY'S CURSE (1944)

Universal’s unwanted Christmas present to horror fans in December 1944 was a final, anaemic pseudo-serious entry in the Mummy series entitled The Mummy’s Curse. Straining the last drops of Tana essence out of the mythology, it resurrected the terminally under-used Lon Chaney Jr as Kharis, eternal lover of the ancient Princess Ananka with whom he disappeared into the Louisiana swamp twenty-five years before this fourth sequel is set. Under former comedy director Leslie Goodwins, this last entry wraps up the original franchise without any humour and virtually nothing to offer.

Bernard Schubert who previously wrote 1935’s Mark of the Vampire and Jungle Woman (1944) was one of an unbelievable seven writers in total involved with the humdrum screenplay. Here, an engineering firm is draining the swamp for reclamation when the Scripps Museum’s Dr Halsey (Dennis Moore) and the Egyptian Dr Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) ask for the chance to excavate the area for the fabled mummified twosome. There’s no need to look for Zucco’s evil High Priest in this version as the active villain sports the dead giveaway ‘black hat’ of a fez . That dubious honour falls to Dr Zandaab who has already dredged up Kharis and secreted him in an abandoned monastery with the aid of his servant Ragheb (Martin Kosleck). This is just as well since the death of a labourer has filled the other site workers with supernatural fear about continuing work in the swamp. Napoleon Simpson’s Goobie expresses this in stereotyped Afro-American subservience: “The devil’s on the loose and he’s dancing with the Mummy!”

Sho’ nuff, Zandaab awakens Kharis with the ancient Tana leaf brew after a flashback that through the mists of time recaps the three-Millenia old legend of how Kharis was rumbled trying to revive his worshipped Princess love and was treated to a live burial as a reward along with those refreshing leaves. These scenes were a crafty cannibalisation of Karloff material from The Mummy (1932) and footage of 1940’s The Mummy's Hand.

The one worthwhile sequence in this film is the memorable rise from the swamp mud of Ananka played by Virginia Christie – later appearing as Wilma Lentz in the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Although Christie emerges as an actress with the same vacuous dialogue delivery as The Mummy’s Ghost’s Ramsey Ames whom she replaces, the physicality of how she emerges from the mud is strikingly eerie. There are echoes of Fulci’s undead rising from Zombi 2 in the slow deliberation of her movements, sightless and clay-covered, almost a stone statue come to life. She raises her blind eyes to the sun and gradually recovers her vision, greeting the world anew with almost poetic beauty and dignity.

Meanwhile the marauding Kharis is sent by the fezzed facilitator to retrieve Ananka. Despite being prone to dream-state murmurings of his name, she flees at the bandaged sight of him. He kidnaps her even so from sanctuary at the home of Cajun matron Tante Berthe (Ann Codee) who began the film singing a French ditty as though we’d stumbled into a Gallic operetta by mistake.

Relocated to the protection of Dr Halsey, Ananka quickly impresses him with her practical skill at identifying a bandage scrap as belonging to Kharis, albeit without any conscious idea of how she knows this. What becomes more evident to the discerning viewer is the better choice for her role of the spirited Kay Harding who instead is the site boss’s niece Betty Walsh. (Harding was Marie Journet a few months before in Sherlock Holmes and the Scarlet Claw). 

The climax takes place in the monastery, a much more elaborate backdrop than the pitiful shed used in The Mummy’s Ghost. This time, the usual betrayal of the Kharis reunion mission comes not from Zandaab but Ragheb, who is understandably bewitched by the better actress. “Master, I am but flesh and blood” he murmurs with ironic lifelessness. Ragheb stabs his employer with a knife and then tries to kill rescuer Halsey but is forced to hide in a cell as Kharis comes after him in furious vengeance mode, his wrath bringing down the holy bricks of the monastery’s wing upon them.

The ending of this drab quickie did not save Lon Chaney from Universal’s remaining monster team-ups of their second wave in House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945). He would however regain a measure of respect for his admirably straight revisiting of Wolf Man Laurence Talbot in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).