Cast:
Lon Chaney Jr (Kharis), John Carradine (Yousef Bey), Robert Lowery (Tom Hervey), Ramsay Ames (Amina Mansori), Barton MacLane (Police Inspector Walgreen), George Zucco (High Priest Andoheb), Frank Reicher (Professor Matthew Norman), Harry Shannon (Sheriff Elwood), Emmett Vogan (Coroner), and Lester Sharp (Dr. Ayad) Directed by Reginald Le Borg (#1179 - The Black Sleep)
Review:
Okay, so here we are with another Mummy film (in the timeline of 30 years after The Mummy's Hand as established by The Mummy's Tomb). It's hard to believe that this is the third of the four Kharis films released from 1940 to 1944, and yet here we are. It is funny that Zucco returns for this film, having apparently survived being shot and going down the stairs from the last two films just so he can go assign the task of getting the mummy to the character played by John Carradine (creatively called Yousef Bey, after the last film had used named the follower character Mehemet Bey and the 1932 film had used "Ardath Bey"), who was busy enough to be on four Universal horror films (the others being The Invisible Man's Revenge, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula). The film was written by Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher, Brenda Weisberg, as based on a story by Jay and Sucher. The movie was shot quickly in August/September of 1943 but wasn't released until June of 1944. This is also yet another movie where a priest tries to get involved with a woman while trying to deal with Kharis. Oh, and reincarnations involving people thought to be the long-dead woman lover, which you might recognize as being from the 1932 Mummy film. The movie was done by Reginald Le Borg, an Austrian who had moved to the States in 1934 that rose from staging in film to bit part actor to directing by the late 1930s. He had made films for the Office of War Information during World War II but got to be part of Universal in 1943 for a handful of their films, most notably the first three "Inner Sanctum Mystery" films; he didn't care for his horror films, but he was a craftsman of several films in the B-level for many years.
You are not getting anything different that you saw in Tomb or Hand, but are you really that surprised? Sure, those movies weren't actually that good, but you could at least say they tried. Here, there just isn't anything to really grouse about, and this is a movie with Carradine in it. He just doesn't get that much to really do when compared to the stuff you saw before when it comes to goofy priests. Lowery might as well be an actual broomstick. Ames has one defining characteristic: a streak of white in her hair, which clearly means danger and sleepwalking. Since one knows that Chaney had a painful time with the makeup (couldn't even scratch an itch), it does amuse to see him try to go around with one good arm (such as with a fence). The people in the film sure have a fun time trying to avoid him, and it is pretty funny to see in a giant case of steps for the climax. Probably the most amusing thing about the movie is the use of a dog to help guide the people around to find the mummy, because then one can make a lazy Lassie joke. Nah, actually, my favorite joke is that a few times the movie has someone ask "Amon-Ra" to aid his quest and I could simply say "but Amon-Ra (St. Brown) plays in Detroit." The only thing that saves the movie is the ending, because for once, you don't get to have a happy ending wrapped up in the last five minutes. I do wonder just what the headline writers or folks did when it came to the time after the swamp episode ("Men Swamped By Swamp", anyone?). In conclusion, nothing has been improved from before in a series of serviceable but wholly "not particularly good" 1940s Mummy films. Making one have to debate between Hand and Tomb for the "best follow-up to The Mummy until being blown out by the 1999 rendition" is a sad task indeed.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
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