The Mummy's Curse

Happy Halloween ghouls and ghoulettes!

More of a whimper than a bang for the end. Universal was running out of steam for horror films by the mid 40s and nothing really says it louder than the fact both Ghost and Curse came out in 1944 putting an end to The Mummy until Hammer studios got their hands on it. A titanic shift has occured here in both time and space, so apparently 25 years have passed since Ghost which if my math is mathing puts this in the late 1960s but the bigger kicker is the setting has shifted from Massachusets to friggin' Louisiana! That's kind of a wide berth to put it lightly, we got french speaking residents, multiple mentions of swamps and bayous, it's Louisiana. Admittedly the Universal Monster movies like a lot of series back then outside of film serials didn't hold continuity in a great light but even I was surprised how much was in sync picture to picture so this blindisded me a notch. But hey a change is welcome to not get stale, though it's very much business as usual. Priests of Arcam are searching for Kharis in the swamp to take him back to Egypt, the reincarnated princess is being stalked by Kharis, and the whole movie gets wrapped up in the last 5 minutes in true Universal fashion. Is it bad? No I wouldn't go that far, but I do feel if it truly ended with Ghost we would have a pretty damn good trilogy here. There really isn't much in terms of protagonist here, there's a bevy of characters who don't have much part to play so we just focus on the princess Ananka which sounds great! At long last we finally get to meet this girl who's been the goal since 1940 but since she's reincarnated she just takes the shape of a amnesiac with only hints of her past, which is a shame. Even Kharis doesn't have much to do if anything becoming the mindless killing machine we were warned about from the start, strangling any soul who's at the wrong place and the wrong time. Even the ending is pretty lackluster but it has brief memorable moments and flashes of something good that keeps it from being an utter slog and far from unwatchable. It's the weakest of the bunch but that is the curse of sequels. If I had to do a ranking I'd go:

4. The Mummy's Curse

3. The Mummy's Ghost

2. The Mummy's Hand

1. The Mummy's Tomb

 

2.5 stars for this one, 6.5/10. And it appears the eleventh hour is over now and the clock is striking twelve. This was a grand October here and elsewhere, and I hope it was for you too. Wherever you may be and whatever you do this most wonderous of days, you'll always have a little corner for Halloween right here.

The Mummy's Ghost

This may have the best ending to any of the Universal Monster movies.

Not a huge leap in quality this time from Tomb to Ghost, but a decent enough entry. Well not much time has passed since the last movie with the Mummy still in Mapleton and a new priest is introduced yet again but this time with a much different agenda, pretty much grab Ananka and get the hell out of Dodge. Yet again a 60 minute runtime to wrap up the plot, with less of a body count and less interesting protagonists in the form of 30 year old looking college students Tom and Amina who got a bit of a romance going, God bless them the writers try to give character where they can but the runtime is the real killer here and not much changes in the next movie I can tell you that. Will however say Ramsay Ames is a stunningly gorgeous woman, easily the best looking lady woman of the series especially when she gets those white streaks in her hair. And congrats to all the women out there who have that too, you're stunners! But anyway, John Carradine is our new priest and I feel that's an actor who never got his flowers despite every movie I've seen him in he does damn good work, the eyework alone in this movie is intense enough to applaud. Of course Lon returns and though he doesn't get much fanfare in his first scene has some standout moments including the above mentioned ending. Do I spoil it? It is a movie that just turned 80 years old but it's not a very well known movie either, and I think it's so good that I dare not ruin it. All I can say is that was ballsy as hell and I love it to death. It makes the whole movie worthwhile and saves it from being mediocre. It doesn't have the atmosphere and direction as the last but has it's shining moments in other areas. So I'll give it 3 stars, 7/10, you really can't lose much over an hour long movie and who the hell wants to watch stuff like Heaven's Gate or Cleopatra or Gone With The Wind when you can watch all the Kharis Mummy movies instead?

The Mummy's Tomb

Now this is more traditional fare.

Made 2 years after The Mummy's Hand we jump three decades in plot time with a new priest and Kharis venturing to Massachusets to destroy the bloodline of Steve Banning from the first movie because revenge and curses just go hand in hand, as the town of Mapleton has to contend with a murderous mummy. What surprised me twofold from the movie's start is the time period and the return of Dick Foran and Wallace Ford from the first movie, I figured Hand was pretty much the 1940s but on further investigation could have been anywhere from the start of the 1900s to 1940 cause it sure as hell doesn't look like 1970 in this movie but very much is centered in the 40s, and for a Universal monster movie to have this level of continuity of both plot and characters between films is like Marvel levels today! I think I can easily say this is my favorite of the bunch so far dropping the action comedy shtick and giving us atmosphere and horror while still basically treading the same plot as before with some appreciated variation. The cemetery, the woods, the amount of shadow play on sets, the reused music from The Wolf Man, this makes a superior sequel that pushes my buttons in all the right ways. True our leads aren't as interesting as Steve and Babe, this time being Steve's son John and his fianceè Isobel but with a runtime of one singular hour there isn't a lot of room for character depth but they act it just fine and dandy. Turhan Bey though not as slimy as George Zucco in Hand, has a real good presence and is the standout performance for me. Lon Chaney Jr. who was pretty much the main movie monster star of the decade is on the same level as Tom Tyler neither better or worse, I feel is carried aloft higher through the direction and atmosphere giving Kharis a lot more scare factor and upping the body count gives it a proto-slasher vibe. I do kinda wish the Mummy movies of this decade were longer to give more breathing room and thusly better quality, but who ever said having a fun sized length monster movie was a bad thing? I give it 3.5 stars, 7.5/10!

The Wolf Man (1941)

You know how I've been saying that it really doesn't take long to show the monster? Quite the opposite here.

So The Wolf Man is one of the better well known Universal Monsters, and the film itself is damn good. The story follows an everyday man Larry Talbot played by the great Lon Chaney Jr., who after a run in with a wolf soon learns that he will become a werewolf himself. So Larry must try and find a cure for his werewolfism before he causes harm to his family and the girl he loves. What I really like besides the very good cast, including Claude Rains and Evelyn Ankers is the excellent musical score, and how eerie they made the forrest. Oh, and I swear I am not making this up, you hear part of the Batman theme by Danny Elfman more than 45 years before the original 1989 Batman movie. So bizarre but really interesting. And yes, you don't actually see the title monster until well past the halfway point of the film, but I actually find that helps build the myth of the werewolves and build our characters in the story. So I very much enjoy this movie, and enjoy the next one I am going to review even more.

Tune in tomorrow where we look at a love story that lasted generations.