The Mummy's Curse

Well, the Mummy Kharis series hits the road to Louisiana for a change of pace, but a swamp clearing turning up Ananka and Kharis (I’m not wasting my time even dwelling on the gigantic elephant in the room regarding how such a road trip from New England to Bayou country could happen) seems more than a little absurd. Not to get on that soapbox because it is exhausting.

On the night when the moon is so high in the heaven, the mummy and his princess, they walk.

Now we even have a Curt Siodmak line for the Mummy series.

We learn as Bayou folk discuss the mummy and its curse that it has been 25 years since Kharis took Ananka into the swamp. So that gives us an idea of how long it has been from The Mummy’s Ghost to The Mummy’s Curse. It still doesn’t explain…oh, nevermind. Later one of the workers who considered the curse talk nonsense goes missing and the foreman of the swamp draining project can’t seem to get anyone of the poor sanitation workers to go near the location.

When the worker is found with a knife in his back, it carries the sign that it is actually a person responsible, perhaps to halt the engineering sanitation, swamp clearing project. It turns out that Egyptian Dr. Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe; he was in the segment of House of Frankenstein featuring John Carradine’s Dracula), who joined American Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) from the Scripps Museum in the hopes of uncovering both mummies that, according to them, went into the swamp the Southern Engineering Company wishes to drain, is in cahoots with a servant, Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), who doesn’t mind stabbing someone in the back if it means he can accomplish carrying two sarcophaguses to the remote ruins of a monastery perched upon these massive steps. While Kharis has been found, and placed in his sarcophagus, Ananka hasn’t (I’m not sure why she hadn’t been, but then there wouldn’t be much of a movie, would they?), so Ilzor vows to find her so the mummies can be reunited.

So, once each night during the cycle of the full moon, Ragheb is ordered to give Kharis three leaves of tana fluid in preparation for the nine tana leaves each night for his movement and strength…Ilzor has big plans for him. In these movies, the Egyptians always swear to Amon-ra, but nearly always they betray their solemn vows to serve without fail…typically over a woman’s affections.

Once again (at least the blah The Mummy’s Ghost didn’t waste our time with this) footage from Mummy movies in the past are shown in flashback, explaining the reasoning behind Ilzor’s mission. It is Universal being cheap, is what it is. This is the sad state the Mummy Kharis series had resorted to…House of Dracula treated Frankenstein’s Monster similarly with flashback footage from other Frankenstein movies, sadly establishing methods to save cash, telling us that interest in their monsters had waned. It made me personally groan. Just tiresome.

All that said, there’s a showstopping sequence that rivals the best Mummy films (the first two) when Ananka rises from the earth, revived as if resurrecting as the sun beams down upon her. It’s just fabulous and simple. I truly was convinced that she could have been buried in the swamp for decades. She can’t even open her eyes the dirt is so thick. And how she seems to indicate that this whole process is as if she were being “resuscitated”, I think it successfully establishes her “re-awakening”.

The return of the stranglehold of doom is in this film which means multiple people in the same room with Ananka freeze into place and allow Kharis to drag towards them, grab them by the throat with one hand, and cause damn near instantaneous death. A performance artist at a club, an archeologist (archeologists die a lot in these movies; it is indeed a dangerous profession) at the dig site, or monastery caretaker; if you are in the general area of Kharis, it seems your fate is decided.

This time around, George Zucco didn’t get to pick up a few bucks as High Priest of Arkham, Andohep, with Universal going with just Coe. I guess propelling the final sequel forward 25 years, old Andohep finally took a dirtnap and had since joined his gods.

I don’t know what it is, but movies in the good ole days loved to have women faint instantly. Awaken to the sight of the mummy, flick the switch to unconsciousness. Kharis’ crippled arm springs to life when he lifts up Ananka and whisks her away…it’s the arm with a mind of its own.

The ending just flounders. Ilzor is even a lesser high priest than his predecessors. He is stabbed in the back by the always-knife-wielding Ragheb who betrays his master after becoming overwhelmed with lust for Southern Engineering foreman’s niece. Ilzor exits the film by getting a knife in the back by a nobody who wants to shag the niece of his foreman’s relative…kind of a letdown considering the previous high priests at least bit the big one in grander style.

 Part of the series’ repetition is that lust for women continuing to be the root cause of the undoing of the “ones in charge”. Bypassing the mission in favor of deciding to satisfy their sexual urges, those with a control over their mummy leave the picture and soon Kharis is left on his own with the authorities (or local mob [natch]) closing in. Kharis attacks those that stand in his way…most of the time it is under orders or going after his long-lost princess (sometimes in re-incarnated form). Victims don’t run or try to move around Kharis. Kharis reduces his victims to collapsing heaps with little effort. The series isn’t the most flattering for Universal…in fact, besides the first two films, the sequels are ultimately done in by messy, illogical scripts and a boring Kharis. Too bad.

My favorite part of this film is Princess Ananka, played by the gorgeous, captivating Virginia Christine. She has amnesia and gets little time to truly become involved with the characters on the location because she spends so much time on the run. She’s a tragic figure because Ananka, no matter how hard she tries, this young woman can never escape Kharis. By film’s end, she is fed some of the tana leaf stew by Ilzor, and upon the demise of those who can keep her and Kharis alive, Ananka is reduced to her previous incarnation upon rising from the earth of the drained swamp land.

Looking at the setting, I’m thinking this movie was shot in the same area of the Universal sets as Son of Dracula. They both have a lot of swamp-forests that appear quite similar. Seeing that both films feature a Southern setting (one featuring Dracula, the other Kharis) and feature characters that might exist in it (well, the characters are seen through the lens of non-Southerners). Knowing Universal was going through their cheap phase, it wouldn’t surprise me if they used sets from Son of Dracula for The Mummy’s Curse.