The Mummy's Curse (1944)

"New thrills! New terror!"

Plot

The mummies of Kharis and Princess Ananka are unearthed from a dried swamp in the Louisiana bayou by a team of excavators hoping to prepare the land for building. Dr Halsey plans to put the mummies on exhibition but unknown to him, his assistant is a priest from the cult of Ilkon and he revives the mummy. Princess Ananka is also reincarnated as a beautiful young woman and is found wondering around the swamp with no memory of who she is. When Kharis finds out, he kills everyone in his path in order to be reunited with his love.

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If you thought horror sequels got a bad hand nowadays, you should have seen what they like back in the 40s! The Mummy was one of Universal’s more successful monster films and the 1932 film paved the way for a whole slew of sequels, of which The Mummy’s Curse was the final one of the original run. But by this time, the mummy himself had become something of a one-note joke: arising from the dead; being controlled by an Egyptian high priest; going off in search of his love, Princess Ananka; killing people who were too slow to escape; and then meeting his untimely demise before he had chance to be reunited with her. Somehow this flimsy plot managed to stretch itself out over the course of a handful of sequels each with lower budgets and even lower creativity. In no other sequel is this stretching more plain to see than The Mummy’s Curse.

Going into production only a few months after the previous sequel, The Mummy’s Ghost, and being released the same year, The Mummy’s Curse is weak assembly line rehashing at its finest. Though the change of setting to the Louisiana bayou does make something of a fresh start (though not on story terms as the bodies of the mummies were buried in a swamp in New England in the last one!) and moving the story forward a few decades in time to the 1990s (though everything still appears to be 1940s America!), the film soon finds itself repeating the same circle of events as described above. At only an hour running time, the film somehow manages to feel longer. Cue the obligatory flashback scene in which we find out how Kharis came to be mummified – I’m not sure whether anyone would have watched the fourth sequel to a series without knowing even the slightest details about its main character. The footage looks familiar and that’s because it’s the same flashback scene we’ve had in each of the sequels. Reusing old footage continues to mean the series blends together more and more - it's virtually impossible to tell these sequels apart once it's been a while since you watch them.

With the budgets slashed as sequels went on, the mummy costume got progressively worse and it’s the mask which seems to have suffered the worst fate here, sagging around the eyes a little too much. Lon Chaney Jr. dons the costume again and can’t hide his displeasure at portraying the Egyptian menace once more. His performance is dull and effortless, kind of ironic given that’s what the mummy character usually is. He embodies the mummy with a useless right arm, constantly holding it up like it's in a sling, which then conveniently works when the script needs him to use it.

Most of the supporting characters are there to kill time in between scenes with Kharis and Ananka – with Chaney Jr. getting top billing, the rest of the cast is insignificant and the film could really have done with the likes of John Carradine from the previous film to keep the humans at least looking interesting, even if they were flatly written. A bad mix of Cajun stereotypes and Egyptian villains give The Mummy's Curse a slightly more dated feel than the other entries too. Once more, these supporting mummy-fodder characters are too dumb or slow to escape from the shuffling man in bandages. It makes a mockery out of common sense at times when no one seems to be able to get away from the world’s slowest walker.

The sole exception to the rule is Virginia Christine who plays Ananka, replacing Ramsay Ames from the previous film. She gets one of the best scenes in the entire series as she rises jerkily from her swampy resting place, caked in mud and clay from her decades in her enforced tomb, before slumbering off and bathing in nearby water to emerge as the token glamour girl she was. Obviously she has the looks and figure to have been cast in that role but her mannerisms and movement during this sequence really give you a sense that she 'got' the film and attempted to make Ananka hers, rather than just be another "by-the-book performance and move on to the next picture" bimbo.

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Final Verdict

The Mummy’s Curse is a weak end to what was virtually a dead series anyway. It’s more of the same as the last few sequels – there’s no originality, spark or attempt to make it anything but another formulaic carbon copy. Despite a brief reprisal with Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, Universal wouldn’t touch the undead Egyptian until 1999’s The Mummy.

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The Mummy's Curse Director(s): Leslie Goodwins Writer(s): Bernard Schubert (screenplay), Leon Abrams (original story & adaptation), Dwight V. Babcock (original story & adaptation) Actor(s): Lon Chaney Jr., Peter Coe, Virginia Christine, Kay Harding, Dennis Moore, Martin Kosleck, Kurt Katch Duration: 60 mins