The Mummy's Curse (1944)

This fourth and final movie in the original "The Mummy" franchise picks up from where the last one ended but despite being made the very same year has recast our leading lady which is a damn shame.It tells the story of our mummy once against being brought back to seek out his reincarnated lost love. This time however after the events of the last film she is suffering from amnesia and every one in her life is in terrible danger.Oddly the quality of this franchise in regards to cinematography has been inconsistent and this is one of the worst. Combine that with some hammy performances and yet again the movie cannot rise above being distinctly average stuff.Despite all this the entire franchise has had a certain charm, but I think 4 movies were sufficient especially considering how similiar they all are.A fitting finale.The Good:Carries on the story nicelyThe Bad:Timelines of the series make no senseCinematography has dippedRecastingMuch of the plot is confusingThings I Learnt From This Movie:Everyone who wears a Fez is evilAmnesiacs are a great source of free labourI can't take a character seriously if they're wearing a safari hat!

I keep reading complaints how the shift from New England to Louisiana is unexplained. It isn't. In the opening bits where the archaeologist talks with the authorities he tells how the priests moved the mummy to Louisiana 25 years ago. (It was perhaps the synopsis of an unfilmed sequel.) Anyhow the dialogue fully explains the shift in location and one needs only to listen to find out. Oh and Virginia Christine is absolutely gorgeous. I only wish they had given her more screen time.Also, Classicsoncall in his review says "We're signaled to the emergence of the Kharis legend by the first appearance of a dead body, but has anyone noticed that the laborer Antoine died with a knife in his back? Kharis always did his dirty work with his left hand, leaving bandage mold behind on the neck of his victims." This too is inaccurate. It was the priest's assistant who killed Antoine after they dug Kharis up. Again it's clearly stated in the dialogue. It's fine and dandy to criticize a movie for its shortcomings but the criticisms should be accurate. Stuff like that can turn off a potential viewer. If you're not going to pay attention to the dialogue then you really have no business submitting an inaccurate review.

1944's "The Mummy's Curse" was the fourth and last of the Kharis series, third to star Lon Chaney in the title role, and the only one not included in Universal's popular SHOCK! television package, having to wait for 1958's SON Of SHOCK, the same fate that befell beloved classics like "Bride of Frankenstein," "The Ghost of Frankenstein," and "House of Dracula." Going from a Massachusetts swamp to the Louisiana bayou is certainly a stretch, but not as much as setting the date an incredible 25 years later. The unexceptional Peter Coe ("House of Frankenstein") is this film's bland High Priest of Arkham, Ilzor Zandaab (his screen time quite limited), his recent disciple, the lascivious Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), providing all the knife wielding villainy to spice up the proceedings. An excavation of the swamp leaves one man dead, the knife still in his back, and a space just large enough for a mummy; shortly afterwards, another finds a hand emerging from its burial place, revealing the now revived Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine), who had gone down with Kharis at the conclusion of "The Mummy's Ghost." Making her way to a nearby lake, the Princess emerges perfectly coiffured (every hair in place!), if a bit wet and amnesiac, spelling death for all those who take her in. There are solid roles for veterans Addison Richards, Holmes Herbert, Kurt Katch, Charles Stevens, William Farnum, and Ann Codee, criminally unbilled as Tante Berthe. Popular years later playing Mrs. Olsen in the Folgers commercials, Virginia Christine scores impressively as Ananka (her natural blonde locks hidden under a jet black wig), light years better than the insipid Ramsay Ames in "The Mummy's Ghost" (her other Universal horror was the doomed prostitute who encounters Rondo Hatton's Creeper in 1946's "House of Horrors"). This marked the end of Kay Harding's brief stardom at Universal ("Weird Woman," "The Scarlet Claw"), while Martin Kosleck, previously seen in the still unissued "The Frozen Ghost," continued his scene stealing ways in "Pursuit to Algiers," "House of Horrors," and "She-Wolf of London." For a role he so fervently despised, Lon Chaney's Mummy again fares well, his frustration palpable, continuously (even comically) one step behind his beloved Princess (the climax finds them both headed permanently to Manhattan's Scripps Museum). This appears to have been the most popular of his three outings, reprising the role in 1959's Mexican "La Casa del Terror" and on television's ROUTE 66 (the 1962 Halloween broadcast "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing," opposite Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre). "The Mummy's Curse" made a total of six appearances on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater- Sept 25 1965 (following 1963's "Battle Beyond the Sun"), Feb 10 1968 (following 1933's "The Invisible Man"), Sept 30 1972 (following 1944's "House of Frankenstein"), Jan 25 1975 (following 1960's "The Lost World"), Sept 20 1975 (following 1969's "Godzilla's Revenge"), and Apr 23 1977 (following 1935's "Bride of Frankenstein").

At the end of the previous movie "The Mummy's Ghost" the mummy known as "Kharis" (Lon Chaney) carried the beautiful "Amina Mansouri" (Ramsay Ames) into the Louisiana swamp and while they were sinking into quicksand she had morphed into the "Princess Ananka". This movie essentially picks up where the previous movie ended with some workers for the "Southern Engineering Company" trying to drain the Louisiana swamp where Kharis and Ananka sank some 25 years earlier. While work is progressing two people from the "Scripps Museum", who go by the names of "Dr. James Halsey" (Dennis Moore) and "Dr. Ilzor Zandaab" (Peter Coe), come to see the owner of the company "Pat Walsh" (Addison Richards) to tell him that they want to dig up Kharis for their museum. Unfortunately, while they are talking the dead body of one of the workers is found near that site. Also found is a bandage which could have only come from Kharis. Not long after that Princess Ananka (now played by Virginia Christine) is also freed from her underground resting place and as she wanders in the swamp she gradually changes back into her old identity of Amina Mansouri. Naturally, Kharis wants her back and he will stop at nothing to get her. Anyway, rather than detail the rest of the movie and possibly ruin the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this is the 4th sequel to the original movie "The Mummy" which was filmed back in 1932. As such it follows the same standard plot which admittedly gets a bit old in subsequent re-tellings. And while there are a couple of twists thrown in which have a certain appeal the fact that this movie only lasted 62 minutes doesn't allow for any depth to the characters or the plot. That said, in my opinion this "paint-by-numbers" approach doesn't lend any quality to the movie and as a result I rate it as slightly below average.