Movie Info
Movie Name: The Mummy’s Curse
Studio: Universal Studios
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): December 22, 1944
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Gimme my woman!
Thirty years have passed since the mummy named Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) disappeared into the swamps with his love Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine). Now the swamps are being excavated by Pat Walsh (Addison Richards), and Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) have been sent to find the bodies of Kharis and Ananka. Unfortunately, Zandaab has other plans for Kharis and which involves both Kharis and his love Ananka walking the Earth again! Now, it is up to Halsey and Walsh’s daughter
Betty (Kay Harding) to stop the mummy once and for all.
Directed by Leslie Goodwins, The Mummy’s Curse was the fifth and final film in Universal’s official Mummy series (it was originally titled The Mummy’s Return). Following The Mummy’s Ghost also in 1944, the movie was largely panned by critics.
I’m just a mummy trying to make a living…
The Mummy’s Curse represents the end of the Mummy’s line…but you wouldn’t know it. The series which fumbled its way through the decades continues to slowly lurch along as the story, the acting, and most of the visuals (sans one great scene) fail to help a series that never was as good as the other Universal Monsters.
The story of this film isn’t very good. With the jumps in years, the story would technically be set in 1995. It also randomly moves the story to the South…in the previous film, the swamps in which Kharis and Ananka disappeared into were in Massachusetts. It is a rather unceremonious send off to a classic monster.
Creepy imagery
The film is also a B-Movie loaded with B-Movie actors. Despite Lon Chaney, Jr.’s return as Kharis, most of the acting was sub-par. The movie didn’t have much of a script or story, so it isn’t very shocking that the actors would struggle to make it interesting.
Universal Monster movies really had collapsed in the period between their heyday and this film. Despite the cheap look and feel of the movie, one scene does stand out in this movie. The scene in which Ananka rises from the dirt actually is quite horrifying. The movie spends a lot of time on it and it is worth it…it is actually a great scene in a so-so film.
With this film, The Mummy saga ends…thankfully. The tedious series had its moments, but often felt like it was stumbling much like the mummy itself. The mummy wasn’t entirely over with the death of the series…the heap of bandages returned in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy in 1955 which featured Eddie Parker as Klaris the Mummy.
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