Kharis 4: The Mummy’s Curse Reviewed

 

A Plan9Crunch analysis from Joseph Gibson

 

Previous Recent Kharis Reviews:

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-mummys-hand-reviewing-kharis.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-mummys-tomb-reviewing-kharis.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-mummys-ghost-reviewing-kharis.html

 Introduction: The Ship of Theseus

 

Please forgive the title and format change for this review series; in my head, this was quite clever and apt.  By this point in the Kharis tetralogy, there was no substantial creative figure I can find that was still in the franchise that had been previously.  (Each film had a different director, but writer Griffin Jay and producer Ben Pivar were the constants before this, but now Bernard Schubert has taken over writing arguments, based on a story from Leon Abrams and Dwight V. Babcock, while Oliver Drake is the producer.)  There is really no single piece of this creative experience that was present from the days of the Mummy’s Hand, so I thought why not make my review match that in some way.

 

It brings to mind the thought paradox of the Ship of Theseus.  If every piece of the whole has been swapped out, is it even the same ship anymore, and at what point did it change?  This is still a Kharis film, with Ananka and the evil mysterious High Priests, but Kharis isn’t Tom Tyler, Ananka isn’t Ramsay Ames and not only are the Priests called Arkam not Karnak now but Andoheb, our main tether to this cult, is gone.  The setting also, rather bizarrely, is different now.  Some of these changes happened gradually, with tethers to the old still present, but ripping off the Band-aid with how different this film is even from the last one raises a certain question.  Is this still even the same series anymore?  I would say yes, but you’ll have to be in suspense as to my reasoning for quite a while.  Despite also starting this review differently than before, I, like Kharis, am still here, for better or for worse and this review is built on my previous analyses of this series, just like the movie is built on his previous escapades.

 

Of Name Discrepancies 

 

Because I was unsure how fully to commit to the Ship of Theseus bit, I actually watched this film not on my captioned dvd but on Internet Archive without captions: in a completely different format which also happened to correspond to a different experience. Consequently, and it is actually very interesting this happened, I cannot say for sure what certain character names are (and neither can internet sources).  Does Kay Harding play Betty Ward as IMDB claims or Betty Walsh (wikipedia)?  It certainly sounds more like Walsh, and her uncle is named Walsh.  Is Peter Coe’s High Priest character named Doctor Ilzor Zardad or Ilzor Zardaab?  Those would sound similar no matter what, so I don’t lean one way or the other. 

 

I generally trust Wikipedia (or at least the sources it links to) more than IMDB, but Wikipedia also calls Tante Berthe’s Cafe (the sign clearly visible multiple times in the movie) a pub.  It is really interesting to me that there is such a large disagreement and even more interesting that I got to be a part of that experience by accidentally taking away the option to have an answer.  The name differences do not matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.  I will call Ilzor Ilzor and Betty Betty (the funny thing about that is that this is also how the credits refer to them, just their first names).

 

The Beginning of the Movie

 

This film is set in rural Louisiana (somehow Kharis, Peanuts, Tom and the mob in the last movie all made the 1382-mile trek from Massachusetts to Louisiana during that climactic chase scene) and opens at the Tante Berthe’s Cafe with a musical number from Tante Berthe.  Character Cajun Joe hits on her and seems somewhat like a sleazeball but one they put up with, while another character named Achilles alludes to Kharis being around as a town legend after winding up in the swamp 25 years before.

 

The actual plot begins when the Southern Engineering Company, represented through belligerent Pat Walsh (Betty’s uncle), aims to drain the swamp that contains Kharis, much to everyone else’s chagrin on account of a recent disappearance and murder attributed to The Mummy or Rougarou/Loup-Garou (pesky captionless print; the Rougarou and Loup-Garou are technically different and either would make sense in this context).  Two doctors from the Scripps Museum (which previously housed Ananka), Ilzor and James Halsey, show up to try to reclaim Kharis and Ananka from the swamp.  Ilzor, it turns out, is there to reclaim them not for the museum but for the cult.  

 

Now, there has been at the very least a 25 year time skip, and seemingly Ilzor and another character already planted in the Louisiana town called Ragheb (Martin Kosleck’s character) are all that remain of the cult of Arkam.  It makes enough sense, given how Andoheb sent The Beggar, Mehemet Bey, and Yousef Bey into dangerous scenarios that got them killed, that Andoheb might have run this cult into the ground offscreen (even if that is a little contrived), but I will actually commend the detail that Ilzor was planted in the museum.  As far as damage control following Dr. Ayad figuring out the secret of the tana leaves, it makes sense for the cult to infiltrate their enemies.  (As for how Andoheb would know about that, The Mummy's Ghost showed both him and Yousef to be very adept at interpreting information from the gods in prayer.)  It just feels like there is a film missing where a dying Andoheb sent Ilzor as their last hope to revive Kharis and annihilate anyone who knows their secret and where Kharis somehow wound up in Louisiana.

 

Ilzor at least has learned from Yousef’s mistake of trying to outright control Kharis by trying to reason with him mostly.  This brings us to the obligatory backstory explanation with stock footage where Ilzor instructs Ragheb in their tana ritual, and the caretaker of the monastery where they are keeping Kharis arrives only for Kharis to kill him.  Ilzor informs Kharis that he will have to find Ananka, and, throughout these scenes, the tana leaves are once again confusing.  Three to keep Kharis alive is mentioned again (though he would have spent 25 years without any, so does he need them for his heart to beat?), but there is a scene where an already moving Kharis is given his 9 tana leaves (9 are supposed to give him motivation and movement, but consistently, he has been already moving to receive those 9, so he should be uncontrollable in all the films, which he admittedly is in these last two but for character reasons, not tana reasons).

 

The Return and Recasting of Princess Ananka

 

Next, a hand and later a body emerge from dirt nearby the swamp.  This being walks stiffly, like a Mummy, from being caked in mud, but the sunlight above empowers her to walk normally after she washes off.  This is Virginia Christine’s Princess Ananka.

 

Now, this hardly feels like the same character as Ramsay Ames in the previous film, and that is technically both a good and bad thing.  Amina was trapped between two battling identities, and the amnesia here should serve as a reset for at least one of those personalities.  If last time the spirit of Ananka inhabited the normally witty Amina, this time the amnesiac Princess Ananka should be our true introduction to this character as she uncovers at least one of her dormant personalities.  In this movie, she alternates between a bubbly and helpful nature that is knowledgeable about Egyptology or almost full catatonia where all she can do is mutter Kharis, run from the mummy and pass out.

 

It is in her less lucid moments that Cajun Joe finds her, tells her he can take her to find help, goes through the side door of Tante Berthe’s cafe, lays her on the bed, and, surprisingly, actually does go get Tante Berthe for help, leaving to get the doctor once Tante Berthe starts helping Ananka.  I don’t want to allude too much to R rated subject matter, but this scene, especially with the context of Cajun Joe as a bit of lecherous Ne’er-do-well, resembles a particular kind of heinous assault especially with Ananka being groggy (implicitly the moonlight and Arkam magic have a drug like effect on her to achieve this state), and I will applaud the film for subverting this imagery to henceforth establish Cajun Joe as a very strong and moral character.  It actually contextualizes why the beginning of this film is structured so that we start in Tante Berthe’s with him and not with the remaining priests of Arkam as per usual.  We have already seen the Mummy and the priests, but there is still suspense to be had in establishing the dynamics of these new townsfolk.

 

Next, Kharis finds her and kills Tante Berthe, the fleeing Ananka winding up with Halsey, Betty and Dr. Cooper, but, before I get into that, I would like to finish discussing Ananka as a character.  As I mentioned, her catatonic and absentminded moments tend to correspond either to nighttime (a good plot justification for setting the action during the scarier nighttime) or odd circumstances involving Arkam priests that said priests take credit for (her mind goes blank when she sees Ilzor during the next day, and he claims that he was trying to lure her back to Kharis in that moment).  During the day, specifically when the sun is up, she shows greater humanity, as she is an agreeable and knowledgeable person that can help Halsey out by identifying and dating Kharis’ wraps because the wrappings were different in Amenophis’ era than after apparently. 

 

The film treats this like Ananka surfacing, but Ananka would only know the Amenophis wrappings and not be able to compare across the centuries, right?  We have never seen Arkam cultists talk about the specifications of the wrappings; it is Amina that associated closely with Egyptologist Professor Norman and checked out books from the college.  (That said, it is possible that Ananka, however long her spirit was in the Scripps Museum, may have observed figures like Steve Banning or Dr. Ayad in their studies, but if she can’t remember either earthly existence, why would she remember her ghostly one?)

 

The Mummy’s Curse

 

The scenes of Kharis chasing her and their dueling motifs make for very interesting cinema to analyze.  She is at her strongest in the sun but still cannot remember herself (or ultimately escape her fate of being recaptured and magically mummified), and Kharis is at his strongest during the moonlight but is a slow-moving slave to his tragic pursuit of love.  There are moments where Ananka or the people protecting her are right in his grasp, but they move on without even noticing he was there.  Moments like that work well for tension because we have already seen his sheer power and brutal effectiveness, but it also communicates a pathetic tragedy, otherwise called “The Mummy’s Curse”.  He’s almost more of a ghost than a man and very out of focus in this film by comparison to the last while still carrying out his will where it intersects with the priests (though still also a downgrade in autonomy).  

 

The focus of this chase scene is on Ananka, engulfed in almost total darkness, an effectively scary scene because we, like Ananka, cannot see much of anything and do not know the layout, but Kharis is still out there, far closer than we realize.  When she ends up with Halsey and Betty, they step into more important roles and each survive confrontations with Ragheb and Kharis respectively, while all Kharis gets is a few more kills, an only somewhat frustrating climactic choice and finally to be buried and eventually put on display at the Scripps Museum.

Leading up to the climax, Kharis kills Dr. Cooper and destroys Betty’s tent to abduct Ananka, while Cajun Joe helps out in a search party for Ananka, Ragheb leads Betty into a trap, and Halsey follows Kharis to find Ragheb killing Ilzor (because Ragheb rather abruptly wants to take on Betty as a sinful bride).  Kharis can really play only the role of predator here; Chaney really isn’t given a chance to act much opposite Ananka, but his murders are fine.  I dislike that he ends up killing Cajun Joe for how much I actually appreciate the character, but Joe wasn’t really the lead of this ensemble, just the character who did the most for others, so his death means more than Achilles, the bartender or Goobie would.

 

Climax

 

Once the remaining core characters are all at the monastery, Ragheb and Halsey fight, and, first, I will just say this might be the most obligatory final fight between a designated protagonist and designated antagonist in any of these Classic Universal Monsters films.  Halsey and Ilzor had a connection, and Halsey grew suspicious of Ilzor briefly when he was trying to lure Ananka to Kharis, but this finale can proceed as if those scenes did not happen, a very bizarre choice.  Rather than flowing from a movie’s worth of buildup, Halsey and Ragheb are fighting because of only the most recent plot points, which is still logical, just not cathartic.

 

The more important part of this sequence is when Kharis turns on Ragheb, and, again, it makes sense in context but does not have much foreshadowing.  I like the idea that Kharis is so fed up with these priests failing, that he’ll kill them when they fall to temptation even when their temptation isn’t Ananka, and I also kind of like the idea that Kharis will be out of focus for most of this movie as part of the tragedy of his character, but I don’t think the film’s execution in weaving these plot threads together is exceptionally good.  Ragheb has no chance from the moment Kharis goes after him, meaning this ending is entirely reliant on the spectacle of the monastery falling around them (which is admittedly well done).  It is just also strange for Kharis to single out Ragheb, when Ragheb is the only person there that isn’t trying to take Ananka and Kharis back to the museum (this is Halsey’s whole reason for being there, and Ilzor should have told Kharis, while the denouement reveals that Betty plans to go with Halsey).

 

Making Ilzor the one to go after Betty would already make the climax more personal for Halsey (because the film decided for some reason he should be the lead instead of Cajun Joe), but it also would for Kharis, since Ragheb was only being instructed on how to care for Kharis by Ilzor, and it was Ilzor that demanded far less of and seemed for helpful to Kharis than any previous master.  For Kharis to lose that at the same time as Ananka (who he barely interacts with in this climax) and have to fight his way out would be very interesting.  

 

What we have is serviceable because Kharis still does lose the most benevolent and powerful master he had ever had, but I think it is undeniable that it would have been more interesting for Ilzor to be the final foe based on the same reason it was most interesting for Edelmann to be the final foe in House of Dracula: inserts an extra layer of tragedy while also engineering a scenario where our hero monster is the underdog.  Imagine for a moment a polished version of The Mummy’s Curse where Ilzor, as in the film, very carefully navigates his cult’s calling with satiating Kharis, feeding Kharis and trying to help him find Ananka while using his magic only on Ananka for that goal, until he does yield to his temptations and then does have to fight Kharis. The fight between an Arkam cultist at full power and Kharis, technically the weakest he has been in this series but the most motivated, not only carries proper tension and is based on the natural momentum of this series but also is the kind of fight I would expect to lead to a destroyed monastery, Ananka somehow becoming mummified and all the nearby tana leaves being destroyed.  As is, those just kind of happen, with the shallow justification that this is the final film.  

 

I don’t want to spend too much time here pitching a different film, because that isn’t really film criticism, but unless I am missing some important symbolism, the filmmakers choosing this ending over any other possibilities really weakens the foundations of this story and makes it seem less interesting.  Do you, the reader, still remember or care as much about the tense Cajun Joe subversion now that the film has decided he, our introductory character, is not important enough to have a stake in the climax?  If I hadn’t brought up the differing styles of Ilzor to previous High Priests, would you remember that when the final image the director Leslie Goodwins chose to show us was Kharis turning on Ragheb after the latter’s temptation was more abrupt than Yousef Bey’s (which itself required an act of god)?

 

Conclusion

 

If any one of these films qualifies as a cash grab, it would be The Mummy’s Curse.  If any one of these films would most benefit from polishing, additional drafts and a longer runtime, it would be this one (and that is saying a lot since that is true of all of these Kharis movies).  And, as I’ve already mentioned, this film is the odd one out, the Ship of Theseus, but it still does enough interesting things with the mythology of Kharis and Ananka (the sun and moon contrast is very simple but also really interesting) and the tragedy of both to have a place in this series.

 

The Mummy's Ghost: Reviewing The Kharis Tetralogy

 

By Joe Gibson

 

“The Mummy’s Ghost is pulp horror at its finest.  I confess to loving this lean, mean, never-a-wasted-minute B programmer from Universal.  There's no excess fat to trim from this film.  It’s like watching a good comic strip – every scene is key to the horror tale.  The film never takes itself too seriously, but at the same time does not descend to camp level.  It’s a damn good hour’s entertainment.  Film students who want to see how a good B film could provide fun to 1940’s movie-goers should make The Mummy’s Ghost required viewing.  It would have been great to view this in a theater with say, House of Frankenstein.” – Doug Gibson (From Plan9Crunch’s previous review of The Mummy’s Ghost.  Link here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-mummys-ghost-is-lean-mean-universal.html)

 

Introduction

 

Having argued the previous films in this series Adventure and Slasher respectively, I am now in somewhat of a dilemma since I do not think either fits The Mummy’s Ghost, but that raises more questions as to why this series stopped those specific types of experimentation.  It could be as simple as new director Reginald Le Borg having different sensibilities or that he expected to make a comedy and was saddled with this script or that he had troubles with some of the actors, especially Lon Chaney Jr that would limit his creativity.  Regardless of the reason, I am confident that this film is unlike its predecessors, mostly due to its presentation.

 

The opening of this film is not a call for sinister avenging so much as essentially a job interview for John Carradine’s Yousef Bey to retrieve Kharis and Ananka juxtaposed with a college class where Professor Norman explains the last film’s events in ways that would affect my previous review (first, he confirms that the flaming house was Banning’s which was easy enough to ascertain but is good to have confirmation of, and second, he says that hundreds of people saw Kharis, which would seem to imply the town and mob were bigger than we saw, which, as I kept bringing up makes that film far more contrived scene by scene if Mapleton is anything larger than a very small town).  Andoheb summarizes events a little differently than before, calling their order after the Hill Arkam rather than the temple of Karnak or waters of Kar and somewhat explicitly connecting the failed love of Kharis and Ananka to the temptations Andoheb and Mehemet Bey already fell to, which lays the groundwork for Kharis to be treated as a dynamic character and not just a slasher villain.  In this juxtaposition, Andoheb and Norman are also set up as mentor foils for young Tom Hervey and Yousef Bey, the wise old men with different perspectives on the events.  Most importantly, Yousef’s task isn’t to mete out revenge but just retrieve Kharis and Ananka (the conflict between Yousef, Tom and Kharis being that Ananka might not be as dead as we have been led to believe, despite also being a corpse in the museum).

 

So if the film has some set-up of Yousef securing resources and authority to venture deep into America and raid Ananka’s museum tomb to bring her back, while Tom learns the history from a mentor with different goals for keeping Ananka there (similar to the previous High Priest’s brief scenes instructing Andoheb in the first film), is this film just a morality swapped version of the adventure that was The Mummy’s Hand?  Not exactly.  While Kharis’ violence was only shown off at the end of The Mummy’s Hand on account of him being near dead for most of it (also being near dead at the start of this film I might add), Kharis gets an attack in on Professor Norman very soon into this movie (he was brewing 9 tana leaves for reasons I’ll get to later). The scene isn’t shot with the same creativity or suspense as any of Kharis’ earlier scenes.  While Kharis’ action of “kill where I find the tana leaves” dates back to Andoheb’s instructions in The Mummy’s Hand, the focus of the scene is actual on the mystery of what is going on with Amina Mansori, Tom’s Egyptian girlfriend, who is compelled to follow Kharis and begins to age rapidly whenever she sees The Mummy (a far cry from anything in that first Kharis film). 

 

There is also not enough context to suggest Yousef could reasonably see the Mapleton college crew the same way Steve saw the Priests of Karnak, since, outside of Norman’s obsession with tana leaf study getting in the way of his wife asking him to go back to bed (of which Andoheb would most likely approve given his monologue about romantic attachments being forbidden), there is not nearly enough done to actually compare the college and the cult of Arkam.  That is completely fine because you would not come to the conclusion of them being similar without overthinking this remarkably simple and straightforward film.

 

As the quote at the top of this review says, the movie is very efficient, trimming any of the fat that might skew it in any other direction than just “quintessential Universal B horror movie,” so let’s just get into the actual review.

 

Review

 

Robert Lowery as Tom Hervey and Ramsay Ames as Amina Mansori lead this film as the third major pair of lovers in this tetralogy, but they are actually very refreshing and possibly the best couple so far.  Tom Hervey is a man of action like Steve that won’t hesitate to jump into action for his girl but also has enough of John’s clinical perceptiveness to not jump to conclusions and be able to accurately take in stimuli as it occurs (but not enough of John’s scientific nature to fully forget his girlfriend and get absorbed into study: most of Tom’s smartest moments are being able to understand and console Amina).  Amina, meanwhile, is naturally a bubbly and intelligent woman that keeps Tom on his toes with shared banter but harbors some mysterious secret that not even she seems to fully understand about Egypt and Kharis. 

 

The town somewhat stigmatizes Amina, through Tom’s college friend and possible roommate urging Tom to tactlessly press her on any question related to Egypt and the town and a newspaper clipping sensationalizing the fact that she, an Egyptian woman, might be involved in a Mummy crime, but Tom genuinely loves her and wants to know about Egypt because of her (rather than everyone else wanting to know more about her because of her connection to Egypt).  The film mines this relationship for effective drama, as we watch Tom try to salvage his relationship with the confused but still reciprocating Amina from circumstances neither one can control or understand.

 

Still set in Mapleton, this story interestingly has new leads but keeps the townsfolk or at least the idea of the townsfolk consistent.  As aforementioned, Professor Norman returns, after analyzing Kharis’ wraps in the previous film, and Mrs. Martha Evans is now a more significant character, with a husband Ben, and now the owner of Banning’s dog King (who, along with Tom’s dog Peanuts, is once again hostile to Kharis).  King gets to be one of the only characters to survive an actual fight with Kharis, while Ben is not so lucky.  Professor Norman repeats some version of the Steve + Babe role in Tomb where he is the main authority figure that gets murdered very quickly, but he actually takes us to some interesting places in terms of figuring out the overall morality of this series.

As I mentioned, he becomes obsessed with the tana leaves and their purported life extension (only academically though) to the point of extensive tests and study, even choosing to study them over his wife, and that gets him killed by Kharis, because he had finally cracked the code that it was 9 tana leaves required during the full moon to give immortality.  Norman will say that it only works during the full moon, which it won’t be after the night of his murder, but the film proceeds with all of Yousef’s later Kharis tana feedings successfully, likely indicating that Yousef’s prayers to the Amon-Ra directly impact this process in lieu of the moon.  Yousef’s prayers, despite being very successful, do not actually seem to work to control Kharis, who carries out his own agenda of seeking food and having one last fight with a Banning (King) on the way to his summons from Yousef. 

 

It is unclear whether or not Norman revived Kharis by melting his 9 tana leaves (in which case Kharis was lying dormant, which has not been established as an ability) or if Kharis was subsisting somehow on his own.  Andoheb does say that Kharis will never die because he has to protect Ananka eternally, which takes us to some interesting possibilities, because it begs the question why the High Priests keep feeding him the tana leaves if he can live years burnt all over without them.  I see two options. 

 

One is that this is an extension of the pattern I noticed where Andoheb (and now all priests of Arkam) are very irresponsible with the amount they give Kharis, and he only needed the initial dose to become immortal.  Going along with this, Norman’s scientific grounding explains his surprise that 9 leaves were required (he implicitly has never tried burning that much because he clearly values this near extinct resource far more than the priests do), so we have finally identified another part of what makes the Arkam priests unsustainable (the first being how treating relationships as taboo makes each of them more allured by the prospect).  The other option is very interesting and uses some of the previous canid symbolism. 

 

Is it possible, based on how Mehemet at least dehumanized Kharis and Andoheb ordered him around, that the priests of Arkam actually have been treating Kharis as a dog, essentially giving him treats intermittently so he’ll not only stick with them for more but also do tricks for them?  Kharis learns over the course of the films, wanting to kill Mehemet Bey for making Andoheb’s same mistake, and, in this film, Kharis has the most independence he has had after fending for himself, so the tragedy here is that Kharis is not actually a lapdog.  He is the untamed wolf, and the jackal, because they are the ones that sing for him.  Dogs, of which there are two significant ones in this film, hate Kharis because he is being treated as one but does not naturally have their loyalty since opposing the cult is what led to his curse in the first place (Tom’s mistaken guess as to why Peanuts is barking at one point is that he heard another dog barking and had to respond, so the film, even if jokingly, supports this interpretation).  Obviously, there are other ways to describe Kharis’ journey “from guardian to avenger to frustrated lover,” but I have always had trouble truly articulating how the Priests of Arkam can have the literal gods of this universe on their side yet also be so misguided, and this possible allusion explains some of that.

Kharis is a very active character in ways that I think are designed to go over the audience’s head upon a first viewing so that the surprise of his opposition to Yousef can still occur.  Once we break it down, Kharis primarily goes to Norman to feed and then finds Yousef, also to feed (which technically demonstrates a lack of independence except that there is implicitly some years since the previous movie during which time he has been fine, and it does not make sense at this point that he would choose not to take his favorite food).  Chaney’s performance is somewhat muted by virtue of the heavier makeup to simulate being in the much larger house fire (it baffles me that the one thing Universal always seems to take into account with continuity is that directly after a fire, the monster should look more burnt, but everything else, including character names is up for revision.  It’s a miracle that Karloff’s Bride of Frankenstein performance happened to be better than his original one, because this is a very easy way for Universal to shoot themselves in the foot, as this film shows). 

 

However, it seems clear based on the one limb he can use to express himself that in his scenes with Yousef, all he cares about is the tana fluid or Ananka tomb that he is directly grasping at.  Yousef happens to have the food he likes and a plan that will get them closer to Ananka; that is why he goes with him.  Yousef doesn’t order Kharis around the same way the previous masters did, and that should also indicate that things are different this time.  When Ananka turns out to be reincarnated rather than in the museum, Kharis has a tantrum and meltdown that only stops when Yousef promises they can still find Ananka.  Again, Yousef noticeably does not order Kharis to kill the night watchmen, because Kharis is thinking, not following orders.  (That will become important in Yousef’s final moments.)

 

After this point, discussion with another Egyptologist, Dr. Ayad from the museum, convinces law enforcement they should replicate Norman’s experiment to lure Kharis there and trap him in a hole, while Tom resolves to take Amina to his people in New York.  The framing of “his people” is interesting because one of Amina’s main worries is that she will not be accepted due to being Egyptian (since the Sheriff is making a very big deal of her connection to this crime that at least the characters involved think he wouldn’t if she weren’t Egyptian), and Tom assures her that his family is already planning to accept her as a Bride.  She is concerned and reticent, but Tom’s wit and romance is enough to comfort her.  Their kiss is broken off as it begins, an effective symbol for their relationship as a whole.  Tom consistently pronounces the dog’s name Peanuts without the proper enunciation and declares Peanuts to be her bodyguard for the night before they leave for New York.

Yousef, following prayers to Amon-Ra, does order Kharis to find Ananka, but Kharis does not leave until Yousef tells him how.  Meanwhile, Dr. Ayad figures out the 9 tana leaves bit with help from Mrs. Norman (previous films implied 3 leaf fluid was only administered to a sleeping Kharis only to keep his heart beating, so I see no issue here that any less than 9 would not register in experiments), and Dr. Ayad’s conduct in this experiment shows off a failing of Norman’s, in that Norman did this experiment without any help or safety, consumed by his obsession, while Ayad carries this out the scientific way.  The rational and scientifically minded John and Ayad are the characters these films think we should aspire to be.

 

Kharis starts to kidnap Amina, and “Ananka” is compelled to walk over to him and pass out, while Peanuts follows.  Tom also tries to find them, after Mrs. Blake alerts him (she also finds the Sheriff, complicating the Inspector’s plan that was involving the entire town at this point).   Peanuts guides Tom to the hiding place of Kharis and Yousef over a slow amount of time (the tension in this film isn’t slow moving Kharis, but the slow moving people trying to rescue his love from him).  Interestingly, it seems that Kharis chooses to bring Ananka back instead of going after the tana fluid.  

 

As Yousef is supposed to kill Amina, some disembodied voice tempts him to make her immortal and live with her forever.  Though I have speculation on the importance of this plot point, I do not necessarily like it because it implies the predatory actions of Andoheb, Mehemet and Yousef may not be of their own volition, but the film and Kharis’ story needed the otherwise asexual Yousef to gain this attraction, so it might as well happen this way.  Amina turns older before Yousef’s eyes, convincing him to give her tana leaf juice.  Kharis is very unhappy about this and attacks Yousef.  And here we see actual orders from Yousef that fail.  For the first time, someone checks the body of a murdered priest of Arkam, as Tom does not have the context that both the Mummy and John Carradine are bad guys.  We should remember that whatever voice reached Yousef, most likely a god, wanted Amina restored to youth and to live eternally.

 

With Tom knocked out by Kharis, Peanuts alerts the mob to Kharis’ location.  Kharis, holding Amina, incidentally outmaneuvers the entire mob by climbing down the lair as they climb up (or maybe he just is that intelligent), but Peanuts is persistent (and if they were going to have a dog be this important to the story, my speculation on the symbolism of dogs vs wolves in Kharis’ story is important since Peanuts and King never once betray their masters). 

 

Amina starts to age even more rapidly in Kharis’ arms, and I must also speculate that, because her tomb’s inscription mentioned she would have a second chance not definite forgiveness from the gods, the very abrupt temptation of Yousef was that chance for her to live again since otherwise she would ultimately age too fast and die again in Kharis’ presence (I know that the following film will go against this, but we have to first concern ourselves with what each film means and not the retcons that will come, since I do not recall the High Priests ever calling their cult Arkam before this film but now that is true).  The mob chases Kharis into a swamp, where he and a very ancient looking Ananka sink, presumably to their shared final resting place.  Everyone leaves the swamp except Peanuts, who sits and waits for Amina.

 

This is a rather dark ending, especially for this series, and that is probably the most unique part of this film from any other Universal B horror film.  It brings to mind the ending to House of Frankenstein, where a similar scenario played out, except there villain protagonist Dr. Nieman absolutely deserved his fate.  Here, every main character is helpless, either dead (in the case of Yousef, who has top billing), desiccated and possibly dead (Amina), unable to stop Kharis or bring themselves to stay by the swamp (Tom) or unable to stop Kharis or bring themselves to leave the swamp (Peanuts), except for Kharis, whose agency is the reason we are in this situation in the first place.  This ending has some good suspense because we are close enough to Kharis to understand possible reasons he chose this but not close enough to pin down the specific meaning, so that, upon a first watch, this climax could have reasonably gone in a lot of different directions.

 

Conclusion

 

The Mummy’s Ghost is a really stupid title for this movie (since, unlike The Ghost of Frankenstein, we do not see said Ghost), but I suppose there are options for what it could mean, each of which touching upon a different theme of the film.  When Kharis finds the corpse of Princess Ananka, he touches it, and it disintegrates while Amina wakes up in bed.  Obviously, Amina is Ananka brought back to life by the power of the gods, and she is as much a Mummy as Kharis is.  It is her ghost that stimulates her to become uncomfortable once it resurfaces, the ghost that is tied to Kharis.  However, I just said that she is as much a Mummy as Kharis is, a statement that goes both ways. 

 

This film is largely about Kharis gaining more independence, and he is the main character in the scene where Ananka’s body disintegrates as well as several other scenes.  The events of this story stimulate Kharis’ dormant and repressed ghost that initially rebelled against the celibacy of the cult which has now controlled him for 3,000 years.  It is frustrating but I think speaks to the thought that went into the film that this incredibly stupid title actually fits its own film the best so far in the Kharis saga (I have argued in the previous reviews that The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb should have swapped titles to more accurately portray their subject matter).

 

If we are speaking in terms of creativity, I would say The Mummy’s Hand might be the best, and for ambition, The Mummy’s Tomb seems to have trail-blazed Slasher storytelling, but in terms of containing the least issues and most consistent product, The Mummy’s Ghost is that.  Again, this all depends most on how each of us views movies and how we appraise their quality, what flaws we notice and what merits we think counterbalance them.  My analysis here is by no means the final word on this tetralogy, within or outside of Plan9Crunch.  We all have different takeaways, and may the best argumentation win!

 

Due to the finality of not only this film’s ending but also of Kharis’ character arc and the Kharis and Ananka story, I almost wonder if this should have been only a trilogy.  For all its flaws, it’s a far more cohesive trilogy than Brendan Fraser’s Mummy films, and Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher (joined by Brenda Weisberg for this one) would not return to write The Mummy’s Curse, nor would Reginald Le Bord return to direct.  However, we cannot end this story here, since The Mummy’s Curse did come out pretty much immediately after this film in the same year of 1944, and it actually does end Kharis’ story.  We shall examine that one next time.  While you wait, I recommend you read our older review of The Mummy’s Ghost, linked above and also here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-mummys-ghost-is-lean-mean-universal.html .

The Mummy's Hand: Reviewing the Kharis Tetralogy

By Joseph Gibson

 

“The four Kharis films all share a key plot element: the high priest, assigned to control Kharis, abandons his vows to pursue a woman.  Reworking the idea through four films might get a bit old, but the Kharis saga does evolve….the changing plots keep the series interesting.” - Frank Dello Stritto (in an interview with Plan9Crunch.  Link here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-quaint-curious-volume-of-forgotten.html )

Introduction 

In The Mummy’s Hand (1940), Universal’s Mummy archetype changed from Boris Karloff’s Imhotep to Tom Tyler’s (and eventually Lon Chaney Jr’s) Kharis.  With this cosmetic change also came a period of the most consistent and yet also experimental of the Universal Monsters series.  While Dracula, the succession of Universal werewolf films, and The Invisible Man sequels meandered into disconnected anthology (and the Frankenstein series that makes up the bulk of the franchise’s narrative swapped protagonist monsters halfway through to the Wolf-Man), this tetralogy remains focused on the saga of Kharis, even if it makes some very odd and ill-advised decisions to navigate us through that story.

 

Before we proceed into analyzing this film, it is important to pin down what genre(s) this and the following films are aiming for.  Focused more on quirky characters on an expedition, the Mummy’s Hand does not fit cleanly into the Gothic horror model one expects from Universal’s earlier works (especially Dracula 1931) where consistent application of tension, whether or not each scene ends in a major release, occurs throughout the film.  This film, to some critics’ chagrin, does not feature much terror or suspense until the end of the film when it would structurally make sense to have tension in any film of any genre that still has some horror elements.  The original Mummy film with Boris Karloff borrowed a lot from Dracula, so the comparison is a pretty easy way to rule out that authorial intent if this new film is so different.  Horror comedy is an option of course, as character Babe Jenson comes off similarly to the Costello role, while the Mummy’s hunts for his tana leaves are genuinely suspenseful, but much of the film seems focused on the adventure to find funding and navigate the temple.  The Brendan Fraser Mummy films oriented closer to adventure with horror elements, so I see no issue with a Mummy movie being labeled adventure over horror if that reflects the priorities of the film.  That would make this film somewhat more slipstream by comparison, since Brendan Fraser’s Mummy leans more into swashbuckling and has more runtime to spend on adventure set pieces.  As should be obvious, The Mummy’s Tomb, the next Kharis film, is decidedly not an adventure movie.  For what it is worth, I will label that film a proto-slasher and highlight the shared tropes I see next time (and will reserve judgment on the other sequels until we get to them).  This shows off a flexibility of genre for the Kharis films despite similar plot and often experimental nature.  Any more specifics into the differences in genre intent between these first two movies will probably have to extend to the differences between directors Christy Cabanne and Harold Young, which is a comparison I am not yet qualified to make.  Based on what we can observe in each film, however, I believe my speculations into genre to be mostly accurate.

 

One of the most frequent jokes and honestly, at this point meme, about the Kharis tetralogy is that based on context clues, the dating of this series is such that The Mummy’s Hand takes place in the 1940s, with an immediate 30 year time skip (after which point World War 2 is still happening), and by the end of this series, it is the mid to late 90s without much difference in the way the world is portrayed.  Because I cannot weigh in on the clothing, speech patterns or technology of the different decades, let me say that Babe’s pop culture references to Coney Island hotdogs (origin 1867 - 1871), PT Barnum (died 1891) and pig latin (1598 - dog latin, 1866 - hog latin, 1800s - pig latin) in The Mummy's Hand are reasonable for any timeframe in early to mid 1900s based on cursory research.  Frank Dello Stritto, in the postscript for his scholarly historical fiction book The Passion of The Mummy, said that there is one brief mention of the May 1940 date of Banning and Solvani's partnership, which Dello Stritto highlights as an unrealistic and unlikely time-frame.  Given that the film started shooting in May 1940, I see no reason we cannot regard this similarly to mistaken clocks in old films more accurate to the shooting time than the film's.  Thus, I will not mention the dates, except that it is entirely possible that The Mummy's Tomb might instead be in the 40s, making the timeline slightly better. 

 

The film begins with efficient introductions to three of the leads: Andoheb, the villain who begins the film with a promotion from Lay-Priest to new High Priest after his mentor, the previous High Priest, reveals Kharis’ backstory to him, Steve Banning, a charismatic but impulsive accomplished researcher that spends their remaining money on an ancient vase, and his best friend Babe Jenson, the comic relief character that buys a dancing doll at the same market.  Steve and Babe circumvent a lot of the issues with their archetypal pairing because the film allows for brief moments of comedic weakness in Steve (Marta pulling Steve out of another wild Mummy chase at the end of the film) and surprising seriousness from Babe (what he does to Andoheb at the end), while still feeling like the same characters scene to scene. Andoheb, meanwhile, comes off as a convincing manipulator, since, due to the Mummy’s late arrival into the action, his manipulations of Marta, Petrie and through The Beggar are the main antagonistic obstacles. Much of this success is due to the casting of George Zucco as Andoheb, Dick Foran as Steve, and Wallace Ford as Babe.

As far as early symbols and foreshadowing thematic content, navigating the stairs outside the Temple of the High Priest of Karnak could be significant, since one of the first things Andoheb does is climb those outside stairs on the way to greater power, and the last thing he does in this film is fall down those stairs, when Babe and Steve take away that power.  Implicitly, Andoheb causes the rockslide that uncovers Kharis’ tomb from a place of higher standing, which also matches his attempted manipulations of Petrie through being a man of higher standing in the Museum.  This does not map through every scene or every instance of a staircase, however.

 

More significant to this conversation is the opening words of the film, as spoken by the previous High Priest of Karnak.  “For who shall defile the temples of the ancient gods, a cruel and violent death shall be his fate, and never shall his soul rest, unto eternity. Such is the curse of Amon-Ra, king of all the gods.”  The seal of seven jackals on the tomb reinforces this message, clarifying death to whoever breaks the seal.  And this does happen.  It is one of the few achievements the film allows to Petrie rather than divvying them up to Steve or Marta (more on that later), because the film seems to think that the person who broke that seal should die, which raises interesting questions about the morality of this whole situation.

 

Kharis’ curse happens because of the very human desire to be with his lover after death, and the High Priests manipulate him as a servant but do so from a place of authority under implicitly real gods.  What makes Andoheb the villain of this movie is protecting that secret, but the way he does it seems to break the rules outlined by his mentor, which seems to be the reason he fails, not the pursuit itself.  Steve has an understandable motivation, genuine passion for archaeology (and why not profit along the way?), but he comes off as obsessive and reckless in a few key scenes.  Dr. Petrie, an actual employee at the Cairo Museum, disregards his boss to join Steve’s wild hunt for Ananka’s tomb that could likely end in the death of them.  Steve and Babe are fast friends with their financier magician Solvani, but their early scenes do seem like them playing each other in genuinely friendly ways that have consequences because the way Steve is conducting this whole operation resembles a scam (making it easier for Andoheb to convince Marta that it is).  Not taking into account the sequel, this film thinks that Steve, Babe, Marta and Solvani at least are innocent of any specific wrongdoing, because Andoheb’s assistant The Beggar is viewed as wrong for disliking Babe early on and does meet his death carrying out the will of the gods against these characters (Petrie and Ali not being as lucky as our core four).  One could make a case that Marta is the redeeming factor for Steve and Solvani (since she does not want to take part in this expedition but takes responsibility, steps up and does the best at deciphering the secrets, at the end preventing Steve from going on another one of these and just being the voice of reason for her father Solvani), but I guess the instant comedic karma of Babe’s bits must be enough to balance his moral scales.

 

Solvani, real name Tim Sullivan (as played by Cecil Kellaway) is an interesting character in this film. While Babe is the kind of comedic character that is so against his own volition, magician Solvani keeps in good spirits and directly steers into every joke at his expense.  There comes a moment in the film when Solvani is drunk, with Marta trying to convince him not to go on the expedition, and, despite still wanting to go, Solvani cannot resist the funniest outcomes possible even if they are against his self-interests, continually cycling through his magic bits and locking himself in a box.  This is a very unique type of character that would not tonally meld with a clear-cut Gothic horror.  Despite great focus early on, he is mostly a vehicle to introduce Marta to Steve.

 

Charles Trowbridge plays Dr. Petrie, a somewhat confusing character for reasons I’ve previously alluded to.  He is the only one of the expedition actually enrolled at the nearby Museum, but he acts the least professionally, immediately breaking the seal and failing to notice that the Mummy, whose skin he examines, is still alive.  He also, surprisingly enough, has undeniable similarities to Marta in such a way that I wonder if the comparison was intended.  

 

Like Marta, he starts the film with an older authority figure it is in his better interests to stay with but gravitates towards Steve upon their meeting.  Dr. Petrie’s introduction sees him choosing the young and untested Steve over the higher credibility of Andoheb declaring the vase a fake, while Marta is fully determined to take Solvani away from Steve and Babe, until she sees Steve and decides to come along.  Now, yes, I know the contexts are different in ways that speak to their individual character traits (and Steve is seductive to them for different reasons).  Here, the characters are actually foils, since the context is almost completely reversed since Petrie is the ostensible expert that acts immaturely up to his death, while Marta is the magician’s daughter who turns out to be the most responsible character, at which point the story rewards her with Petrie’s skills and knowledge. I say this because, after Petrie dies, the film proceeds as if his previous contributions and observations of the tomb were Marta’s.  She brings them back up to Steve and is the closest to figuring everything out until the end of the film.  Just because I can see what they were doing with these characters does not mean I think it justified though.  The adjustments that happen to Marta’s character do not feel earned but do make the movie more contrived than it needed to be.  (If Marta were interested in Egyptology from the start, she would have joined the expedition for different reasons than protecting her father and attraction to Steve.  That abrupt attraction to Steve at least has some justification due to juxtaposing his and Babe’s appearances but is still convenient.  If she lacked the skills to interpret hieroglyphs, then the movie could not proceed, and if Andoheb did not happen to develop feelings for her, then, again the movie does not happen this way.)

That said, Peggy Moran does a great job in the role, and her chemistry with the rest of the cast does not seem out of place.  If you just sit down and watch the movie, you will not question when she starts talking to Steve about the tomb because it is just our romantic leads sharing the screen.  Their relationship is entirely serviceable.  I think The Mummy’s Tomb does such a good job fleshing out what the loss of Marta means to Steve’s life that it makes one retroactively view their relationship as stronger in the movie that featured it, but their relationship in this film, while rushed and a little convenient, still serves as a good basis for this franchise.

 

One of the larger issues with this film, from the point when the Petrie and Marta switch occurs, is the continuity.  After the group finds Kharis’ tomb, they are disheartened to find a male Mummy, but Petrie is going to study whatever they find anyways, and so will Steve.  Marta and Solvani say they are going to bed, and Ali, the last of the native helpers sticking around, only does so to inform the others that he cannot stay.  Then, Andoheb feeds Kharis 9 tana leaves to kill Petrie (the High Priest explains that three keeps Kharis alive, 9 will give him movement, and any more than 9 will make him uncontrollable, each feeding corresponding to the howl of nearby jackals), and the film resumes with Steve finding Petrie dead and Kharis gone and Solvani entertaining Babe and Ali, Marta eventually joining Steve in the research.  The Beggar hides more tana fluid to result in killing Ali and attacking Solvani, kidnapping Marta.

 

The way I interpret these scenes is that Steve running off to get Ali and running back, finding Petrie dead, must be in the same night, with a missing scene where he convinced Ali to stay.  Ali staying after another day passes where no one has heard from Petrie strains credibility.  Shortly after all of this, Marta and Solvani go to bed again.  If this is all the same night, then Kharis should already be uncontrollable, which admittedly does not change much but is just a very strange decision for Andoheb to make and requires additional context (but if it is a different night, that also requires more context as to why nobody checked on Petrie for that long).

 

From here, we get into the tense scenes of Tom Tyler’s Mummy hunting for his tana leaves and coming into conflict with our characters.  I think The Mummy’s Tomb leverages Kharis’ slow violent prowling better and more consistently, but this film is again a start to unveiling this character and what he can do.  Tom Tyler’s eyes are better emphasized than his hands, so the title is confusing unless the title is supposed to be about Andoheb in a figurative way (since audience expectations after the very dynamic Imhotep would probably be for the High Priest to serve The Mummy as a right hand) or perhaps to represent that the Mummy’s limbs are being stimulated by the tana leaves, and not his mind.  There are a lot of interpretations, but I think The Mummy’s Tomb ironically would have been the better title for this film.

 

Steve and Babe realize the truth of the tomb’s layout from the lay-priest medallion of the Beggar and take different paths to get to the Temple of Karnak.  Steve’s path gets the Mummy following him, while Babe shoots Andoheb, because the latter erroneously believed he could still manipulate a weary Babe that’s already endured all his tricks.  Andoheb had tied up Marta to turn them immortal, and a confrontation occurs between Steve and Kharis, where the film thankfully does not give Steve the knowledge of the audience since he actually needs the other characters to help him.  Steve destroys the tana vial but does not think to overturn the urn of the fluid, necessitating Babe’s shooting skills once more.  Kharis goes for the spilt fluid, and Steve sets him on fire, seemingly just trying to knock the Mummy out with the torch holder.  After a quick bit in which Marta passes out, Babe comments on that and passes out himself, all that is left is the happy ending where Steve, Marta, Babe and Solvani are reunited, and Marta prevents Steve from buying another vase.

Conclusion

 

All in all, this film is very enjoyable and a strong start for this saga; I noticed new merits and new faults upon this rewatch that would make my rating a bit more nuanced than before.  This film is better as the first chapter than the entire story is the most succinct way I can put it: a strong basis with room for improvement. We shall see if the later installments keep the momentum going.

Check out an earlier Plan9Crunch Review of this film here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-mummys-hand-first-kharis-tale-from.html

And here is a link to an interview with Dello Stritto on his book The Passion of the Mummy: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-passion-of-mummy-interview-with.html