Monster March: The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

There is no ghost in The Mummy’s Ghost. There is a swamp, a dog, and of course a mummy, but there’s no ghost, which might tell you everything you need to know about this movie. I know I said the exact same thing last week about The Mummy’s Tomb, but if the screenwriters couldn’t be bothered to derive a new story, neither should I write an entirely new review. In Ghost, there is a major plotline involving reincarnation, which seems particularly apt for a demi-remake that’s so familiar you’ll feel an acute sense of déjà vu. 

Yousef Bey (John Carradine) has come to New England in search of the mummy Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.), believed to have been destroyed during the events of The Mummy’s Tomb. As high priest, Yousef Bey has been tasked with bringing Kharis and the mummified remains of Princess Ananka back to Egypt. Meanwhile, local college boy Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery) is baffled by his Egyptian girlfriend Amina (Ramsay Ames), especially the mystery of why she fainted outside the home of the mummy’s latest victim...

 

The Mummy’s Ghost was filmed over the course of only one week, and I have to say it shows. Ghost is full of narrative dead-ends and plot holes, beginning from the very first reel. If you remember The Mummy’s Tomb (and I won’t fault you if you don’t), it starts with George Zucco as Andoheb recapping Kharis’s backstory while passing on the mantle of high priest before his death; The Mummy’s Ghost begins with exactly the same sequence, right down to Zucco reprising his role. Like Hyman Roth, it seems, Andoheb has been dying of the bullet wounds from The Mummy’s Hand for the last twenty years. (If you’re having trouble telling your Hand from your Tomb from your Ghost, don’t be alarmed – these titles don’t relate to the plot in any way and might as well be interchangeable. Next week’s Curse doesn’t quite help matters.)

 

As I’m watching these movies, I’m starting to wonder whether I actually like mummy movies or whether I only like the 1999 Mummy. I certainly don’t like this mummy movie, which feels as though I’ve seen it four or five times this month. Surely there must be more one can do with a mummy film than this, in which a priest pursues a mummy that acts like a serial killer until carting off the female lead in his withered arms. There’s also only so many times you can retread the plotline where an incredulous town doubts the existence of a mummy, despite several residents having been menaced by this very mummy in the past. At least this time they don’t try to light the mummy on fire – because that hasn’t worked in the last few movies – though the climax set in the swamp ends up having the same net effect.

 

The chief problem with Ghost, as with most of the Universal Mummy films, is that Kharis is not exactly a charismatic screen presence. In a cinematic universe populated by the likes of Karloff and Lugosi, even Lon Chaney Jr. has done better work as the Wolf Man. Behind his plaster face and bandaged limbs, Kharis is little more than a mindless brute, always acting at the behest of someone else. The script certainly tries its best to make him menacing, but it’s a strain on the audience’s credulity to suppose that no one can escape the grasp of the mummy, unless Kharis gives off some sort of stupefying aura that stuns his victims into immobility before he shambles near enough to strangle them with his one good arm.

 

In The Mummy’s Tomb, it fell to Turhan Bey to give an entertaining performance as Kharis’s caretaker, the high priest Mehemet Bey. In Ghost, it’s John Carradine, who’s practically bathing in a river of ham as Yousef Bey. (Any relation? If this were the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Beys would surely have their own show on Disney+.) Don’t get me wrong, Carradine is borderline hypnotic, but Egyptian he’s not, and that’s an incredible distraction, as is the fact that his abrupt third-act heel-turn is precisely the same “twist” that every foregoing mummy movie has pulled at exactly the same moment in the story.

 

Look, there’s a certain amount of formula to be expected from the Universal Classic Monsters. Dracula is always going to stalk and bite his victims, Frankenstein’s monster is always going to be born out of some misguided experiment, and the Wolf Man is constantly running from the moon and his own id. But for whatever reason, the seams of the formula really show on the mummy films, with almost predictable precision. Never mind the fact that the mummy films, more so than the other franchises, feel compelled to begin with a recap that effectively spoils the movie because the franchise’s obsession with reincarnation and the undead often means that there’s a cyclical nature to events, recurring and recurring as the tragic doomed Egyptians live out a vicious yet familiar recursion. All of this will happen at least once more, I’m quite sure, in The Mummy’s Curse, and I have a feeling I’ll be able to rerun this review next week, too, changing the names to protect the innocent – or, if none are found, the dull.

 

The Mummy’s Ghost is not rated. Directed by Reginald Le Borg. Written by Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher, and Brenda Weisberg. Starring Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Ramsay Ames, Barton MacLane, George Zucco, and Robert Lowery. 

Tune in tomorrow for Transylvania Tuesday, with Son of Dracula (1943) starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Next week for Mummy Monday, we’ll “wrap” things up with The Mummy’s Curse (1944), starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Virginia Christine. But for bonus mummy shenanigans, stop by for Silly Sunday, when Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Eddie Parker.