The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Film: The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Robert Lowery, Ramsay Ames

Director: Reginald Le Borg

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

Lon Chaney, Jr. is not an actor of great distinction, but he is an actor with a great distinction.  Chaney's career was marked by horror.  Though he initially had some success as a serious actor (his most famous role was as Lennie in Lewis Milestone's classic Of Mice and Men), after he signed a long-term contract with Universal Studios & had success using his father's moniker in The Wolf Man, Chaney would make horror films for the remainder of the career.  As a result, he would become the only actor in film history to play the Wolf-Man, Frankenstein's Monster, Count Dracula, & the Mummy in English-language studio films.  Chaney's life was plagued by alcoholism, but he worked up until his death; though he lived longer than his rivals Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi, he died younger than them.  We won't have time to get to these films this month, but like these two men Chaney also went into independent film as his career waned, making his final picture Dracula vs. Frankenstein in 1971 for exploitation filmmaker Al Adamson.

(Spoilers Ahead) Like most of the Mummy films, we have two concurrent plots that are being set up for a showdown.  On one hand you have Yousef Bey (Carradine), who is trying to bring back Kharis (Chaney) aka the Mummy and reunite him with Ananka, his one true love.  On the other hand we have a young student named Tom Hervey (Lowery) who is romancing a beautiful Egyptian woman named Amina (Ames).  When Kharis is awakened, he also entrances Amina, and this continually happens throughout the film as Kharis kills others & is able to keep Amina under his spell.  As is the wont of these movies, we soon learn that Amina is the reincarnation of Ananka, and though Tom protests, this is her inescapable doom.  Yousef Bey kidnaps her (and briefly falls in love with her), but after Kharis kills him too, Amina starts to age, and therefore resemble the mummy, aging until her eventual death.  A horrified Tom looks on as his love & the mummy sink into a swamp (more than likely just waiting for the sequel).

The Mummy franchise, of all of the Universal Monsters, is the franchise with the most diminishing returns.  This is partially because it's the weakest initial entry (even if it's still a good movie), and also because unlike Dracula, the Wolf Man, or even Frankenstein's monster, there's not a lot of personality in the sequels (in the first film, Boris Karloff gives him much more sway but he also gets to speak...that ends in the sequels).  As a result, you need side characters to invest in, and this franchise didn't have an Ygor or a shrieking Una O'Connor to keep you interested.  Even John Carradine's spooky priest is largely sidelined throughout the movie even if he's the only character you care about.

As a result, even with a morbid & melancholy ending, this is dull & uninventive.  We have one more Mummy film left which we'll do on Thursday, but I will admit right now that I don't have a lot of hopes for it before we switch into some better-reviewed fare & finish out the month with a classic.  For now, though, Lon Chaney's name continues to be an "ehh" for me-after seeing almost a dozen of his movies, I just don't understand why he became such a big, bankable name in show business other than luck of having a famous father & some fantastic makeup artists.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death