The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minutes of runtime, rated 5.8 (!) by 2329 cinematizens.
Genre: Incredulity.
Verdict: Boredom.
George Zucco is brought out the Old Villains Home to assign John Carradine the thankless task of this movie. Carradine travels to middle America where he turns Lon Chaney (you’d never know it to look at him) loose on the descendants of those who desecrated his Mummy’s tomb. ‘Desecration’ is the right word for this film.
The action takes place on the college campus replete with thirty-year old undergraduates, including Kansas City’s own Robert Lowery from Missouri. It just so happens — ah huh — that the librarian whom he pursues is Egyptian, but she freezes when that subject of Egypt arises. She keeps a pet terrier in the library in which she shows no interest whatever, but which saves the day later, sort of.
Across the quad Prof is steaming tana leaves for lunch. Bad! Steamed tana leaves are not a good idea, Prof! They are worse than kale. (Nothing is worse than Tuscan cabbage.)
Once Mummy Chaney gets the scent of lunch there is no stopping him. The aim is to reincarnate his long dead love into the Gypo bookworm noted above. There is a nice touch when after her first brush with Mummy a white streak appears in her hair. Bob is too discreet to mention it but she does not seem to notice it either. Is she the only woman who does not look at a mirror? As Lon draws nearer her hair gets progressively whiter with neither comment from others nor reaction from her. The point being…..?
It has a surprisingly downbeat ending when without a GPS Mummy Chaney, struggling under the load as he carried her off, wanders into a swamp and the two sink to the bottom as quickly as did this film. She may not have been that heavy but since he had only one arm and one leg was always dragging for reasons now forgotten. Bob shrugs it off and with the terrier walks away. Neither sadder nor wiser, as the rest of his career shows.
Barton (General Martin Peterson) MacLane for once is allowed to act, rather than just bellow, and he is quite effective as the Plod up against the unbelievable long before he was drafted in I Dream of Jeannie (1965-9). Director Reginald Le Borg had a fifty-year career cranking out ninety-two pictures like this one. He must have offended the karma gods big time to have to do that. Carradine is, as always, Carradine.