The fourth and final entry in the 1940s Kharis mummy series from Universal, "The Mummy's Curse" features the series' usual tropes. Like "The Mummy's Ghost," released just a few months earlier in 1944, as well as the original 1932 "The Mummy," Kharis stalks his reincarnated love, and as usual, the girl does a good deal of screaming and fainting and being carried off by the monster. Once again, he takes her to the secret lair of the high priest, which is always atop a long staircase, no matter the location: Egyptian temple, a mill, or an abandoned monastery--even the house in "The Mummy's Tomb" (1942) had a long flight of stairs that the lumbering, foot-dragging mummy had to ascend. For reasons beyond my understanding, Universal in the 1940s seemed to be fascinated with a crippled monster going up and down steps. The place here, the monastery, does offer one scene of a bit of a holy war, though, with the "infidel" Catholic priest trying to evict the squatting "pagan" high priest of the Ancient Egyptian gods.
This one also borrows a couple of the worst narrative devices from its predecessors. Similar to "The Mummy's Tomb," which was set 30 years after the events of the "The Mummy's Hand" (1940), this one, according to Cajan Joe, takes place 25 years after the last film. Thus, either "The Mummy's Hand" takes place as far back as the 19th Century despite its 1940 contemporary appearance otherwise or this final entry takes place as far as the then-future as the mid 1990s. So, this Mummy series either offers some of the worst historical reconstruction ever put on screen, the most unimaginative futurism, or, what it most surely is, very lazy writing. The other device is reusing the pool flashback scene from the 1932 "Mummy," which "The Mummy's Hand" had already done, too. Here, they also superimpose the priest's face over the clips as he retells the tale we've already heard and heard again.
Like the prior films, the Mummy is associated with the Moon, as though he's a werewolf or something, and in this one Ananka is associated with the Sun, for no apparent reason--inundating the screen with repeated shots of the star. I suspect the film is still located in Massachusetts, where the last two films took place, but I can't be sure, and I suppose it doesn't matter. Anyways, the settings are quite different except for the swamp, but I suppose that's to be expected 25 years in the future. Even Ananka, who was in the last film, is played by a different actress, so....
What does this one have going for it? It has the best and most haunting scene in the series where Ananka emerges from the drained swamp. Otherwise, I think it's a bit more, perhaps, unintentionally funny than the others. The line, "The Devil's on the loose, and he's dancing with the Mummy," got a laugh from me, even though it came from a servile black stereotype named, of all things, "Goobie," and his running around yelling "massa" is a low point here. Of course, the entire series is largely built upon the stereotypical lascivious foreigner, with the Egyptian characters usually being portrayed by Americans or Europeans. That's what happens here again, as the priest's servant tries to rape the film's other girl. A couple surely unintentionally funny things about this one, besides the usual tropes, are how Ananka sneaks out behind the Mummy twice as he chokes someone else to death, and it just seems odd that there's one character wearing a fez and another a safari hat, as though the filmmakers forgot that they set this piece of Orientalism in the U.S. instead of Egypt. The swamp archaeologist in the safari hat is even oblivious enough to call Ananka's clothes "strange" at one point.
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