“I am a priest of Arkam. I fear only the great wrath of Amand Ra.”
After the death of Mehemet Bey in “The Mummy’s Tomb” a new High Priest of Karnak needs to be chosen. High Priest Andoheb (George Zucco) is again assigning the job to a new recruit. Yousef Bey (John Carradine) is now the new mummy keeper. Andoheb instructs Bey to travel to America and retrieve Kharis and the body of Ananka and return them to Egypt.
Professor Norman (Frank Reicher) is studying the hieroglyphics on a box of tana leaves. Following the instructions he brews a tana tea. Unfortunately it is a full moon and he ends up summoning the mummy Kharis. Kharis kills the professor and drinks the tea. Nearby Amina Mansori (Ramsay Ames), in a trance state, is also summoned to the professor’s house. She passes out when Kharis leaves.
When Yousef and Kharis break into a museum to steal Ananka’s body it disintegrates. Yousef determines that Ananka has been reincarnated. He needs to find where Ananka’s spirit is now residing. Somehow he figures out that Ananka now resides in the body of Amina.
Kharis is sent to get Amina and bring her to Yousef. When the priest sees her he immediately falls in love with her. He wants to keep her for himself and live forever with her. Kharis is getting sick of fetching women for high priests to drool over. Especially this one. He kills the high priest. I’m beginning to think they need to switch to women high priests. At least they can get the job done.
“The Mummy’s Ghost” was released in 1944 and was directed by Reginald Le Borg. This movie is fourth in the Universal Studios mummy series and the second sequel to “The Mummy’s Hand” It is also Lon Chaney’s second time playing the mummy. By the way, there is no such thing as tana leaves. It looks like they use Bay leaves in the movies. The priest of Karnak is now the priest of Arkam.
Most of the mummy movies have a standard plot. A princess dies. A high priest tries to bring her back to life. The priest gets mummified. Thousands of years in the future another high priest mucks everything up because he can’t keep his vows. It’s the same old story. This movie does have a little twist at the end. I’m not sure if that helps the movie any or not.
Each successive movie doesn’t get any better or any worse. Suffice it to say, the first Universal Studios mummy movie was good. Everything else is variations on a theme. They’re OK. Just not really original anymore. Like the energizer bunny, Kharis keeps going, but he’s doing the same thing. They’re similar to zombies. They shuffle along killing people and they’re undead. Other than that, they’re pretty simple creatures.