“White people shouldn’t live too long out in the jungle.”

In 1951, Curt Siodmak, a screenwriter probably most famous for the very excellent Lon Chaney Jr. Wolf Man, wrote and directed Bride of the Gorilla, which recycled a ton of elements from The Wolf Man.

Plot
In South America, a brash young plantation manager is having an affair with his employer’s beautiful young wife. There’s an argument at dinner and he gets fired by the old man, and the argument continues outside. The two struggle briefly, and the manager lets a deadly snake bite the old man and kill him. This would be great news for our protagonist, but the deed is seen by the creepy old native witch who works on the plantation. She was following our protagonist to get revenge on him for abandoning a local lover, and she takes the opportunity to curse him (and starts slipping a magical plant into his drink to facilitate the curse). The manager inherits the plantation and marries the widow, but soon starts seeing himself transform into a bestial creature. Not coincidentally, a bestial creature begins terrorizing the region at night, and a local police commissioner begins investigating.

Characters

Barney Chavez: Raymond Burr! Clearly not Hispanic. Or Spanish. Barney is a terrible plantation manager who slacks off constantly and is juggling at least two love affairs before his boss fires him and the fateful confrontation happens. Afterwards, things seem pretty great for him, he gets a profitable estate and a beautiful bride that loves him. Then he starts seeing his hand get hairy, then sees a gorilla costume instead of his reflection in the mirror. The curse starts driving him up a wall and he starts spending more time out in the jungle than with his wife. The natives begin whispering of the “sukara” a beast that is tall, red, and somewhat man-like (In other words, a gorilla costume). For a while its up in the air whether Barney is actually turning into a creature or its all in his head.

Dina Van Gelder: Barbara Payton plays the young, materialistic trophy wife of the plantation owner. She’s not happy in her marriage, since she doesn't love her husband and they live in the middle of nowhere. So when the young stud Barney starts up a relationship with her, she goes for it. Blinded by love, she doesn't realize (at first) that Barney’s really responsible for her husband’s death; she loves him unconditionally. Dina bet on the wrong horse though, since Barney starts losing it and would rather frolic in the jungle than spend evenings with her. Yes, he cheats on her with the Jungle. She still loves him and wants to get them away from the plantation, which leads to dire consequences.

Klaas Van Gelder: Paul Cavanagh plays Dina’s sickly husband. He’s not in the movie long, but gets to express his intense dislike of Barney and feels bad that he can’t make Dina happy. Then it's snakebite time.

Dr. Viet: Tom Conway plays the family physician who gets caught up in investigating the mysterious goings-on. He’s ALSO got romantic feelings for Dina, but she doesn't even notice, probably because he’s older than Barney and thoroughly boring. 

Police Commissioner Taro: Lon Chaney Jr. is also clearly not Hispanic, but plays one anyway. He’s effectively the hero of the movie, a local boy made good who came home and is now putting the pieces of a murder mystery together. He’s also a creature between two worlds, but he knows it (and doesn't kill farmers in the night). City educated and sworn to uphold civilized law, he’s also well-versed in local legend and superstition and the more…flexible form of justice found in the jungle. 

Al-Long: Giselle Werbisek plays the creepy housekeeper and witch woman. She’s got an illegal plant that she can do magic with. The locals all hold her in awe and fear. She actually witnesses Van Gelder’s death from the bushes but doesn’t do anything about it, instead leaning over his dead body and cursing Barney Chavez to become like an animal. At the inquest she gives false testimony that helps acquit Barney, but then she holds what she knows over Barney’s head and quietly keeps drugging him with the plant. She comes across as sinister and unlikable.

                               Man, I wish I had this as a .gif

Visuals/Effects

This was one of the few movies directed by Curt Siodmak. Siodmak was an interesting guy. Born in Germany in 1902, he was part of the mass exodus of Jewish filmmakers who fled the Nazis prior to World War II and he had a long, healthy career as a screenwriter and novelist. His older brother Robert Siodmak had a much more prominent career as a (more successful) director. 

As far as the visuals of this movie go, it's okay I guess. The budget is obviously low and the gorilla costume is not very good. I presume the filmmakers realized this, as they kept it off the screen as much as possible. Sure, it was probably also minimally used to build tension and uncertainty, as they use it in reflections and for hands, but I think the look of the gorilla costume was also a factor. The rest of the movie is a very workmanlike production.

Writing

Written by Curt Siodmak, I really can’t help but focus on the similarities to The Wolf Man. Its got a curse, a gypsy-like wise old woman, the elements of a love triangle, the notion of the bestial nature of man as a curse, and its even got Lon Chaney Jr. The major thematic difference is that Barney Chavez is a brutal, unsympathetic murderer and Larry Talbot was a sympathetic, likable guy. Outside of the commonalities, the dialogue, characters, and plot are all quite pedestrian. I suppose it's also worth noting that gorillas are not native to South America. At all.

Sounds

Original music by Raoul Kraushaar and Mort Glickman (uncredited). It’s…there, in a forgettable way. 

Verdict

The movie essentially takes Siodmak’s Wolf Man premise and recycles it into the South American jungle with an ape. Curt Siodmak cribbing from his earlier, better script but with a much lower budget is somewhat interesting, but not particularly compelling. There are worse movies out there, but considering the talent involved in making this, Bride of the Gorilla is simply mediocre and mostly boring. Sure, it's in the public domain and easy to find, but you're not missing anything by not seeing it.

“The mummy’s on the loose and he’s dancin’ with the devil!”

Closing the week out while also closing out the Universal Mummy series. Curiously, this sequel is also from 1944. That means Universal released two mummy movies in one year. That’s a lot of mummy. Anyway, here’s The Mummy’s Curse, the last of the Universal mummy franchise and its got the biggest continuity headscratcher of them all.

Plot
We start with a musical number in Louisiana. Huh. 25 years after The Mummy’s Ghost, a government-sponsored work crew is draining some swamplands in Louisiana when the workers start getting real suspicious since a generation ago a mummy disappeared into the swamp. Yes, the movie blatantly moves the entire setting from Mapleton, New England, to the bayou. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they wanted to put a mummy in Cajun country.

Anyway, an academic from the Scripps Museum comes down and asks the foreman for cooperation in letting them dig around after they’ve drained some swampland when the work crews find a dead laborer and a mummy-shaped hole in the ground. Kharis is out there, somewhere. Later, some earth gets loosened and the Princess Anaka digs herself out of the dirt as well. She ends up washing the dirt and crud off and returning to normal human form and the workers and archeologist try to help her out, but her memory’s foggy and she knows an awful lot about Egyptian history. There’s a new High Priest of Arkan in town looking to get both mummies back home and Kharis really wants his woman back.

Characters
Pat Walsh: Addison Richards plays the skeptical and flustered foreman trying to get part of the swamp drained. Mostly around to provide a voice of grumpy cynicism about the possibility of a mummy being in the area.

Betty Walsh: Kay Harding is Pat’s daughter and secretary. She’s there to provide a love interest for…

Dr. James Halsey: Dennis Moore is the archeologist sent by the Scripps Museum to try and recover the mummies if he can. He develops a thing for Betty.

Princess Ananka: Virginia Christine is our real protagonist. Ananka is actually Amina who was killed at the end of the last movie, now revived and psychologically messed up because she’s got the memories of two people in her head and she still swoons into trace-like states when Kharis is near. The most sympathetic character who gets the most character work, she’s actually rather interesting.

Ilzor: Peter Coe is our resident fez-wearing Priest of Arkan, and unlike every one of his predecessors, is actually focused on the mission and not subject to temptation. He’s also kind of a jerk to Halsey after Ananka is revived, constantly decrying the search efforts for her (she tends to wander off a few times) as futile and hopeless.

Ragheb: Martin Kosleck is Ilzor’s henchman and embedded in the work crew. He ends up desiring Betty and ultimately betrays his vows. He’s a stab-happy goon and probably the most outright villainous character in the whole series.

Cajun Joe: Kurt Katch plays a veteran of the swamps who’s a kind of unofficial leader among the work crew. He’s the first person to find the revived Ananka and tries to take care of her. He learns that shotguns don’t impress Kharis at all. He, like most of the crewmen, is painted in broad, stereotypical strokes.

Goobie: The awesomely named Napoleon Simpson is another member of the work crew and also happens to be a black guy who survives a horror movie. Goobie’s quite likable actually, being funny and observant when he’s around, though he too is fairly stereotypical.

Kharis: Lon Chaney Jr. one last time as the mummy. Kharis is quite a bit darker in this movie, strangling a surprising number of innocent people who just wanted to help Ananka. He also seems to have greater strength in this movie, being able to topple some ruins at the end of the film as a kind of avenging agent hell-bent on punishing Ragheb.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Leslie Goodwins, the film actually does pull off some neat techniques. Kharis appears several times as a backlit silhouette against a tent, which hasn’t really been done since the 2nd movie. The mummy effects by Jack Pierce continue to be good, but Kharis' face isn't quite as good.

However, the most impressive scene for me was Ananka’s resurrection. First she kind of digs her way out of the dirt, her skin completely covered in dirt and looking mummified. She stumbles out of the ground and her eyes are pretty much closed as she shambles through the swamp, but she’s not slow like Kharis. They played with the film speed too because her movements are just jerky enough to be inhuman without being grossly exaggerated (and you can tell from the way the leaves on the trees move). That coupled with the music yielded a surprisingly melancholy and creepy scene that worked really well, I thought.



Oh yes, and they recycle footage like crazy during flashbacks, so that tradition continues.

Writing
So Original Story credits to Leon Abrams and Dwight V. Babcock (and uncredited Ted Richmond), adaptation by Leon Abrams and Dwight V. Babcock (and uncredited Oliver Drake), and Screenplay by Bernard Schubert. So, the elephant in the room is the drastic shift in location. Going from New England to Louisiana is really difficult to swallow and really breaks the suspension of disbelief.

But once you get past that, it IS interesting setting a mummy movie in the bayou just because that never happens. The movie also really highlights for me a major feature of the Universal Mummy series. While there’s a definite pulpy feel to the stories, Kharis also straight up kills good/innocent people. Sure Kharis usually kills off a bad guy or two, but most of his victims are nice people who either get in the way accidentally, are searching for knowledge, or, in the case of this movie, just trying to help an amnesiac woman out of sheer human kindness. Rather interesting when you compare it to, say, 90s horror movies where just about all of the victims of the monster are unlikable jerks. Another notable element is that the movie ends on a downer again.

Sound
Original music by (uncredited) William Lava and Paul Sawtell. The music continues to work well with appropriate cues for action, suspense, and melancholy.

Conclusion
So The Mummy’s Curse actually takes the series out on a high note in my opinion. Despite taking the biggest liberty with continuity yet, they do some really cool stuff with Ananka and the setting eventually works.

Now, as for the series of films, the Karloff one stands alone, both as its own story and the best made. The Kharis films are about 50/50 for me in terms of quality, with the middle two being the weak ones. However, as a whole they provide an interesting experience, with a slower, more deliberate pacing than other Universal horrors from the 40s. The Kharis films are also a bit more coherent than the “House Of…” monster mashes with Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man, but at the cost of being way less batty.

Contradictorily I am going to recommend the Mummy series as a whole but not the individual films as stand alones. Because the story generally makes more sense if you follow Kharis along from the start despite the heavy retcons they make with each subsequent film. They're just more fun as a whole.

“Looks like somebody else was messing around with tana leaves.”

Universal returned to Mapleton in 1944 and resurrected Kharis for another go around, burning mansion be damned. Leaving the Banning family behind, the franchise takes it to new territory: A college campus. So will we be seeing a mummy undergoing fraternity hazings and doing keg stands? Of course not, but the results are still rather interesting anyway. Its The Mummy's Ghost, which doesn't actually feature any ghosts.

Plot
Mapleton is recovering from its last Mummy problem when the priests of Arkan (not Karnak anymore) send a new representative to America to recover the mummies of Kharis and Ananka, the latter being on display in the Scripps Museum. We then turn to Mapleton College, where a professor dabbles in translating hieroglyphics and brews up some tana leaves. Right as rain, he gets choked out by the mummy Kharis and the town goes into a fit over the new killings. One of the deceased professor’s students is dating an Egyptian student who starts to feel weird. She also tends to go into trances and wander around the campus and faints when she sees the mummy. Things progress along familiar territory when the priest sent to exact revenge falls for the girl, and then the movie ends on a real downer.

Characters
Tom Hervey: Robert Lowery is our “college aged” hero. He looks to be in his thirties at least. Anyway, he’s skeptical about mummies and the supernatural. He’s also got a cute little dog as a kind of sidekick, but a pet is not a substitute for a personality. Probably our blandest Mummy hero yet.

Amina Mansouri: Ramsay Ames plays our actual protagonist. Beautiful, but not really “Egyptian-looking,” she is actually the reincarnation of the Princess Ananka. Which explains why she goes into trance states when Kharis is near. Sort of. Anyway, she’s actually an interesting, sympathetic character since she’s mystified by all that’s going on and trying to do something about it.

Andoheb, High Priest of Arkan: George Zucco again, and again under the weathered, old-man makeup. Why is he a Priest of Arkan instead of Karnak? Who knows. Maybe their lease was up and they got a better deal. Anyway, he’s only in the beginning of the movie, but it is kind of amusing that he seems frustrated in the failure of his previous successor when appointing another.

Yousef Bey: John Carradine! Looking a little tanned! He’s the new priest sent to America to get Kharis and Ananka back. Interestingly, reclamation is the sole mission as opposed to the revenge angle. Needless to say, he too falls victim to the whims of lust and falls for Amina and would like to make both her and himself immortal, just like the last two guys tried. Still, the fact that its John Carradine means that he chews the scenery with exceptional relish. It also ends about the same too, with Kharis defenestrating him near the end of the film.

Kharis: Lon Chaney Jr. again and he seems more comfortable in the role. This time around Kharis is a bit more proactive, hiding out in some guy’s barn before Yousef arrives and being very, very adamant about taking Ananka, regardless of whatever body her spirit is in, home to her proper resting place.

Prof. Matthew Norman: Frank Reicher, who was in the last movie as a minor character doing forensic work for the police (maybe a live mummy limping around got him interested in Egyptology), returns in this one as somebody who can be the first victim of the mummy. His death is quite accidental, in that he dabbled too eagerly with the tana leaves and got a throttling.

This kind of shot has been in Every mummy movie so far.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Reginald Le Borg, makeup by Jack Pierce. Again, visually there’s not a whole lot of interesting flourishes, but the camera work is dependable and the makeup effects are great. The movie also makes liberal use of stock footage of Egypt and recycled footage from the Karloff film.

There is one standout scene in the Scripps Museum where Yousef sneaks around after hours and summons Kharis and a security guard gets in the way. It’s quite well done and Carradine’s smile as he sees Kharis sneaking up is nice and creepy, as is Kharis’ temper tantrum when he realizes that Ananka’s spirit is not with her mummy anymore. The last scene is also rather impressive, with Kharis carrying the body of Amina/Ananka into a swamp as he’s being chased by (you guessed it) an angry mob.

Writing
The screenplay is by Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher, & Brenda Weisberg, and here things are actually quite a bit more interesting than the last film. Sure, Tom’s as boring as a rock, but the merging of Amina with Ananka is genuinely an interesting development cribbed from the Karloff film. I also really liked the fact that after the professor’s death, the local police don’t waste any time in suspecting it could be anything other than a returned Kharis. That’s a nice bit of continuity there. What’s also fun is that the cops try to recreate the situation that got Professor Norman killed, only they plan to trap Kharis in a pit trap, since that’s the best idea they’ve got because they know bullets don’t work on him. Sadly they never get to use it, but the fact that they showed the cops being savvy enough to try is a nice touch. Sadly, the random continuity breaks persist, with the priesthood suddenly becoming that of Akran. Maybe they weren’t comfortable with Karnak anymore, since the actual Karnak was a real city and a seat of theological importance? I dunno.

Sound
Frank Skinner (uncredited) on musical duty, and the score continues to be good. This time the themes are changed up a bit and its more sweeping and a bit less melancholy.

Conclusion
The Mummy’s Ghost is better than the previous entry. Some interesting writing touches are done and Kharis displays more personality and then we get a genuinely unhappy ending. Definitely a step up, but it kind of requires seeing The Mummy’s Tomb to appreciate it more, continuity issues notwithstanding.


Wooden fences are no match for the might of KHARIS!

“Three tana leaves to keep him alive, nine to give him movement.”

The first Kharis movie was successful and it took only 2 years for the next sequel, The Mummy’s Tomb, to come out. This time around, it’s a direct continuation of the story, only set 30 years after it. But despite this, things start to get a little…wonky.

Plot
Its 30 years later and an old Steve Banning is now a retired archeologist with a grown up son who’s got a girlfriend/fiancee of his own now. He tells a tale of his adventures as a young man, told through recycled footage of the last two films, and his son doesn’t really believe it. Meanwhile, Priest Andoheb is still alive and appoints a new priest to act as his successor and caretaker of the mummy, Kharis. Princess Ananka was taken to a display in America and the new guy is sent with Kharis to get her mummy back and exact revenge on those who defiled the tomb 30 years ago. The priest arrives in the town of Mapleton (which is somewhere in New England) and immediately starts sending out Kharis to do his strangling thing.

Characters
Steve Banning: Dick Foran continues to be likable, this time as a mustachioed professor-type who pretty much does a bunch expository narration over some flashbacks before becoming the first victim of the “Mapleton Monster.” Which I’ll admit, is kind of interesting. You bring the hero back from the last movie, then kill him off ten minutes in. Didn’t exactly expect that in a 40’s movie. Its also kind of a shame, since Foran’s performance is more nuanced in this one.

Dr. John Banning: John Hubbard is our actual hero. The skeptical son of Steve Banning, John’s a pretty boring character who doesn’t do anything except be the useless voice of scientific skepticism in a house where his dad straight-up fought a mummy in his youth. He’s kind of a useless character until he finally believes in Kharis, and then he finally does something about it (like helping organize an angry mob). It just takes several deaths to get him there.

Isobel Evans: Elyse Knox plays John’s girlfriend. She’s a bit more intrigued by Steve’s stories, but other than that she’s another standard character without much personality. Pleasant, virtuous, and eventually the object of Mehemet Bey’s affections, she’s more of a plot device than a real character.

Babe Hanson: Wallace Ford returns. I have no idea why his last name’s “Hanson” instead of “Jenson” this time around but whatever. He arrives in Mapleton, also wearing a dapper moustache (and spectacles) after Steve’s murder and he knows exactly what’s going on: Kharis followed them to America and wants revenge. Except nobody believes him. Though the newshawks that descend on Mapleton for the story are eager to hear his tale. He too becomes a victim of Kharis’ wrath.

Andoheb: George Zucco returns. He survived the gunshot that took him out of the last movie and here is shown under a lot of old-people makeup. Humbled from his attempt to use a mummy to steal a girl for himself, he tasks his successor to finish his job, but not before warning him to stay true to his vows and avoid temptation. Guess how well that works out?

Mehemet Bey: Turhan Bey (who’s half-Turkish; which is as close as the series gets to an actual Egyptian High Priest), is our villain this time. He’s a young High Priest of Karnak following his mission. He’s an interesting character since he’s quite polite, kind of nice and not really intimidating in the way you’d expect the handler of a thousand year old mummy to be. He’s fairly level-headed and treats his mission like the job it is. He’s got nothing personal against Banning and company. That all changes when he spots Isobel. His heart goes aflutter and the plan starts to go off the rails.

Kharis: Lon Chaney Jr. takes up the mummy mantle (and continues to do so from here on out). His Kharis is a little bit singed and one eye has swollen shut, but he’s still mute and shambling. Sadly, they didn’t bring back the rotoscoped effect for his eyes this time. It doesn’t feel like Chaney found his footing with Kharis this time around, though the mummy is surprisingly spry and capable of climbing a trellis to the second floor of a house.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Harold Young, the movie has a workmanlike quality to it that isn’t bad, but lacking in any real identity. It is kind of novel bringing Kharis to an American setting, and the Jack Pierce makeup effects are still top-notch, but it lacks the wit of the previous film and the artistry of Freund’s film.

Writing
Story by Neil P. Varnick and Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher. The story is…okay. It recycles a few beats from the last one (and a lot of footage) in that the mummy’s handler falls for a woman and succumbs to temptation and then suffers for it. Like I said above, the real interesting element at play here is bringing in the heroes from the last movie and murdering them, which kind of displays the mummy’s patience and persistence at getting his revenge (though in a lot of ways Kharis is just a tool of the Priests of Karnak). What’s also interesting is that the internal continuity of the series is beginning to, ah, unravel, with Babe’s sudden change in last name. Oh, and big surprise, but there’s an angry mob in the movie.

This happens a lot in the series

Sound
Musical Director Hans J. Salter, and the score is really nice and appropriate. Pretty much the stuff I said for the last movie applies here as well. A good, solid score.

Conclusion
The Mummy’s Tomb is a pretty weak entry into the series. Its watchable, certainly, but it lacks real vitality to make it stand out. It’s got a strong start and then only picks up again at the end when a house is lit on fire with the mummy in it. Also, the movie wants you to buy War Bonds.

“He is not insane. He simply wants to die.”

1943 ushered in what’s best called the Universal Monster Mashups. Universal had the rights to their big three horror franchises, so it was only a matter of time before they started crossing over with each other. Last year two of those mashups were watched (out of sequence, I might add) but here’s the one that started this ersatz trilogy: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (which would be followed by House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula in that order).

Story
So, Lon Chaney Jr. reprises his role as Larry Talbot/the Wolf Man, but there’s a bit of a problem, since he’s kind of dead at the beginning of the movie. The movie quickly works around that and he’s up and running again, checking himself into a psych ward seeking either a cure or a way to stay permanently dead. Normal science doesn’t do jack for him, so with gypsy woman Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya again) in tow, he heads to obscure central/eastern European-ish Vasaria to find the notes of the late Dr. Ludwig Frankenstein (the protagonist from Ghost of Frankenstein). Talbot finds the doctor’s daughter Elsa (Ilona Massey), now the baroness of the estate and a scientist herself. A scientist, Dr. Frank Mannering (Patric Knowles as a completely different character than in The Wolf Man) chases after Talbot, trying to help him, but growing obsessed with bringing the recently thawed/revived Frankenstein Monster (this time Bela Lugosi) back to full strength.

All of this secretive activity doesn’t sit well with the citizens of Vasaria (including a particularly bloodthirsty innkeeper) and the Mayor (Universal Horror vet Lionel Atwill) has a difficult time restraining the torches and pitchforks crowd (which includes Dwight Frye among their number).

Whew. Got all that?

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Roy William Neill With George Robinson as Director of Photography, Jack Pierce’s effects continue to be solid and the werewolf transformations are incredibly impressive. Easily the best scene in the film is the first, where two grave robbers open Talbot’s tomb and accidentally revive him.

Writing
Curt Siodmak once again, and despite the fact that the continuity of the series turns into a complex snarl worthy of any fanboy obsession (you should browse Wookieepedia sometime if you don’t believe me), the fact that Siodmak was able to take two completely unrelated franchises and slap them together with any sense of coherence at all is an achievement. And it still hits all the expected notes of mad science, an angry mob and the Monster & Wolf Man fighting, while adding some new twists.

Sound
Original Music by Hans J. Salter (uncredited) is the standard 40s horror sound that I’ve grown quite accustomed to.

Conclusion
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man isn’t exactly great and probably marks the downward turn for Universal’s horror series, but its still a lot of fun watching the very first monster mash. Lugosi’s Monster isn’t that great (partly due to script cuts that removed the Monster’s blindness and partly due to the fact he was sixty years old at this point) but it succeeds in giving you exactly what it says it will.