The Mummy's Curse - 1944

Next up in the Universal Monster list was this movie. It was connected to the previous movie, The Mummy's Ghost, which is where the problems start.

At the end of the last movie, the mummy and his princess are swallowed by the swamp. I didn't realize it at the time, but they were supposed to be in Massachusetts. Apparently there's a pretty large swamp in Mass. called the Hockomock. It sounds like it has some mystery and superstition surrounding it. Maybe they could've done a movie about that instead. Anyway, let's get back to the "plot."

A group is draining the swamp. The bulldozer runs over the mummy's spot, and now he's out. The princess digs herself out, takes a dip in a pond and is young again. Then she proceeds to use people as shields to protect her from the mummy while she tries to figure out who she is. Eventually, she ends up in her coffin and is old and crusty again. For some reason, the man from the museum instantly recognizes who she is and figures out what happened.

Putting aside the obvious question of how the mummy stayed a mummy when the woman got young, how did we get to the swamp? The previous movie only had the one spot of swamp, and people weren't really Cajun. We went from a little bit of swamp to using boats to travel around. I got the feeling they wanted this one to be in Louisiana, but they definitely were referencing the first movie. Also, are there usually abandoned monasteries in the middle of swamps? 

And I want to mention an especially cringey character - Goobie. This poor African American actor was named Goobie and had all the stupid "massa" speech. We're talking 1944, WWII, the time of the Tuskegee Airmen and other heroes, and this is the best we can do for Napoleon Simpson? No. There was no reason for his character to be like that, and I hated it. Maybe the mummy could've taken out the screenwriter. Although I'm not sure how he kills anyone. You just have to lightly jog to get away from him. He's very slow.

Anyway, this one was real bad. The mummy just got rocks piled on him, so he could come back. The princess was just lying in her sarcophagus, so who knows what will happen. On the flip side of that coin, we only have so many movies left on our list, and at least two or three of them are creature of the Black Lagoon. Here's hoping we're done with the mummy!