MonsterHunter

By 1955 Abbott and Costello had met just about every monster Universal had to offer. The only one that had escaped their withering satire was the Mummy. Of course by the end of the Kharis films in 1944, many probably already believed that the Mummy was a joke. No matter though as Universal cranked out one last gasp in the Abbott and Costello meet the Monster of the Week oeuvre. This one looked chintzy and the gags were more rickety than ever, though the film was not without its amusing moments (almost exclusively provided by Costello).

The film begins with our stars in Cairo, Egypt. A&C overhear a conversation about a mummy being found and that it’s going to be shipped back to the USA so they decide to apply for the job of watching over the crate as it gets shipped overseas. I think we all recall how this same job worked out for them in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

So Bud and Lou head over to the professor’s home to see if there is still a position open for “two idiots to watch runaway mummy”. Before they get there though, we are introduced to some villains. There are two sets of villains in this flick, which serves to give it a manic quality. I suppose they hope so much is happening that we won’t stop to think that we’ve seen all these jokes before in other A&C efforts. Sometimes it works, sometimes we still remember they haven’t developed any new material in something like 15 years.

One set of villains are some crooks that are after the Mummy because of some medallion it has which supposedly has the key to where lots of buried treasure is located. The other set of crooks are those secret sect of losers that always crop up in these mummy flicks. They’re a bunch of guys without jobs who are stuck in the past and think that anybody still cares about their crummy mummy and his forbidden bride. Whenever someone shows up to excavate the tombs they try to stop them. Talk about doing the same old shtick.

It seems that the mummy in question is named Klaris. I’m not sure if that is supposed to pass for a joke since it sounds like Kharis (the original Mummy) but isn’t. The secret sect want Klaris and his medallion back so he can protect the long dead princess whose name isn’t Ananka but does start with an “a”. I’ve left out the most ridiculous part. The high priest in charge of all of this is played by Lumpy Rutherford’s dad from Leave it to Beaver! Long time readers of MonsterHunter may recall that I claimed he made in appearance in The Birds, but this was unquestionably him! His voice alone betrays his sitcom fame!

Bud and Lou get to the professor’s place and can’t find him because he’s already been offed with a blow gun dart to the neck by one of Mr. Rutherford’s goons. We spend the next 20 minutes messing around the place with Costello doing his bugged eyed looks and his patented “Aaaabooooott!” scream while bodies and mummies are disappearing just like you would expect in a sequence like this. Parts were amusing, but it just seemed to drag on too long. At one point Lou carries on a conversation with the dead man because a tape recorder is playing his voice. Later he tapes himself sounding tough and making threats and that tricks a bunch of the bad guys into letting him go.

The best part was when Bud and Lou finally establish that the professor is dead so Bud has Lou take some pictures of the dead guy so that the police will have proof that a murder has taken place. Then they send the photos off to the cops anonymously so they don’t have to get involved. The next day, Bud reads a newspaper account of the murder and sees that one of their pictures has been used in the paper. Of course it’s the one Lou took when Bud was standing next to the body! What a kidder, that Lou!

This means our heroes are now fugitives from the law and the two sets of goons, so they go undercover as a couple of beggars. I’m not sure why, but this also means that Lou has to pretend to be a snake charmer. Here comes the old rope gag. Abbott is holding onto this rope and it rises into the sky as Costello plays his little horn. Eventually, he tells Costello to cut it out and he does with the immediate result being that Abbott comes crashing down in a heap. Why does Abbott keep hanging out with this guy? It’s obviously an emotionally and physically abusive relationship.

by now they are in possession of the mysterious medallion that everyone is after, having found it in the professor’s place before they eluded all of their pursuers. During all this chasing and hiding they manage to have time to go to a cafe for a leisurely bite to eat. I also think that it was somewhere around this time that a musical number was shoehorned in to pad this thing out another five minutes.

I don’t really recall much about that part because as soon this woman starts wailing like someone’s stomping on her foot, I just looked out the window and watched my neighbor try to get his truck started. It looked like an old truck, so I assume it’s pretty cold blooded in the dead of winter, but then the boys were back on bantering back and forth with their hamburgers and trying to trick one another into eating the medallion! I have absolutely no idea why they wanted each other to eat it. If it was cursed, I’m not sure what eating it would do and if that was the reason, then why not just chuck the dang thing into the Nile? If they were trying to hide it from all the evildoers who were after it, I can think of a better way. Maybe like how that one guy hid that watch in Pulp Fiction. (If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen it, you don’t want to know what I’m talking about.)

Eventually, Costello gets tricked into eating it, but once he bites into it, why does he keep eating? I’m thinking he needs to be institutionalized or at the very least have a guardian of some type. I also think that part of his treatment would be not to associate with Bud. Anyone who tricks you into eating a cursed medallion that two groups of killers want is not your friend.

After some scenes involving the bad guys, Lou, and an x-ray machine, everybody tromps off to the hidden temple where the treasure, the Mummy, and all the bad guys are. At this point, I feel compelled to make a comment about the Mummy, as he’s portrayed in this picture: abysmal. First of all this guy is in the worst mummy outfit I have ever seen. Basically, it looks like he’s wearing coveralls that have been sewed to look like bandages. This outfit bends and gaps when he moves around and doesn’t even look like it fits him well. The look of the bandages is awful. They just look like some dried papier mache. I thought I was watching a homecoming skit where somebody was too lazy to wrap themselves in toilet paper so they just put on a low-priced mummy suit from Wal-Mart.

The ending of this movie is one these things that’s so “silly” it veers off into “ridiculously idiotic.” The Mummy gets himself blown up in the temple and then A&C come up with an idea to keep Klaris alive in everyone’s memory. They open up the Kafe Klaris complete with house band dressed as mummies! Fred Rutherford is now the head waiter or something! All the goons now have jobs at this place. I think you could probably say that this predicted the whole trend toward theme restaurants, and it was just as dumb then as it is now.

The movie ends (finally) with the old snake charming gag! Even at the end they were rehashing the not-too-amusing jokes that infested this film. A completely ignominious end to the Universal Mummy cycle. Some amusing moments from the rubber faced and often very loud Lou Costello, but we’ve just seen it all before in their other movies. I think that after seeing this one, Fred Rutherford would have grounded it for a month!

© 2008 MonsterHunter