"George Zucco took one look at the sets and said no way was he goin' to be in anything that cheap. Eddie said screw him, we'll use Criswell..."
|
'Tis true, there is a lot of missing continuity in the Mummy horror movies cranked out at Universal Studios during the early Forties. This has led to wild speculation that there may be a missing mummy movie, or two, moldering in Universal's vaults somewhere. Well, we at HORROR-WOOD steadfastly refuse to propagate wild rumors. No, sir! We have it on good authority that there were two lost Mummy movies and one was directed by Ed Wood and was called...
By K. MOON DAWKINS (Moon Dawkins teaches popular culture at East Side Community College in Chicago. We’re proud that he has chosen to share this exclusive find with us unworthy infidels at HORROR-WOOD.) Here are the locales and putative dates for the "Kharis" films released by Universal studios in the 1940s:
Thus does the four-film Mummy cycle feature an incredibly stretched-out time frame, and a seemingly impossible geographical shift between the third and fourth entries. We’ve got just 25 years to get Kharis and Ananka from Mapleton, Massachusetts to Louisiana.
Do you suppose that the Mississippi River has an undiscovered tributary ‘way up there in New England, and the mummies were somehow carried southward over a quarter century? The sticking point is that everybody in Curse seems to feel that the mummies have been there all along, or at least a very long time. There's a whole local legend about The Mummy dancin' with the Devil. As we shall see, the fellow who came closest to the correct explanation is HORROR-WOOD regular Don Mankowski. In his article "Mummies For Dummies," published in Cult Movies #34 a couple of years ago, he indulged in some "what if." What if there was a forgotten Universal in there? Maybe: The Mummy’s Amble (Universal, 1944). D: Earle C. Kenton. J. Carrol Naish, Acquanetta, George Zucco, Anne Gwynne, Milburn Stone, Ian Wolfe, Fay Helm, and Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Mummy.
Mr. Mankowski explained to me that he simply made logical assumptions about who was working for Universal then, and who hadn't tried any mummy stuff lately. He also assumed their B-budget couldn't afford Karloff or Evelyn Ankers. Of course, now, the story writes itself. The High Priest (Zucco) charges Redundo Bey (Naish) with transporting the mummies from New England to the Gulf of Mexico, because only from there can his Egyptian cohorts get them back to Egypt. He almost succeeds, but of course falls madly in love with one or the other of the supporting actresses, and gets thrown through a window by Kharis. The mummies end up in a Louisiana swamp, with plenty of time for the local legend to build. A good cast is worth repeating, but they go ahead and show you these peoples’ names anyway. (As Acquanetta has trouble with speaking roles, she is well cast as the silent Ananka.) There! In maybe 59 minutes of running time, and adding maybe two weeks to our already overextended timeline, he’s resolved everything.
But, really, sir! A suppressed Universal film is a tough sell. You don’t suppose that we'd know about it? Unless there were something more sinister brewed here. So, I continued to dig, spending most of last summer in the back roads about Hollywood, and was astonished at what I found. Revealed at last, the inside story. I've chosen the popular "oral history" style, used by Rudolph Grey in his Ed Wood semi-biography Nightmare Of Ecstasy (Feral House, 1992), for reasons that will soon become obvious. ELI POUNDER [retired "B" producer]: I already told you that Universal had budgeted three "mummy" pictures for 1944. Fact is, they farmed the middle one out to Sam Katzman, the independent producer, the big studios used to do that. Sam pretty much forgot about it, and when he remembered, he had only five days left on his option. Only one man could turn out a picture under those conditions, so he went out and hired Ed Wood. Yeah, Ed was in the Army then, but I think he had a pass or a furlough. Or maybe he was A.W.O.L.
REÁL LAMER [renegade film historian]: Wood, though only in his twenties, was already a force with which to be reckoned. He didn't have much of a budget, and didn't want to do any location shooting at all. He had found a bunch of Louisiana actors out of work due to the cancellation of the East Side Kids movie that I mentioned earlier. So, Wood conceived a script, The Day The Mummies Moved that would get Kharis and Ananka out of New England "in a hurry," so that he could just hire a couple of people who could "talk Boston." "Who needs locations," he said, "when you have accents?" The man was an unappreciated genius, truly. GROVER GRIMES [retired movie "extra"]: George Zucco took one look at the sets and said no way was he goin' to be in anything that cheap. Eddie said screw him, we'll use Criswell. Hell, he said, we only need Andoheb for the opening scene. Screw Zucco, let him go back to Monogram. Still, Criz was good, I remember him saying--here, let me read it--"I predict that you, loyal and servile exalted priest of Karnak, will deftly recover the dormant and forlorn bodies of Kharis, Prince of Egypt and Ananka, Princess of Egypt from the dark and doom-ridden swamp, clandestinely spirit them via palatial limousine to the impressive train station, book a sumptuous first class train compartment, in order that they, the mummies, might be swiftly transferred to the great American Southeast, there to await the coming of the purposefully shabby boat which will transport them safely to..." and so on and on, like that. God, you couldn't shut that man up. Actually, they had Criswell read out the whole story just in case. Spoiled it for me, sort of.
Fact is, Eddie made the speech that long to save money. The next scene has Frisco Bey standing by a lamppost with the Louisiana people strolling by. And he says, "Just as Andoheb predicted!" We didn't have to shoot any of it! Frisco Bay was the Egyptian priest, played by Dudley Manlove, some fruit-filled friend of Wood's. He had some great lines. "Stupid infidels! You’re all stupid! Stupid!" Bela used to crack up hearing him. Yeah, I mean Lugosi, he’d already signed, came along with the picture. Eddie cast him as the police inspector, said he was psychically right for the part. I didn't think he ought of been playing that part, but you couldn't argue with Eddie. Just couldn’t. Bela, he really tried. You should have heard him. Wait, I gotta hold my nose while I do this. "Profeszor Normond issz DEDD! MIRR-dirt! And sszome won issz reSSZPONsszible!" He sure tried, Lugosi did. "Ah! Dey played me a trick! It’s da mummy! Ahhh! Gedt oudt of de vay!" Poor Bela!
RL: Yes, a lost Lugosi role! But, you see, Wood only had Lugosi for one day, and so he shot all of Bela's scenes in the hotel lobby. Wood apologized to Lugosi, said that one day he'd use him in a good movie. For the rest of the picture, Bela's part was played by Wood's podiatrist. I see you're wondering how he pulled that off. I'll get to that. The actor took care to keep the visor on his hat down over his face throughout, and he didn't voice any dialogue, he just gestured with the pistols in his hands. That's right, he found one gun too limiting, and so played the role with two. Now "Doctor Joe" had been an All-American basketball star at Southern California, was in fact a foot taller than Lugosi, but he wore special shoes of his own design so you couldn't tell. EP: Oh yes, Dr. Trautz' famous negative heels! Ed Wood told me later that he regretted not saving those shoes for some later project of his, whatever that was.
GG: The mummy? Well, they lent us Lon Chaney Junior, but he and Eddie got drunk the first night, got into a fight. Chaney stuffed Eddie in a trash barrel, and Eddie fired Lon just as soon as we pulled him out of it. Lon told Eddie to go screw himself and left. Eddie got Steve Reeves to play the mummy. With the bandages over his mug, who could tell? Besides, he spends most of the picture in a crate. RL: You see, we're five minutes into Wood's film, and Frisco Bey has the mummies in New Orleans. It's brilliant! GG: The rest of the picture involves Frisco Bey trying to get the big-ass sarcophaguses…sarcophagi…er, boxes to the dock. There's lots of misadventures. Let me tell you: Eddie could do comedy without even trying. It seems a lot longer than it was, because we keep going from night to daylight because we couldn't wait for the right time of day. I mean, the five days were nearly up, and they wouldn't give Eddie any more money, so he says, hell, we'll just dump the mummies back in a different swamp and clear outta here.
So he came up with the ending during lunch. After Ananka chokes Frisco Bey, they end up in the swamp. Heh, heh, the sarcopha--the boxes--wouldn't sink, so we gotta put rocks in 'em, and when they do…ha, ha, ha—cough, cough, cough. Excuse me. No, Kharis didn't choke him, it was the lady. Eddie changed a few things. I'll explain later. Hah, we all wanted to choke Dudley! Then there's one more Criswell speech, some crap about the future and how we’ll all be there one day, and then we wrap.
EP: At this point, Chauncey Walsh, the vice-president at Universal returned from vacation, and got to review Wood's film. He was, what’s the word, not pleased. GG: This big shot at Universal took one look at it and got pissed. Chewed out a bunch of his flunkies, told them if they released that piece of crap he'd fire their butts. So, the film is probably still in some warehouse or other. RL: I've offered to pay the expenses if they'd release it to us, but they refuse me yet.
EP: Universal had already commissioned the script for The Mummy's Curse by this time. They figured they could do it better. GG: When someone pointed out that this story started in Louisiana, the big shot said screw it, who cares? We're sure not goin' to have that whole script typed up again. And, like they say, the rest is history. Ah, nobody could make movies like Eddie! Thanks, "Moon"! That's sure some discovery, all right. Imagine, if ol' Ed Wood had been given his big break by Universal...he could have made Housedress Of Frankenstein. And Bud and Lou could've done a drag number in Abbott And Costello Treat Frankenstein. And Ma Kettle would have worn the pants in her film family! And Francis, the Talking Mule, would have preferred angora sweaters to Army blankets! Yes, just imagine... Article copyright © the person behind Moon Dawkins |
