Notes: Universal. 61 minutes.
Kharis, The Mummy: Lon Chaney, Jr.
Yousef Bey: John Carradine
Amina Mansori: Ramsay Ames
Inspector Walgreen: Barton MacLane
Andoheb: George Zucco
Tom Hervey: Robert Lowery
Professor Norman: Frank Reicher

Screenplay: Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher, Brenda Weisberg
Story: Griffin Jay, Henry Sucher
Associate Producer: Ben Pivar
Directed: Reginald LeBorg.

Summary: Scenes of the Sphinx and Luxor are followed by a clip of the young George Zucco ascending the temple steps (from The Mummy's Hand). This is supposed to be Yousef Bey (John Carradine), though, who listens to the story we have heard repeatedly about Kharis and Princess Ananka, now called a priestess initiate of Arkhan ("They dared to love each other"), from old and palsied Andoheb (George Zucco, alive yet again). At least we don't have to watch the recycled clips this time. Kharis reportedly still lives to guard Ananka's tomb, although there was that unfortunate incident involving the fiery annihilation of Kharis at the Banning house "30 years ago"! It will be Yousef's mission to bring them both back to Egypt.

The Ananka blab is continued by Professor Norman in a class lecture. He tells of the Mapleton incidents from The Mummy's Tomb, which one of the rather aged-looking students dismisses as having been caused by "a man made up as a mummy, to keep the legend alive." But the Professor is an eyewitness and knows a little about tana leaves. When the bell rings, he promises Egyptian history next time, vs. "the more lurid and non-curricular subject of living mummies."

Tom's rather disinterested but jittery girlfriend is Amina, who is part Egyptian and is reading The Tombs of Ancient Egypt. "Something happens to me when I think of Egypt"; she gets tired and troubled.

Back to the priests of Arkhan under the cycle of the moon: "Now swear by the ancient gods of Egypt that you will never rest until the Princess Ananka and Kharis have been returned to their rightful resting places in these tombs." After the obligatory recipe initiation, Yousef Bey heads to America to retrieve Kharis and the inanimate mummy of Ananka.

Professor Norman, having discovered an "elusive hieroglyphic" specifying the number nine in reference to tana leaves, is working late despite his wife's protestations that he should come to bed. "That's my salvation, Ella: the fact that you're not a scientist and that it is too much for you." The Professor cooks the leaves, and the mummy bursts through a rail fence, following the scent of the tana brew. We never get an explanation as to his surviving the fire in the last film. The mummy's shadow passes over Amina and she sleepwalks. The mummy kills the Professor, slurps up the tana soup, and leaves the characteristic mold. Amina sees the mummy leaving and faints outside. "I begged [him] to come to bed last night," wails Mrs. Norman to the investigators the next day. Amina has been found collapsed near the scene with a new white streak in her hair. Mapleton is in a tizzy and headlines read "Egyptian Girl Liked to Mystery Killing." She's warned by the sheriff not to leave town.

Yousef stews. Amina is parking with Tom, but feels cold when he's sucking on her neck, so he takes her home. The mummy is wandering about, upsetting dogs (especially "old King"), killing gun-toting farmer Ben Evans, and busting through barn walls.

At the Scripps Museum and the tomb of Ananka, Yousef laments that the priests are "powerless now to prevent the gaze of heretics resting upon her." He hides until after hours. Kharis shows up, and when he lovingly approaches Ananka's mummy, Amina at home screams, and Ananka turns to dust: "her soul has entered another form." But Kharis goes berserk, breaks things, and kills a watchman. Amina reports afterwards, "I could feel his hands, touching me."

Inspector Walgreen (the guy who played Inspector Henderson in the Superman tv series) tries reconstructing the crime in the Noman home, burning tana and digging a 10-foot pit for the mummy, which never works out. Tom keeps wanting to go to New York, and Amina is rather icy about the prospect of marriage to this doof. Bey prays for guidance, and a mystical light takes Kharis to a sleepwalking Amina. Peanuts the dog leads Tom in pursuit, and a mob has formed too now, proceeding to a shack where Yousef now has Amina, with more white hair, tied down. He claims she's the reincarnation of Ananka "as she was centuries ago." Amina declares, "You're mad," but she does have a birthmark on her hand. Yousef must decide, in this "hour of temptation," whether "to consign this lovely girl to death again," that is, to inject her with tana fluid for Kharis, or listen to his inner voice: "What of your destiny as a man?" Her hair is now white. Yousef prays to Isis. If he proceeds correctly, he'll "keep her young and beautiful forever.... No more to fear: no death, no decay." He decides they won't return to Egypt. Kharis is shocked! He kills Yousef. Tom and his stick fail in their assault and the mummy takes an unconscious Amina out of the shack. Peanuts leads the mob towards the escaping Kharis, carrying Amina who is now wrinkled. They walk into a bog, and Tom is warned, "You can't go in that swamp. It's certain death." An aged and unconscious Amina is carried under, into the muck, by the mummy.

Overvoice: "The fate of those who defy the will of the ancient gods shall be a cruel and violent death." [But she didn't.]

Commentary: What a mess! This one wasn't thought through very carefully, as exemplified by the pointless pit-digging in front of Professor Norman's doorway, one hastily and poorly incorporated scene from a previous mummy film, Amina's lack of consciousness for most of the film, and the general pointlessness of it all. The film has nothing to do with Egypt and not much to do with anything else. I am at a loss as to how to comment. Ah! The bog is real, so that's truly disgusting muck. But mummies should be associated with dryness and dust!

For a very enthusiastic reading of these '40s mummy films plus lost scenes from the scripts, see Thomas M. Feramisco, The Mummy Unwrapped: Scenes Left on Universal's Cutting Room Floor (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., Pub., 2003).