08/23/2013
The Mummy Speaks! (1946)
“When the mummy speaks... it’s the last thing you hear!”
This Edgar Allan Poe-inspired film begins with a Canadian archaeologist who was traveling overseas returning home with an ancient Egyptian mummy, which he brings to the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. Before the ancient sarcophagus can be opened, Canada’s former ambassador to Egypt, a rich man of influence, borrows the mummy and has it brought to his house as the centerpiece to a party meant to amuse his friends. Among the guests are a rich but senile millionaire and his gold digging young girlfriend, a dandy socialite, a columnist for the Ottawa News, and our heroes, Dan and Stan, a pair of hapless Laurel and Hardy-like caterers.
When the party goers ignore a centuries-old curse and recite a spell they discover written on the side of the sarcophagus, they get more than they bargained for. At first, nothing happens and
most of the guests laugh off the idea of a curse and return to the party, leaving the casket in the study. But soon, the mummy wakes from thousands of years of slumber and goes on a murderous rampage.
The monster stalks the mansion, killing the guests one by one, starting with the gold-digging girlfriend. She’s found in the games room with her tongue and several gold filings ripped out of her mouth. A gold-digger in life, her fate is poetic justice. Her boyfriend is next, also found with his tongue torn out. Trapped by a storm, which has taken down the phone line, the partygoers are
trapped in the cavernous home.
As the remaining guests try to figure out who’s responsible for the killings, more of them are found dead, all with their tongues ripped out, until it’s only Dan, Stan and the reporter! In the midst of this chaos, Dan and Stan – the slightly more heroic of the pair – emerge as unlikely saviours when Stan knocks the mummy back into its sarcophagus with the catering cart as it chases Dan through the house.
After the reporter recites the passage on the other side of the coffin, suddenly, the mummy speaks. It reveals that its soul was in a better place until the incantation brought it back into its rotting co**se. Living within a rotting pile of bones held together with wrappings is a painful experience and the creature lashed out with vengeance for those who spoke the words. The tongues were ripped out in order to find one that would help it speak its pain.
The heroes agree to help the mummy to return it to its peace beyond the grave. Reciting another incantation, the mummy once again returns to its eternal slumber and our heroes have to figure
out what to do with the mess!
Concept: Brett Kelly, director of The Bonesetter, Final Curtain, Attack of the Giant Leeches and Kingdom of the Vampire
Artist: Eric Robillard
