THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

The above art, showing a fight between the titular mummy and a jackal-man, is far better than anything in the movie, particularly the film's climactic fight, where one can hardly see the two fighters in prevalent darkness. But now that I mention it, CURSE might have been better had everything been filmed in prevalent darkness. 

Director Oliver Drake had definitely seen better times. He'd written and/or directed a few dozen B-films in the forties, including the last of the Lon Chaney Jr "mummy movies," THE MUMMY'S CURSE. Most of the films he worked on were quickly forgotten, but five years before the 1969 CURSE, he wrote a psycho-thriller that might be his best scripting work: LAS VEGAS STRANGLER. He wasn't responsible for writing this feeble mummy-flick-- that honor went to a writer with only two other credits on IMDB-- but Drake may've contributed a little input, since the names of the two mummies in the film are "Akanna" and "Sirakh," re-arrangements of the doomed Egyptian lovers from the Universal series, "Ananka" and "Kharis."

But though the Universal mummy-films are mostly formula-fodder, the writer for CURSE didn't seem to have any awareness of what formula he was trying to emulate. Back in ancient Egypt, Princess Akanna (Marliza Pons) is informed by her dying Pharoah father that he's received a message from the gods. Rather than living out her life in ancient Egypt, the gods want Akanna to be entombed under a magical spell that will preserve her for centuries, until the time is right for her to rise again. Along for the ride is Sirakh, a low-ranking Egyptian who's in love with Akanna and attempts to steal her body from her special tomb. For this he's punished in the usual way-- the bandage-wrapping, the tongue-uprooting-- and made into a sleeping sentinel meant to serve Akanna when she next awakens.

Cut to modern Las Vegas: in a small house there, David Barrie (Anthony Eisley) shows off his two mummy-sarcophagii to a couple of friends. I'm not sure if Barrie is some sort of "Egyptologist manque" or what. Barrie claims that he simply found the caskets in a downed plane and took them with him. He claims to have some notion of exhibiting Akanna and Sirakh but doesn't seem to know how that would work. The conversation with Barrie and his friends is just there to set up Barrie's entrancement with the perfectly preserved non-mummified body of Akanna. He also mentions an Egyptian legend about a "bite of the jackal," which is also confusingly referenced by the Pharoah, and Barrie plans to test the legend by locking himself in the room with the opened caskets.

Sure enough, at some hour or other Akanna wakes up (Sirakh takes a little longer) and somehow inflicts the bite of the jackal on Barrie. I think this whole jackal-thing was the writer's dim attempt to bring Anubis into the mix, but it's never justified. The spell, or bite, or whatever it is works its magic, and Barrie becomes a raging Jackal-Man. He gets free and assaults a few Vegas residents, goes back home, re-transforms, and then gets his new instructions from Akanna.

After lots of talky, badly-lit incidents, Akanna finally reveals the plan of the Egyptian gods: they want her to conquer the modern world in the name of the ancient deities, with only a walking mummy and a Jackal-Man to aid her. How she would accomplish this, the audience never learns. But a real Egyptologist, Professor Cummings (John Carradine), hears about the Jackal-man killings and shows up on Barrie's doorstep, having implicitly figured out who got hold of the two missing mummies. Cummings, who doesn't have more than fifteen minutes in the movie, provides the info a local cop needs to put down this ancient threat: strike at a certain time, when the moon's no longer full, and Akanna's power will be weaker. The upshot is that Akanna loses her youth and the two monsters, each of whom is jealously possessive of his mistress, perish after fighting one another, I guess because Akanna's power wanes.

Only John Carradine's scenes justify watching this pile of dreck. He actually looks better here than in some of his earlier sixties films, and his speaking voice is as resonant as it was when he played roles like "High Priest of Kharis" in the 1940s. All of the other actors, whether experienced thespians like Eisley or dabbler-types like Pons, convey nothing but sheer boredom.