Of the Universal Kharis Mummy films, the only one for me that came close to good was The Mummy's Hand, though that also had its uneven spots. The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost and The Mummy's Curse are watchable at least but also heavily flawed and uninspired, of which The Mummy's Curse fares the worst.The Mummy's Curse highlight is, agreed, the resurrection of Princess Ananka. It is a splendid, atmospheric scene that provides goose-bumps, and along with the ending of Ghost is the best scene of all the Universal Kharis Mummy films. It is sadly though the only great scene in the film, the only one to show any sense of care or directorial flair. Anne Codee makes a memorable appearance, and her Hey You number provided the film with a brief flicker of charm that the rest of the film was sorely lacking in. Of the cast(of which most of the cast were not very good), Virginia Christine comes out on top, she has an alluring appearance, and as well as making one's hairs stand up on their neck she is poignant too. Martin Kosleck is fun and menacing in his role, while Holmes Herbert is appropriately silky voiced. The sets are very atmospheric and there is some nice shadowy lighting, the camera work is the resurrection is most effective. And there is one amusing line, Goobie's 'The devil's alive and he's dancing with the mummy'.Lon Chaney Jnr sadly completely goes through the motions here, he at least had some intimidating moments in Tomb and Ghost but here it seemed as if he didn't care. He is disadvantaged by that Kharis here has very little screen time and whenever he does appear he has nothing to do, nothing that wasn't done before in the previous Kharis films anyhow. Peter Coe is also by far the worst high priest of all four films put together, he brings very little authority or sense of threat to the role and instead he's wooden. Napoleon Simpson provides some mostly unfunny and often embarrassing comic relief(apart from that one line) as the film's most stereotypical character, in a film where all the characters are stock and uncompelling, and Dennis Moore and Kay Harding, while an improvement on the leads from Ghost, are a little dull. The script on the most part is as lumbering as Kharis himself and all the humour falls flat. As with the previous three Kharis films the romance elements don't come off strongly either, feeling saccharine and underdeveloped.Princess Ananka's resurrection sequence and the Hey You number aside, The Mummy's Curse is slow-moving and dull with a lot of the storytelling feeling like an even blander retread of Ghost, the attacks and chases being especially repetitive. Unlike the previous three films, there is very little attempt at trying to do something different to before. The previous three films for all their problems had some campy fun and a little suspenseful atmosphere, plus Kharis also showed signs of being intimidating before, but again with the resurrection scene aside none of those can be found in Curse. The music doesn't sound bad at all by itself, it sounds quite haunting, but is very stock and doesn't always fit, a couple of placements sounded random. While the production values have their moments, some close-ups of Kharis don't look particularly good and the editing is shoddy, it was made virtually straight after Ghost(which was also made quickly, and looked it) and it really does show.In conclusion, the last of the Universal Kharis Mummy films and sadly it is also the weakest. Pretty weak a lot of the time, but thanks to the song, that one great sequence and a few performances it's watchable. 4/10 Bethany Cox

1944's "The Mummy's Curse" was the fourth and last of the Kharis series, third to star Lon Chaney in the title role, and the only one not included in Universal's popular SHOCK! television package, having to wait for 1958's SON Of SHOCK, the same fate that befell beloved classics like "Bride of Frankenstein," "The Ghost of Frankenstein," and "House of Dracula." Going from a Massachusetts swamp to the Louisiana bayou is certainly a stretch, but not as much as setting the date an incredible 25 years later. The unexceptional Peter Coe ("House of Frankenstein") is this film's bland High Priest of Arkham, Ilzor Zandaab (his screen time quite limited), his recent disciple, the lascivious Ragheb (Martin Kosleck), providing all the knife wielding villainy to spice up the proceedings. An excavation of the swamp leaves one man dead, the knife still in his back, and a space just large enough for a mummy; shortly afterwards, another finds a hand emerging from its burial place, revealing the now revived Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine), who had gone down with Kharis at the conclusion of "The Mummy's Ghost." Making her way to a nearby lake, the Princess emerges perfectly coiffured (every hair in place!), if a bit wet and amnesiac, spelling death for all those who take her in. There are solid roles for veterans Addison Richards, Holmes Herbert, Kurt Katch, Charles Stevens, William Farnum, and Ann Codee, criminally unbilled as Tante Berthe. Popular years later playing Mrs. Olsen in the Folgers commercials, Virginia Christine scores impressively as Ananka (her natural blonde locks hidden under a jet black wig), light years better than the insipid Ramsay Ames in "The Mummy's Ghost" (her other Universal horror was the doomed prostitute who encounters Rondo Hatton's Creeper in 1946's "House of Horrors"). This marked the end of Kay Harding's brief stardom at Universal ("Weird Woman," "The Scarlet Claw"), while Martin Kosleck, previously seen in the still unissued "The Frozen Ghost," continued his scene stealing ways in "Pursuit to Algiers," "House of Horrors," and "She-Wolf of London." For a role he so fervently despised, Lon Chaney's Mummy again fares well, his frustration palpable, continuously (even comically) one step behind his beloved Princess (the climax finds them both headed permanently to Manhattan's Scripps Museum). This appears to have been the most popular of his three outings, reprising the role in 1959's Mexican "La Casa del Terror" and on television's ROUTE 66 (the 1962 Halloween broadcast "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing," opposite Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre). "The Mummy's Curse" made a total of six appearances on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater- Sept 25 1965 (following 1963's "Battle Beyond the Sun"), Feb 10 1968 (following 1933's "The Invisible Man"), Sept 30 1972 (following 1944's "House of Frankenstein"), Jan 25 1975 (following 1960's "The Lost World"), Sept 20 1975 (following 1969's "Godzilla's Revenge"), and Apr 23 1977 (following 1935's "Bride of Frankenstein").

At the end of the previous movie "The Mummy's Ghost" the mummy known as "Kharis" (Lon Chaney) carried the beautiful "Amina Mansouri" (Ramsay Ames) into the Louisiana swamp and while they were sinking into quicksand she had morphed into the "Princess Ananka". This movie essentially picks up where the previous movie ended with some workers for the "Southern Engineering Company" trying to drain the Louisiana swamp where Kharis and Ananka sank some 25 years earlier. While work is progressing two people from the "Scripps Museum", who go by the names of "Dr. James Halsey" (Dennis Moore) and "Dr. Ilzor Zandaab" (Peter Coe), come to see the owner of the company "Pat Walsh" (Addison Richards) to tell him that they want to dig up Kharis for their museum. Unfortunately, while they are talking the dead body of one of the workers is found near that site. Also found is a bandage which could have only come from Kharis. Not long after that Princess Ananka (now played by Virginia Christine) is also freed from her underground resting place and as she wanders in the swamp she gradually changes back into her old identity of Amina Mansouri. Naturally, Kharis wants her back and he will stop at nothing to get her. Anyway, rather than detail the rest of the movie and possibly ruin the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this is the 4th sequel to the original movie "The Mummy" which was filmed back in 1932. As such it follows the same standard plot which admittedly gets a bit old in subsequent re-tellings. And while there are a couple of twists thrown in which have a certain appeal the fact that this movie only lasted 62 minutes doesn't allow for any depth to the characters or the plot. That said, in my opinion this "paint-by-numbers" approach doesn't lend any quality to the movie and as a result I rate it as slightly below average.

The final entry in the Kharis the mummy series is also the weakest, although still a good watch. At the end of the last film, Kharis and Ananka disappeared into the swamp. Decades later, the swamp is drained. For some reason, this film moves the location of the swamp from New England to Louisiana! So obviously somebody didn't think continuity was that big of an issue. Anyway, Kharis is revived by yet another Egyptian high priest (Peter Coe). Meanwhile, Ananka resurfaces from the mud and we discover she is played by Virginia Christine. Why Ramsay Ames didn't return to the role I'm not sure, but Christine does fine. Needless to say, Kharis is once again anxious to find his lost love. This was Lon Chaney Jr.'s last turn as the mummy. This one's got some marks against it but it's a fun movie. Nice atmosphere and some creepy moments. Universal horror fans like myself will like it most.