This is the first film I have seen starring Wheeler & Woolsey, and it'll probably be my last, the painfully unfunny comedy duo failing to make me laugh even once. Clearly under the illusion that they're of the same calibre as Laurel and Hardy and The Marx Brothers, the guys deliver their stale brand of vaudeville humour with energy and confidence, but their act only serves to irritate, Bert Wheeler being particularly grating with his repeated forgetfulness.
I only watched this one because I am a horror movie completist, and I had hoped for some zany 'mummy on the rampage' fun. What I actually got was a dire murder mystery, devoid of originality, laughs, and excitement. The plot sees ditch-diggers Stanley Wright and Aloysius Whittaker (Wheeler & Wollsey) hired as excavators on an expedition to Egypt, where archaeologist Phillip Browning (Frank M. Thomas) intends to return artefacts taken from the tomb of King Pharatimes, thus avoiding becoming another victim of the Pharoah's curse.
The low point of the film for me was an attempt at comedic wordplay, the characters unable to say the phrase 'twenty miles as the crow flies'. It's the kind of thing that Bob Hope or Danny Kaye might possibly have made work, but Wheeler and Woolsey have no chance and the result is embarrassingly inept. I'm sure you will have your own 'worst moment' from the movie - there are plenty to choose from.
The film doesn't even have the decency to feature a real mummy (the killer wraps himself in bandages to pretend to be a mummy), expects us to believe that Browning's pretty daughter Mary (Barbara Pepper) would be romantically interested in an absent-minded idiot like Stanley, and includes the obligatory stereotypical 'scared black man' (Willie Best).
I only watched this one because I am a horror movie completist, and I had hoped for some zany 'mummy on the rampage' fun. What I actually got was a dire murder mystery, devoid of originality, laughs, and excitement. The plot sees ditch-diggers Stanley Wright and Aloysius Whittaker (Wheeler & Wollsey) hired as excavators on an expedition to Egypt, where archaeologist Phillip Browning (Frank M. Thomas) intends to return artefacts taken from the tomb of King Pharatimes, thus avoiding becoming another victim of the Pharoah's curse.
The low point of the film for me was an attempt at comedic wordplay, the characters unable to say the phrase 'twenty miles as the crow flies'. It's the kind of thing that Bob Hope or Danny Kaye might possibly have made work, but Wheeler and Woolsey have no chance and the result is embarrassingly inept. I'm sure you will have your own 'worst moment' from the movie - there are plenty to choose from.
The film doesn't even have the decency to feature a real mummy (the killer wraps himself in bandages to pretend to be a mummy), expects us to believe that Browning's pretty daughter Mary (Barbara Pepper) would be romantically interested in an absent-minded idiot like Stanley, and includes the obligatory stereotypical 'scared black man' (Willie Best).