Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy


1h 19m 1955
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy

Brief Synopsis

Two bumblers get mixed up with Egyptian grave robbers and a murderous mummy.

Film Details

Also Known As
Abbott and Costello in the Mummy
Genre
Comedy
Horror
Release Date
Jun 1955
Premiere Information
not available
Distribution Company
Universal Pictures Co., Inc.
Country
United States

Technical Specs

Duration
1h 19m
Sound
Mono (Western Electric Sound System)
Color
Black and White
Theatrical Aspect Ratio
1.85 : 1

Synopsis

At an Egyptian café, bumbling adventurers Bud Abbott and Lou Costello overhear Dr. Gustav Zoomer explain to a journalist that he has just discovered the mummy of Klaris, the Prince of Evil, whose sarcophagus contains a clue leading to the long-lost tomb of the Princess Ara. Two other interested parties also listen closely to Zoomer: Hetsut and Iben, henchmen of Semu, the leader of Klaris' cult followers, who are eager to steal back their sacred god; and Rontru, a fortune-hunter who plots with her helpers, Charlie and Josef, to kill Dr. Zoomer. Bud and Lou, wanting Zoomer to hire them to accompany the mummy back to America, visit the doctor's castle that evening, not realizing that Hetsut, Iben, Charlie and Josef are hiding there. Unable to locate Zoomer, Bud and Lou search the rooms separately, and although Lou repeatedly finds evidence that other people are there, the clues disappear as soon as Bud arrives. Meanwhile, Hetsut and Iben find the mummy and sequester him in the basement, where they realize that his medallion, which contains the clue to Ara's location, is missing. Upstairs, Bud instructs Lou to hide in different rooms and photograph anyone he sees. While hiding, Lou repeatedly stumbles onto Zoomer's dead body, but each time he brings Bud back to view it, Hetsut has removed it temporarily, causing Bud to scoff at him. Finally, Lou enters Zoomer's office, where he inadvertently overhears a recording of Zoomer revealing that the medallion is in the grandfather clock. Bud finds Lou and has him photograph Zoomer's body, so they can anonymously send the pictures to the police. On their way out, Charlie and Josef overhear them discussing their plans and assume they killed Zoomer. Meanwhile, Hetsut and Iben sneak Klaris to his tomb, where Semu feeds the stirring mummy and then threatens his men to find the medallion or die. The next day, Bud sees in the newspaper that Lou photographed him along with Zoomer's body, and is now wanted for the doctor's murder. He and Lou flee the police, disguising themselves as snake charmers to escape detection. Hoping to catch the real murderer, they return to Zoomer's at the same time as Rontru, Charlie and Josef, who are hiding in the castle and attack as soon as Lou uncovers the medallion in the clock. When the police then appear outside, Bud and Lou fight everyone off, escaping through a window. They race to a pawnshop to hock the medallion, but when the owner sees it, he screams that it is cursed. Rontru then appears and offers to buy it from them that night. They meet at the café, where Bud and Lou pass the medallion back and forth, each one hoping to foist the curse off onto the other. When Bud places it in Lou's burger, Lou swallows it, prompting Rontru to abduct them and take them to a doctor's office, where she x-rays Lou's stomach. Semu has followed them, and when he pretends to be an amateur archeologist, she hires him to lead them to Klaris' tomb, using hieroglyphics inscribed in the medallion and exposed in the x-ray as a guide. The next day, as they reach the mouth of the tomb, Semu disappears into a secret entrance and organizes his followers inside. Lou accidentally discovers the hidden door by falling through it, then stumbles into several giant prehistoric beings before being pursued by an awakened Klaris. As Bud joins Lou inside, Klaris catches Lou and, by shaking him upside down, retrieves the medallion. Outside, Rontru sneaks up on Semu and ties him up, and then disguises Charlie as a mummy, enters the tomb and knocks out Klaris. After she replaces his body with Charlie's and buries Klaris outside, Bud and Lou find Charlie and, thinking he is Klaris, knock him out and unknowingly bury him in the same hole as the real mummy. Finding leftover bandages, Bud wraps himself up like a mummy, after which he and Lou discover Semu and accidentally push the still-bound man into the tomb via another hidden door. Just as Bud and Lou re-enter the tomb, both Charlie and Klaris wake and follow them. Soon after, the three mummies frighten one another in the labyrinthine passages. Semu's followers find him and everyone enters the tomb in time to see Klaris attack and kill Rontru. Josef tosses some dynamite he has been holding to Lou, who throws it to Klaris just as it explodes. When the dust clears, the mummy is dead and Ara's sarcophagus has been exposed. To cheer up Semu, Bud proposes a new way to honor the Prince, and soon after, Café Klaris opens to great success.

Film Details

Also Known As
Abbott and Costello in the Mummy
Genre
Comedy
Horror
Release Date
Jun 1955
Premiere Information
not available
Distribution Company
Universal Pictures Co., Inc.
Country
United States

Technical Specs

Duration
1h 19m
Sound
Mono (Western Electric Sound System)
Color
Black and White
Theatrical Aspect Ratio
1.85 : 1

Articles

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy


Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, generally considered the most successful comedy team in the history of motion pictures, made a series of hit films, most of them at Universal, that put their patented stage routines into various winning formulas: finding themselves in the Navy, the Army, high society, college and a harem or in such locations as Africa, Mexico, Alaska, Hollywood, the tropics, the Old West and on Mars. In 1948, the duo hit on a new formula that was so ideal for the studio, one wonders why no one thought of it sooner - teaming them with the various monsters and horror film characters that had been Universal's mainstay for years. The first (and best) of these ventures put them face to face with no less than Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman (the latter two played by their original creators at the studio, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr.). Over the next few years, they would meet "the Killer," (1949), played by Boris Karloff, the Invisible Man (1951), Captain Kidd (1952), starring Charles Laughton, and the only one of the "Meet" series not done at Universal, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953) with Boris Karloff again. In a departure from the horror genre, the duo also encountered the Keystone Kops (1955), which was a natural since Universal originally purchased the Edison Movie Studio in 1912 where Keystone Cops was first produced. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) was the last of the series and turned out to be their final picture with Universal, ending a 28-film, 15-year association that had reportedly earned the studio $100 million worldwide. It would also be their next to last picture together. The team appeared once more in Dance with Me, Henry (1956), and Costello died of a heart attack five months before the release of his last screen appearance in The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959).

In this outing, the two find themselves stranded in Egypt and involved with an archeologist who is murdered by a cult. Costello accidentally swallows a medallion containing directions to a sacred burial site and, thanks to the dirty dealings of the leader of the cultists and a greedy adventuress, end up menaced by the Mummy. The title monster was played by famous stuntman Eddie Parker, who had stunt-doubled for all of Universal's horror stars.

The part of Mme. Rontru, the scheming adventuress, was played by B-movie bad girl Marie Windsor. Although she had made her mark in crime thrillers and noir pictures - among them Force of Evil (1948), The Narrow Margin (1952) and City That Never Sleeps (1953), Windsor enjoyed doing comedy and was given many timing tips by Costello during shooting of this picture. Also in the cast, as evil cult leader Semu, was Richard Deacon, replacing ailing silent film star H.B. Warner. Deacon's greatest fame came later as Mel Cooley, the bald, put-upon producer of the fictional Alan Brady Show on TV's The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the biography, Abbott and Costello in Hollywood by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo (Perigee), Deacon recalled that during the filming of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, he was asked by one of Lou's assistants, Bobby Barker, "to sign a pro-McCarthy petition. From my standpoint, I knew that Lou was thinking of America, which is fine. But I happen to think that McCarthy was the most evil thing that ever happened. So I refused. He said, "If this gets back to Bud and Lou, you'll never work on this lot again." I said, 'Be my guest. If that's what I have to do to stay in the business, then I don't want any part of it.' But it was never mentioned to me by Bud or Lou, and, of course, I worked at Universal again and again." Other cast members in the film include Costello's 15-year-old daughter Carole in an uncredited bit as a cafe flower girl, her third appearance in her father's movies.

Other contributors of note were Henry Mancini, a composer on a few earlier A&C movies and later one of Hollywood's top Oscar®-winning scorers, and John Grant, who penned 31 of their pictures. Grant died just a few months after this picture's release.

Director Charles Lamont helmed his ninth and final movie with the pair, bringing it in a day earlier than its 25-day allotted shooting schedule, which allowed Abbott and Costello to fulfill a request to appear in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade the day after this picture wrapped. Lamont also brought the film in $12,000 under its $738,250 budget. Only $18,000 of the total budget went into advertising, a sure sign that Universal had lost faith in its stars. When the duo asked for more money under a new contract, the studio refused. Even though an intersection of streets on the lot had just been named for them in gratitude for having kept the company financially afloat for a decade or more, the association came to an abrupt end.

A couple of curious notes on this production: although their characters' names are Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, the two refer to each other throughout the film as Bud and Lou, and Costello even utters his trademark "Heeeey Abbott!" And although Universal's Mummy character was always named Kharis, it was inexplicably changed to Klaris for this film.

Director: Charles Lamont
Producer: Howard Christie
Screenplay: John Grant, based on a story by Lee Loeb
Cinematography: George Robinson Editing: Russell Schoengarth
Art Direction: Alexander Golitzen, Bill Newberry
Original Music: Henry Mancini (uncredited) and others; songs by John Benson Brooks
Cast: Bud Abbott (Peter), Lou Costello (Freddie), Marie Windsor (Mme. Rontru), Michael Ansara (Charlie), Richard Deacon (Semu).
BW-80m. Closed Captioning.

by Rob Nixon
Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, generally considered the most successful comedy team in the history of motion pictures, made a series of hit films, most of them at Universal, that put their patented stage routines into various winning formulas: finding themselves in the Navy, the Army, high society, college and a harem or in such locations as Africa, Mexico, Alaska, Hollywood, the tropics, the Old West and on Mars. In 1948, the duo hit on a new formula that was so ideal for the studio, one wonders why no one thought of it sooner - teaming them with the various monsters and horror film characters that had been Universal's mainstay for years. The first (and best) of these ventures put them face to face with no less than Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman (the latter two played by their original creators at the studio, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr.). Over the next few years, they would meet "the Killer," (1949), played by Boris Karloff, the Invisible Man (1951), Captain Kidd (1952), starring Charles Laughton, and the only one of the "Meet" series not done at Universal, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953) with Boris Karloff again. In a departure from the horror genre, the duo also encountered the Keystone Kops (1955), which was a natural since Universal originally purchased the Edison Movie Studio in 1912 where Keystone Cops was first produced. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) was the last of the series and turned out to be their final picture with Universal, ending a 28-film, 15-year association that had reportedly earned the studio $100 million worldwide. It would also be their next to last picture together. The team appeared once more in Dance with Me, Henry (1956), and Costello died of a heart attack five months before the release of his last screen appearance in The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959). In this outing, the two find themselves stranded in Egypt and involved with an archeologist who is murdered by a cult. Costello accidentally swallows a medallion containing directions to a sacred burial site and, thanks to the dirty dealings of the leader of the cultists and a greedy adventuress, end up menaced by the Mummy. The title monster was played by famous stuntman Eddie Parker, who had stunt-doubled for all of Universal's horror stars. The part of Mme. Rontru, the scheming adventuress, was played by B-movie bad girl Marie Windsor. Although she had made her mark in crime thrillers and noir pictures - among them Force of Evil (1948), The Narrow Margin (1952) and City That Never Sleeps (1953), Windsor enjoyed doing comedy and was given many timing tips by Costello during shooting of this picture. Also in the cast, as evil cult leader Semu, was Richard Deacon, replacing ailing silent film star H.B. Warner. Deacon's greatest fame came later as Mel Cooley, the bald, put-upon producer of the fictional Alan Brady Show on TV's The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the biography, Abbott and Costello in Hollywood by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo (Perigee), Deacon recalled that during the filming of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, he was asked by one of Lou's assistants, Bobby Barker, "to sign a pro-McCarthy petition. From my standpoint, I knew that Lou was thinking of America, which is fine. But I happen to think that McCarthy was the most evil thing that ever happened. So I refused. He said, "If this gets back to Bud and Lou, you'll never work on this lot again." I said, 'Be my guest. If that's what I have to do to stay in the business, then I don't want any part of it.' But it was never mentioned to me by Bud or Lou, and, of course, I worked at Universal again and again." Other cast members in the film include Costello's 15-year-old daughter Carole in an uncredited bit as a cafe flower girl, her third appearance in her father's movies. Other contributors of note were Henry Mancini, a composer on a few earlier A&C movies and later one of Hollywood's top Oscar®-winning scorers, and John Grant, who penned 31 of their pictures. Grant died just a few months after this picture's release. Director Charles Lamont helmed his ninth and final movie with the pair, bringing it in a day earlier than its 25-day allotted shooting schedule, which allowed Abbott and Costello to fulfill a request to appear in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade the day after this picture wrapped. Lamont also brought the film in $12,000 under its $738,250 budget. Only $18,000 of the total budget went into advertising, a sure sign that Universal had lost faith in its stars. When the duo asked for more money under a new contract, the studio refused. Even though an intersection of streets on the lot had just been named for them in gratitude for having kept the company financially afloat for a decade or more, the association came to an abrupt end. A couple of curious notes on this production: although their characters' names are Pete Patterson and Freddie Franklin, the two refer to each other throughout the film as Bud and Lou, and Costello even utters his trademark "Heeeey Abbott!" And although Universal's Mummy character was always named Kharis, it was inexplicably changed to Klaris for this film. Director: Charles Lamont Producer: Howard Christie Screenplay: John Grant, based on a story by Lee Loeb Cinematography: George Robinson Editing: Russell Schoengarth Art Direction: Alexander Golitzen, Bill Newberry Original Music: Henry Mancini (uncredited) and others; songs by John Benson Brooks Cast: Bud Abbott (Peter), Lou Costello (Freddie), Marie Windsor (Mme. Rontru), Michael Ansara (Charlie), Richard Deacon (Semu). BW-80m. Closed Captioning. by Rob Nixon

Quotes

Trivia

Though Bud Abbott's character in this film was named Peter Patterson and Lou Costello's character's name was Freddie Franklin, they addressed each other by their own, real names ("Heeeeey Abbott!") throughout much of the picture.

This was Abbott and Costello's last film for Universal.

In this film, the name of the mummy has been changed from "Kharis" to "Klaris."

Notes

The working title of this film was Abbott and Costello in the Mummy. Although Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are referred to by their real names in the film, they are listed respectively as "Pete Patterson" and "Freddie Franklin" in the closing credits. Lou Costello's daughter Carole appeared in the film. Although a November 1954 Hollywood Reporter news item reported that she had been cast as an Egyptian dancer, she played a cigarette girl in the final film.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States on Video August 28, 2001

Released in United States on Video October 6, 1993

Released in United States Summer June 1955

Last of the "Abbott and Costello Meet...." series.

Released in United States Summer June 1955

Released in United States on Video August 28, 2001

Released in United States on Video October 6, 1993