The Mummy’s Ghost – Scripts from the Crypt Collection No. 15

At the height of World War II, Americans on the home front were making do with less in all corners of their lives, from food to cloths to cars. A recent arrival in our fair land, Kharis the Mummy of Mapleton, Massachusetts, nee Prince Kharis of Egypt, also made a sacrifice: his royal lineage! During WWII, one of the responsibilities of the Office of War Information (OWI) was to ensure that nothing in Hollywood movies offended our allies or neutral countries. In 1943, when Universal proposed a third Kharis movie, The Mummy’s Ghost, its pilot again had Kharis and a mad holy man committing murder in the service of Egypt’s demon gods. Alarm bells sounded in Washington and the OWI’s concerns were relayed to Universal. The script rewriting began, with government men and even a Washington expert on Middle Eastern affairs getting in on the act. The Mummy’s Ghost tells us that the Kharis of ancient Egypt was a commoner rather than a prince, but this change did not affect the Mummy’s homicidal streak, wider than ever as he seeks to bring the mummy of Princess Ananka home to Egypt. When Ananka’s soul finds a new home in an Egyptian girl, Amina Mansouri, Kharis abducts the young beauty and carries her to a nearby swamp, where both have a date with destiny.