THE MUMMY'S GHOST - "Nameless! Fleshless! Deathless!" (1944)

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is another Universal Studios Mummy tale!

 It's the second of three shot in the 40's starring Lon Chaney Jr. as Kharis The Mummy! "The Mummy's Hand" also came out in 1940, but it had Tom Tyler as The Mummy!

"The Mumy's Ghost" is probably my least favourite of the three, but it's only a little over an hour long, and besides Lon Chaney Jr., it also has John Carradine, George Zucco, and Barton MacLane in it, so you really can't go wrong!

This time John Carradine is Yousef Bey, The Mummy's caretaker! John is, was, and will always be great! Period!

 The stoic George (The Mummy's Hand, The Flying Serpent) Zucco has a very small role as the High Priest!

The Mummy has a long history of being a ambling, lumbering, slow moving, but powerful creature. He's a little limited in what he can do, but he somehow always manages to get the job done. He can't go over or under this fence, so he just busts through!

Ravishing Ramsay (Calling Dr. Death, The Black Widow) Ames was a dancer and a singer in a Rhumba band before she became an actress!

My big question is how can a Mummy have a ghost when it's already dead?

Besides being as slow as a snail riding on a turtle, you'd really think they could smell him coming from at least a mile away!

This shot made me go back and look up whether this film was first shot in 3D.

Ramsay's character is an Egyptian woman named Amina Mansouri, and the spirit of Princess Ananka is slowly taking over her body each time some Tanna leaves get burnt, hence the sudden "Bride of  Frankenstein" hairstyle!

"The Mummy's Ghost" ends with him carrying Princess Ananka off into a swamp in New England. In the so-called sequel he comes up in a swamp in Florida, so there's either something weird going on or, there's a giant network of underground swamps in America I didn't know about.

"The Mummy's Ghost" is your basic revenge film, and The Mummy is summoned to off a bunch of guys one by one.

Yousef Bey comes to America to boss The Mummy around, and he has a portable altar he can set up in remote places like in the woods.

Kharis is not the delivery they were expecting!

The rampage of The Mummy actually makes John smile!

Dungeon stalwart Barton MacLane is in there as a Detective who never really figures anything out. They did dig a 10 foot deep pit to try and trap The Mummy, but they never get a chance to use it!

This scene in this abandoned mill is amazing I have to admit! I wonder how many times he fell while filming this. His vision is impaired and that looks pretty damn steep to be stumbling up and down on!

Then at the end of the movie, he has to climb down a ladder carrying Ananka!

 

This little dog's name is Peanuts, but the first couple of times they say it, it sounds like Penis!

Amina keeps transforming further into Ananka!

Yousef Bey crosses over the line, and that's it for him! That's when Kharis grabs his girlfriend and walks out and into the swamp, and that's about as close to a happy ending as you're gonna get!

THE COCAINE FIENDS / aka THE PACE THAT KILLS - 1936

In today's Friday the 13th tale, it's all about how unlucky you can be if you get hooked on cocaine! A drug dealer is on the run from the law and meets an innocent young girl and her brother, it's only a matter of time before he turns them into "Cocaine Fiends!"

This one stars Lois (THE BLACK CAT) January, Noel (THE BLACK RAVEN) Madison, Sheila (THE HELL CAT) Bromley, Dean (THE RETURN OF CHANDU) Benton, Lois (THE LONE WOLF RETURNS) Lindsay, Charles (THE BEATNIKS) Delaney, Eddie (PHANTOM PATROL) Phillips and Frank (FLASH GORDON - Dr. Alexis Zarkov) Shannon.

Here's Jane, she's new in town, and has unknowingly hooked up with a drug dealer named Nick. She overhears the police talking about taking down local pushers...

Jane's brother Eddie has a job at a car hop establishment. He's feeling tired and so Fanny gives him some "headache powder." Women always have interesting places to hide things.

But, it isn't long before Eddie and Fanny are fired from their jobs and are now addicted to cocaine. The landlady wants to know why Eddie isn't out looking for a job. Fanny sez... He's sick. Just look at them, what an understatement!

Things get worse, so, Eddie leaves Fanny, saying that he never loved her!.. Poor addicted girl, just no way out of Hell.

That's Nick on the right, him and his pal cause a pile of trouble at the Dead Rat Club and create a diversion to escape from the authorities...

Jane goes to a cocaine den for a fix but finds that her brother Eddie is in one of the beds. She grabs him and takes him away with her.

Jane calls the cops and tells them where she is, the apartment of rich playgirl, Dorothy Farley.

Jane has a gun and is not afraid to use it. Nick's pal comes into the room and gets a shot to the gut! The police arrive to find him dead on the floor.

Through some interrogation, it's discovered that Dorothy's father is the head pusher!.. Dorothy breaks down upon the devastating news.

After the dust clears, Dorothy and her beau Dan, the detective, drive off merrily into the sunset, making for a happy ending... Tune in tomorrow when we'll bring you (and them) another special post, here, at The Dungeon!..

THE MUNSTERS Pilot Episode In Colour - "My Fair Munster" (1964)

I accidentally turned to the next page in The Monster Cyclopedia, and guess what comes after Mummy? Munsters! 

Welcome to Alternate Reality Wednesday in The Dungeon sponsored this week by Lord Litter's Magical Music Box!

So, what the heck am I talking about? The pilot episode of "The Munsters was created in 1964, and was only 15 minutes long  in an effort to try and sell it to the network!

This episode wasn't released until 2004, some forty years later!

The first weird thing is that it was shot in glorious colour, unlike the real series which aired in black and white like this!

They changed a few other things too..........

........Like the look of The Munster's house!

The pilot episode was titled "My Fair Munster," and when they completed it with the necessary changes, it was used not as the first episode, but the second episode that aired the first season. The first episode ended up to be about a masquerade party and was called "Munster Masquerade!"

This episode starts with Marilyn coming home from a date, but he runs away when he sees Herman. Grandpa makes a love potion to make Marilyn more attractive, and that's where it ends. When fully aired, Herman and Lily end up ingesting the potion instead with predictable results!

I was watching this without knowing, and everything was fine until it got to the credits, and I was like what the Hell is going on here? Joan Marshall as Phoebe? Who the Hell is Phoebe? Very confused, I stopped watching, and started reading, and trying to figure it all out!

I'm just assuming the network liked the pilot but somebody decided it was just a little too dark, and started making changes!

Joan Marshall was in scores of TV shows in the 50's and 60's, and was in the "Twilight Zone" episode titled "Dead Man's Shoes," but she would never be part of The Munster family again!

Yvonne De Carlo as Lily Munster was nine years older than Joan Marshall, less scary, and much more maternal!

I guess they thought Beverly Owen as Marilyn was just fine in her role, because they kept her, but look, they spelled her first name two different ways! The black and white one is the correct one.

Nate "Happy" Derman's career never took off after this. He was in four other TV shows before calling it quits a a couple of years later!

In 1983 Butch Patrick released a 45 as Eddie and the Monsters called "Whatever Happened To Eddie?" Butch looks younger than Happy, but they were both born in 1953.

Again, why did Happy get axed from the show? For me, he was just a little too over the top maniacal, and maybe the producers felt the same way.

They kept Al Lewis as Grandpa!

 Al was just a little too unique, and I can't even imagine who they could have replaced him with!

Fred Gwynne would have been pretty hard to replace also, but....

.......They did goofy-up his role some I think!

It looks like they changed up his makeup a bit too!

Look how young he looks in this shot!

The more I look at Joan Marshall in this role, the more she looks like Barbara Steele, which just might have been too much for the 60's sitcom fans, but I would have liked it!