I remember the last time this happened. It was pretty horrible.
A mummy's work is never done, at least not according to Universal in the '40s. Two years after Kharis was laid to rest in 1942's The Mummy's Tomb, Lon Chaney, Jr. was compelled to don his moldy bandages twice more in the same calendar year. In The Mummy's Ghost he answers to priest John Carradine, who has been dispatched by a fairly shaky (and exposition-laden) George Zucco to New England to retrieve both Kharis and Princess Ananka. Standing in Carradine's way is suspiciously long-in-the-tooth undergrad Robert Lowery, whose Egyptian fiancée Ramsay Ames is naturally Ananka's reincarnation. Also thrown into the mix is Lowery's dog Peanut (yes, Peanut), such a yappy little mutt that I was begging for Kharis to reach down and throttle it, but alas, my prayers went unanswered.
Unimaginatively directed by Reginald Le Borg, who did little work of note, The Mummy's Ghost has one thing going for it since it takes place in a town where a previous mummy attack is on record, so when the coroner notices mold on the neck of a strangled victim there's no doubt in anybody's mind what's responsible. This also seems to be the film where Chaney perfected Kharis's foot-dragging, arm-swinging scuttle, since he's called upon to do it quite a bit. I do find it interesting that his right arm doesn't work until he needs it to carry somebody, though, as in the closing scene where he and Ames sink into the swamp together. Not that anybody could have expected Universal to let them lie there.
Sure enough, the tail end of 1944 brought with it The Mummy's Curse, which takes place 25 years later in the Louisiana bayou, where Kharis and Princess Ananka have been magically transported without any explanation. This does give a number of Universal's character actors the chance to air out their Cajun accents, which leave a lot to be desired. Frankly, so does the plot, in which yet another Egyptian priest (Peter Coe) is on yet another mission to retrieve yet another Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine) with the help of a bandaged Lon Chaney, Jr. By this time his shambling-and-strangling routine is getting to be a bit old hat, but director Leslie Goodwins lucks into a genuinely creepy scene when Christine emerges from the muck, having been uncovered by a bulldozer. Why she wasn't buried right next to Chaney is a bit of a mystery, though.
Also a mystery is what audiences today are supposed to make of characters like Cajun Joe (Kurt Katch) and Goobie (Napoleon Simpson), who embody the worst kinds of stereotypes. (Goobie is especially problematic since he goes around calling people "massa" and alternates between saying "The devil's on the loose and he's dancin' with the mummy!" and "The mummy's on the loose and he's dancin' with the devil!") I do find it amusing, though, that the square-jawed hero is played by an actor named Dennis Moore, who curiously enough does not go around stealing lupins in his spare time. I'm guessing that subplot was cut in order to get the running time down to an hour.