Mummy's Boys

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).

Although Mummy's Boys has its moments, and although it always a pleasure to see Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey in a film, this one is really minor league after their run of greats in the pre-code early 1930s.

Here the boys play loafers who go to Cairo to help on an archaeological dig, aided and hindered by the lumbering Willie Best, a sort of poor man's Stepin Fetchit, and distracted by Barbara Pepper, a low level love interest for Bert, who has a habit of forgetting things here rather than stealing things as he did in Cockeyed Cavaliers.

Although Woolsey's reactions were predictable and a bit tiresome by this stage in the series, little Wheeler is as charming and cute as ever. There is no musical number, which is a shame, as the film drags somewhat without the distraction of some song 'n' dance.

Not the best W&W, and perhaps not the one to start with, but worth a look.

Long before Abbott&Costello were teaming up with all the Universal horror characters, over at RKO Wheeler&Woolsey took their turn at the horror genre with Mummy's Boys.

They introduce it with a plot gimmick straight out of the Depression. The guys are digging ditches at what looks like a Works Progress Administration Project. And they're not getting along too good with that. But Woolsey spots a newspaper advertisement where diggers are sought for an Egyptian expedition. He correctly reasons why not put their newly acquired skills towards something positive and see an exotic part of the world.

The guys sign on to an expedition headed by Frank M. Thomas who has the idea to take the treasures that were dug up in the last expedition back to Egypt and the tomb they came from because they're bringing bad luck. An unusual string of fatalities keep happening to those who were on that first expedition, a lot like what was happening to folks who were on the famous King Tut expedition in the Twenties. Wheeler gets an additional reason for coming along, he gets stuck on the professor's daughter, Barbara Pepper.

Of course in Egypt and on the trip going there, the boys get in all kinds of trouble. My favorite is how they get tangled up with desert sheik Francis McDonald and his harem.

Moroni Olsen as another archaeologist gets a chance to do a great crazy act in the end, something different from a character actor who usually had quite serious roles.

It's not quite as good as either the A&C horror spoofs or some of the earlier Wheeler&Woolsey work, but Mummy's Boys will generate more than a couple of laughs.

Two zany ditch diggers join an expedition intent on returning a cursed treasure to the burial chamber of Egyptian King Pharatime. But when a crazed killer starts spreading comedic terror in the tomb, who will come rescue the MUMMY'S BOYS?

This starts out as a suspense tale, with mysterious deaths & a Pharaoh's curse, but it soon becomes a typical Wheeler & Woolsey comedy (Bert Wheeler is the one with the curly hair; Robert Woolsey has the cigar & spectacles). The Boys are always fun to watch and this film is no exception, even if the plot is exceptionally silly. Unlike Laurel & Hardy, who relied heavily on slapstick & physical humor, Wheeler & Woolsey's comedy derived largely from the dialogue. Their best bit here: the `twenty miles as the crow flies' routine.

Barbara Pepper is Wheeler's love interest here; Willie Best adds to the craziness.

This was the third to last film made by the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey and it's pretty weak stuff. Totally forgettable. As an Egyptian Mummy curse movie it at least has a dark and mysterious look to it, and is ably directed, but this is a comedy and it has the bad luck of having the "laughs" provided by W & W. Unless you have a fondness for stale vaudeville patter, you're not going to find much humor from the work of this trying team. There is a reason these guys are mostly forgotten: they weren't funny. But, oh, do THEY think they are. In film after film, including this one, the duo practically burst out laughing at their own antics. And this film was a financial flop when it came out; so much so that RKO even fired the director Fred Guiol right off the lot. He only managed to keep a career in Hollywood because of his pal, director George Stevens. Amazingly, this stale muffin was written by THREE writers. As one critic put it at the time: "Mummy's Boys" is a seven reel comedy that is eight reels too long." I would like to add that there is one Wheeler & Woolsey comedy that, to me, was actually pretty funny: 'Diplomaniacs.' It has a zany Marx Brothers feel to it and is very reminiscent of W.C. Fields' wacky film 'Million Dollar Legs.' Even Wheeler & Woolsey could score once, in my book.