Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy
After 15 years of hit movies for Universal Studios, Bud Abbott and Lou  Costello left the studio in the twilight of their partnership with the last of  their monster comedies. Decked out in desert safari gear, the boys go looking  for a job with an Egyptologist and wind up in the middle of a conspiracy  concerning the murdered professor, an ancient mummy, and a magical medallion  that, true to form, bumbling Costello manages to eat for dinner. Marie Windsor,  the boss lady of a gang of treasure hunting crooks, dresses in a harem outfit to  vamp for our chubby little hero, and the eternally stiff Richard Deacon  hilariously plays the leader of an Egyptian mummy cult like a high school  principal decked out for Halloween. Directed by longtime collaborator Charles  Lamont, it's a typical Abbott and Costello farce with disappearing corpses,  mistaken identities, and wacky word plays ("Take your pick" riffs on "Who's on  first" with garden tools). While not as clever or spirited as their original  monster mashAbbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the vaudeville  veterans are still masters of the double take and fast-talk patter, and the  picture climaxes with a screwball chase that involves not one, not two, but  three mummies skittering through the phoniest looking pyramid this side of  community theater. You were expecting realism? The boys appeared together once  more on film, inDance with Me, Henry, and then split up.--Sean  Axmaker