Mummy's Boys (Fred Guiol, 1936)

Mummy's Boys, a horror-comedy that begins as a spoof of The Mummy but unravels into a thin series of gags from the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey, is no great shakes, but it's a fascinating time capsule. It's such a time capsule that it was probably already painfully out of date by 1937. It's creaky stuff, but there are a couple of quality pratfalls.

The film begins like a straightforward horror film, on a dark and rainy night, in the study of scientist/explorer Phillip Browning (Frank M. Thomas) and his daughter Mary (Barbara Pepper, filling in for Wheeler & Woolsey's usual vivacious sidekick/Wheeler love interest Dorothy Lee). Browning is one of the last survivors of a recent expedition/raid of an Egyptian tomb. Ten of the fifteen expedition members have died of "natural causes," and Browning is convinced the curse is real. He decides to go back to Egypt and return the stolen treasures in hopes of remaining alive. This opening scene has a real sense of style and movement, which unfortunately does not carry through to the rest of the film.

Enter Stanley Wright and Aloysius C. Whittaker (Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey), a pair of bumbling New York ditchdiggers who spot Browning's ad for expedition assistants in the newspaper. The pair not very convincingly pose as experts on Egypt but are somehow hired anyway, and sparks fly between Stanley and Mary. The Wheeler & Woolsey shtick in this particular film (maybe in their other ones, too?) is that Wheeler's Bert is a nice but simple-minded guy with a horrible memory. He can only remember things after he wakes from a deep sleep. Woolsey's Aloysius is a wisecracking, cigar-smoking schemer who overestimates his own intelligence and has a catchphrase ("Whoa-ohh-oh!") that is so stupid and is repeated so often that I couldn't help but laugh. Wheeler & Woolsey are no Laurel & Hardy (or even Abbott & Costello), but Woolsey sort of resembles a cross between George Burns with less charisma and Groucho Marx with less anarchic energy and quality jokes.

As the whole gang heads to Egypt by boat, the team picks up a new member, a stowaway named Catfish (Willie Best). Unfortunately, this is the racist part of the Hollywood time capsule. Best was, by the accounts of actors who worked with him in the theater, a deeply talented performer, but most of his movie roles were horrendous racial stereotypes in the Stepin Fetchit vein. He often played a wide-eyed, lazy, afraid-of-everything chauffeur, servant, or sidekick, forced to utter dialogue like "Who is dey?" This movie is no exception. At least he's credited by name. Some of his '30s films credit him as "Sleep 'n' Eat."

After some hijinks involving boat malfunctions, squirting pen ink, a sheik's harem, tent pitching, a tattoo parlor, needle phobia, and a map, the group makes its way into the tomb to return the loot. Guess what? Things are not as they seem. Attempted murder, hidden passageways, a huge needle, and mummy cosplay ensues.

Mummy's Boys, aside from the opening scene, a great pratfall on the boat, and a joke here or there, is nothing special. It really feels like one of those old movies that aired on Saturday afternoon TV in the early '80s while I was at my grandparents' house drinking grape Kool-Aid and waiting for wrestling to start. It was one of the last Wheeler & Woolsey films, followed only by On-Again, Off-Again and High Flyers, the latter of which Woolsey struggled to complete as his health was failing. He died of kidney disease in 1938. Wheeler's career was bumpy after the death of his partner. He appeared once in a while in movie and TV roles and had a Broadway run with Dorothy Lee, but the work wasn't as consistent as it had been with Woolsey. Wheeler died in 1968.

Director Fred Guiol (pronounced Gill) cranked out the second-tier comedies from the silent era into the 1940s and also directed some television in the '50s. He was also a producer and a screenwriter, with his most famous screenplay cowrites being Gunga Din and Giant. I'm going to leave you with the titles of some of Guiol's comedies as writer or director, which sound like fake titles a modern comedian would invent for old movies: Rich Uncles, Who, Me?, Should Crooners Marry, What! No Groceries, Don't Park There, Sure-Mike!, Flaming Flappers, Long Pants, The Hug Bug, Ukulele Sheiks, Sailors, Beware!, Pass the Gravy, Feed 'em and Weep, Skirt Shy, Campus Champs, What's Your Racket?, Silly Billies, Tanks a Million, Hay Foot, Mr. Walkie Talkie, and Botsford's Beanery.

Crime Zone (Luis Llosa, 1988)

A post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller about a post-plague police state? Brother, we're already sorta living in it! Ah, those '80s post-apocalypses. Take me back. But not too far back. I don't want to redo seventh grade.

Crime Zone is a Roger Corman-produced slab of dimly lit future shock directed by Luis Llosa in Peru (Llosa would go on to direct Anaconda and the Stallone/Sharon Stone/James Woods action/thriller The Specialist) with dozens of extras made up of the students and faculty of the American School of Lima, an international nonprofit private school. Crime Zone is cheaply made and goofy as hell but fortunate enough to have Sherilyn Fenn and David Carradine in prominent roles. I enjoyed myself but can't wholeheartedly recommend it.

Crime Zone takes place in the working-class, crime-ridden streets of the ironically named city of Soleil (Llosa shot the film at night to hide the low budget, but the film is so damn dark, he hides almost everything). The denizens of Soleil are forced into lives of menial drudgery and solitude. If they kiss enough ass and work enough hours, they can earn the points to graduate to a middle-class life in white-collar or military work and the privilege of having romantic partners and spouses. Until then, the police bust anyone caught bringing a member of the opposite sex to their living quarters (there are apparently no LGBTQ people in this future), and the only sex allowed is fifteen-minute paid increments with sex workers from the government brothel. The only fun to be had is post-work beers and pool at the local bar.

Local bad boy Bone (Peter Nelson) is extremely disillusioned when his supervisor at the rich-people cryogenics factory fires him shortly before he can get the points to move up the social ladder and be allowed to marry. Bone doesn't act like he loves his factory job enough and only works his regular hours, so his supervisor doesn't think he wants it enough. Bone commiserates with his buddies Creon (Michael Shaner) and J.D. (Don Manor) at the bar. The three dudes have long been part of a street gang called The Fuck-Ups, but Bone wants to grow up and live a better life. He's also smitten by old man Alexi's (Orlando Sacha) tales of the nearby city of Frodan, where he was stationed in the military as a young man. Frodan is a free city with no police state, and, according to Alexi, the women there are incredible.

Side note about Frodan. Until I looked it up online, I had no idea what the hell this city was called because everyone in the movie pronounces it differently AND like they have a mouthful of marbles. It's variously referred to as Frow-dan, Frau-dan, Frowen, Frawn, Frunn, Fruuuuuh, Fraw-dan, Fraw-en, Freh, etc. What the hell is going on here? Why can't anyone in this movie enunciate Frodan? Someone look into this.

An unemployed Bone wanders the streets of Soleil, watching the live execution of an armed rebel on the black-and-white televisions stationed at kiosks all over the city. (Hilariously, the government kills the rebel by blasting him in the nuts with a laser.) He wanders near the brothel, where the ladies of the evening are being advertised shortly before the brothel's rooms open for business, and falls in love at first sight with Helen (Sherilyn Fenn). After her shift, she plays some pool against Creon and Bone, and falls in love at first sight with Bone, but definitely not Creon, because Creon sucks. Bone and Helen soon begin sneaking into Bone's shack together, though they're nearly busted by the sexy but evil police, the policewoman demanding of Bone, "Show me your dick!," I guess as some sort of proof Helen is in his room?? 

After some mostly surreptitious grocery store shoplifting, the couple are spotted by the mysterious Jason (David Carradine), who hires them to perform some high-level corporate theft in exchange for taking them to the impossible-to-pronounce Frodan. What's Jason's angle? They're skeptical but ready to get the hell out of Soleil, so they make the deal. Soon, the couple are Soleil's most-wanted fugitives and local folk heroes. 

Will they make it to Frodan before the cops blast their privates with lasers? Will the large-faced and extremely obnoxious Creon turn on them? Is Jason really what he seems? Will any scenes have any light? These questions will all be answered. Many more will not, including: Why does every character drop so many f-bombs? How did Helen and Bone accomplish the insane and mostly impossible burglary? What happened to the rest of The Fuck-Ups? How is that guy walking normally after being shot in the leg? Why won't anyone turn on a damn light? And why can't anyone enunciate Frodan?

Crime Zone is middle-tier Roger Corman, nowhere near his best and a few clicks up from his worst. The cinematography is too dark, the story is cobbled together from 18 other better movies, and parts of it drag, but Carradine and Fenn are fun to watch, parts of it are highly amusing, the dialogue is pretty wacky, and even a mediocre b-movie is better than 95% of the respectable NPR-endorsed awards bait horseshit any day of the week. I give Crime Zone two and a half crimes and three zones.