Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled

1918

Comedy

5
IMDb Rating 5.8/10 10 234 234

mummy slapstick comedy all black cast

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Plot summary

Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled pokes fun at both mad scientists and the Egyptian mummy craze that followed the discovery of King Tut's tomb early in the 20th century. A young man wooing the daughter of a scientist hatches a get rich quick scheme when he spots a classified ad searching for "a mummy for experimental purposes." While he wraps up a phony for the scientist, two Egyptian agents (outfitted in a crazy mix of ancient fashion and modern style) tracking stolen relics get tangled in the confusion.

Director

R.W. Phillips Photo
R.W. Phillips

Top cast

Mattie Edwards Photo
Mattie Edwards as
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
123.86 MB
1280*958
English 2.0
NR
24 fps
12 hr 13 min
Seeds 29
229.83 MB
1442*1080
English 2.0
NR
24 fps
12 hr 13 min
Seeds 69

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by ebeckstr-1 7 / 10

Entertaining historical and cultural artifact

Other IMDb reviewers have done a good job of describing this film's attributes. I will only add that the original score written and performed by Alloy Orchestra is fantastic, with its emphasis on bass, percussion, and a resonant piano. (I watched this film on the Criterion Channel, FYI.)
Reviewed by Cineanalyst

Mummified Decomposition

Ancient Egyptian mummies were a popular source early on in film history. The same year as this film, "Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled," saw the release of Ernst Lubitsch's "Eyes of the Mummy Ma." Moreover, this Ebony Film Company release is largely derivative of an earlier comedy short, "The Egyptian Mummy" (1914), but with a black cast instead of a white one. The slapstick here is broad, involving a man setting out to buy and, then, resell a sarcophagus--after hiring someone to pretend for a day to be the mummy inside--to the father of the woman he wishes to be engaged to so as to have enough money to win his approval to marry her. Seeing an early iteration of a mad scientist--and who, therefore, is in need of an ancient, preserved corpse--is amusing in its absurdity. Being distributed by Ebony, which shortly hereafter closed due to protests over the depiction of negative racial stereotypes, makes this also historically interesting to see for its racial representation--not only for African Americans in this case, but also for them depicting two ridiculous Western notions of Egyptian characters. The most fascinating aspect of viewing the surviving footage of this film today, however, has nothing to do with any of that.The decomposition of the nitrate film here is severe--particularly at the beginning and end. While unfortunate in respect to film preservation, although it's a blessing for such old films to exist in any shape considering that most from the era are now lost, the decomposition seems unintentionally apt here. This is a film, after all, that deals in mummies--the preserved remains of decaying bodies. It's the nitrate film that's the true relic, though. It's the mummified remains that today are most captivating.
Reviewed by boblipton 6 / 10

She Was Only a Mad Scientist's Daughter

Daddy may be mad, but he's not stupid and he wants his daughter to marry a man with some money. Daddy has also put an ad in the newspaper, to buy an Egyptian mummy for experiments, so his would-be son-in-law buys a sarcophagus and hires a guy to play the mummy.It's a pretty good comedy from 1918, with a a pleasantly complicated story and an appeal to the public interest in Egypt that would peak the following decade with the opening of King Tut's tomb. This film from the Ebony Film company, like the others, starred Black actors and was primarily tended for the all-Black movie houses of the era. The surviving print isn't in very good shape, but it's more than worth your time to look at.
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