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Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy DVD

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 mash Abbott 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, in Dance with Me, Henry, and then split up.