Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled (1918)

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Siskoid
I wasn't really aware of Ebony Films/Comedies before, but I'm certainly intrigued by minority film making and Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled is a fun enough black-cast silent, even though the film is very badly damaged. But that damage, with nitrate ghosts that the modern-day score (at least on the Criterion Channel version) seems to acknowledge with ghostly music, is strangely hypnotic. The problems are at the beginning and end, and that second time hit at the perfect point, as if they were meant to (although they make the very end really hard to grasp). I laughed several times as the ridiculousness of the premise is still intact - there seems to be a lot of call for mummies in this American town, so one enterprising fellow wraps his friend in bandages and sells him to a scientist, even as cultists converge on their location. It's extremely silly beyond just the slapstick, a living cartoon really. Had it been (more) intact, I would have upped its score. 3 years 2 months ago