Watch enough werewolf movies and one is bound to come across more than a few dogs — and I’m not referring to the ones some filmmakers try to pass off as their werewolves. This is the first time I’ve encountered a jackal, though, which archaeologist David Barrie (Anthony Eisley) is cursed to transform into when he ignores the clear warning on the side of the glass-topped sarcophagus of beautifully preserved Egyptian Princess Akana (Marliza Pons). Well, it’s clear to him because he can decipher hieroglyphics.
“Whoever is in the presence of the sacred Akana’s body during the cycle of the full moon will suffer the Curse of the Jackal,” he reads, so naturally David wants his friend Bob (Robert Alan Browne) to lock him inside the room in his house where he’s storing Akana along with her fully mummified sacred protector, Sirak. Bob and David both laugh off the curse, but when he’s alone, the latter writes in his journal, “What this will be, I don’t know, if anything.” David has his answer soon enough, though, when he drowsily lies down and, in a series of dissolves, becomes an utterly unconvincing jackal-man. He then promptly escapes, kills two policemen, returns home, lies back down, and transforms back in another series of dissolves.
All this happens in the first 15 minutes of The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals, which is good because it’s only 81 minutes long and there are three more nights of the full moon to get through before the cycle is over. The film also needs time for a lengthy flashback to ancient Egypt and the entombment of Akana, who’s so well-preserved because she’s actually been in a deep sleep for 4815 years. (Meanwhile, Sirak gets to be the movie’s shambling mass of bandages, earning Saul Goldsmith the coveted “And” credit “as The Mummy.”) When Davis awakens after his second night of were-jackaling, he is greeted by the revived Akana, who says he has served her well. She also puts him off when he goes in for a kiss, saying, “There is much we must do. Later we will have time for… other things.” (She means sex.)
That evening, David and Akana go on a double date with Bob and his girlfriend, model Donna (Maurine Dawson), to whom he introduces the princess as “Connie Adams,” a name he has to make an effort to remember every time he says it. Meanwhile, Sirak awakens, lurches out the door, and kills two Las Vegas showgirls (one in her dressing room, the other right on stage in front of everybody) so he can be even with David. They don’t compare notes, though, until after David has transformed for a third time (outdoors for variety’s sake) and pursues Sirak through the throngs of gawkers when the mummy attempts to make off with Akana. Realizing she’s in over her head, she calls on Isis, who uses Bob as a vessel to tell her, “I have given you Sirak and now the Jackal, who will fight for you and protect you. Each is in love with you and will have you for his own, and they will obey you.” Isis also generously throws in control of Bob, but thankfully he doesn’t have to be turned into a vampire or zombie or anything first. That would have been a monster too far for this film’s paltry make-up budget.
Anyway, John Carradine shows up in the home stretch to cash a paycheck and play David’s mentor, Professor Cummings, who is consulting with the police about the murderous mummy seen on the Strip the previous night. “You mean to tell me we have a live mummy here in Las Vegas?” asks the incredulous detective on the case. “We not only have a live mummy on our hands,” the professor replies, “but something else which nobody in modern times has had to contend with: a jackal-man.” Nobody in modern times has to contend with it for long, though, as David and Sirak have their final clash — and meet their mutual demise — in the waters of Lake Mead that very night.
The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals was filmed in 1969, but went unseen until it surfaced on videocassette in the mid-’80s (when a lot of other marginal entertainment saw the light of video store shelves). It has since been scanned from the internegative and released on Blu-ray by Severin, which means it looks leagues better than a film like this has any right to. Severin has also packaged it with a cover that promises so much more than the film can hope to deliver. The VHS rip streaming on Tubi (and available for rent on Amazon Prime for 99 cents) is more its speed.