The Mummy (Kharis) vs The Creature From The Black Lagoon
The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 26
Original Fight 15
The Mummy (Kharis) vs The Creature From The Black Lagoon
Happy Halloween, internet!
You may take a candy from the candy bowl.
Go on. Be brave. Take a treat.
Got your treat? Alright. Now let’s get to the fight!
Who Are These Characters? What’s The Theme Here?
In many ways, the Universal Horror universe, whose Flash of Two Worlds was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, was like the first superhero universe. James Rolf even did a video on the similarities:
Following the superhero universe comparison, the Superman-Batman-Wonder Woman trinity of the Universal Horror universe would be Dracla, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man. Those are the big guys. Those are the A-listers. If you have a monster mash, they’re going to be there, definitely. It doesn’t matter what form the monster mash takes–monster cereals, Van Helsing (2004), Monster Force (1994), The Groovy Ghoulies (1970)–there will always be Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man.
But of course, the club doesn’t end with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man. There are the other guys. They’re Green Lantern and Flash. They’re the Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They aren’t always with the big three, but sometimes they are as with the examples of the Aurora model kits of the 1970’s, The Monster Squad (1987), Hotel Transylvania (2012), and Darkstalkers (1994).
But our theme goes deeper than “second tier Universal monsters.”. The Creature and the Mummy never met any of the other monsters. During all the Universal movie crossovers, the big three were the only monsters to ever meet each other–though the Invisible Man did have a cameo at the VERY end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
But wait! It goes deeper still!
The Creature and Mummy are both creatures from the distant path, in the Creature’s case the VERY distant past, who live a lonely existence in the modern age (well, modern when their films were made). They exist as guardians of ancient domains and punish trespassers foolish enough to go where they aren’t wanted.
And, most importantly and tragically, they’re both in love.
The Mummy loves only one woman, the princess Ananka, while the Creature loves any woman that can relieve his loneliness, but still they love–and their love means their doom.
Carl Denham was apt when he said “It was beauty killed the beast.”
Modern movie monsters, slashers for instance, are scary because we fear what they could do to us. But classic movie monsters like the Mummy and Creature are scary because we fear we are like them. We fear that we are lonely and in need of love, but that no matter how hard we try to be loved, we will die rejected and alone.
Pity the monster, for to be unloved is to be wretched.
Fear the monster, for to be unloved is to be human.
The Mummy (Kharis)
“To those that defy the will of the ancient gods, their fate shall be a cruel and violent death.”
–Motto of the Priests of Karnak
“Kharis. The moon rides high in the sky again. There is death on the night air. Your work begins.”
–The High Priest of Karnak
Mummies are the coolest monsters.
It’s the pyramids, and the tombs, and the cures, and the Egyptian mythology, and the ancient civilization, and you know what, the full-body wraps are a great look. Mummies are the Invisible Man but magic. That’s hard to beat.
Kharis is the mummy, but perhaps not the mummy you think he is.
In 1931, Universal released The Mummy to cash in on American interests in Egypt following the opening of King Tut’s tomb and the “curse” that befell the excavators. That film starred Boris Karloff as high priest Imhotep, and the story was more or less Dracula with a more sympathetic character. A creepy but erudite foreign dude stalks a girl in the hopes of turning her into a creature like himself. But Imhotep doesn’t want to turn his victim into his snack and harem slave. He just wants to turn her back into the girl he remembers. In a twist that no doubt inspired Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Imhotep’s victim is his reincarnated lover from ancient Egypt and he wants to ritually mummify her to restore her to her previous personality.
Unfortunately for him, she remembers enough of her past life to pray to Isis for protection and a statue shoots a laser beam at a spell book which reduces him to ash.
Ouch.
It doesn’t pay to be simping, not in this century, not ever.
Instead of bringing Imhotep back for a sequel, Universal decided to remake their mummy monster in 1940 with The Mummy’s Hand. Imhotep was out, Kharis was in.
Kharis’ backstory was very similar to Imhotep–so similar in fact that Universal reused scenes from Imhotep’s origin in Kharis’ own!
Like Imhotep, Kharis was a priest in love with a girl who sought to use forbidden magic to bring his lover back to life and was punished for it. But Kharis’ punishment was more extreme. Imhotep got off relatively lightly with being mummified alive. Imhotep was allowed to die, and it was only because an archeologist read the Scroll of Thoth in his presence that he came back to life.
Kharis wasn’t allowed to die.
It turns out that the ancient Egyptians figured out a legit form of immortality through the fluid of tana leaves. The Egyptians harvested the plant to extinction and kept its leaves in a box below a statue of Isis. When Kharis got busted looting the box to try and bring back his dead love princess Ananka, Pharaoh decided that a fitting punishment would be to use the tana leaves on Kharis.
But Kharis wasn’t going to get the fun Highlander kind of immortality. Oh no. He was going to get the bad kind.
Pharaoh had Kharis buried alive in his coffin and tasked the priests of Karnak to administer the fluid of three tana leaves every night during the cycle of the full moon to keep Kharis’ heart beating.
Kharis was alive and aware in his sarcophagus.
For centuries.
Since the priests of Karnak now had an immortal meat puppet on their hands, they decided to get some use out of Kharis by making him their attack dog. If anyone ever violates the tomb of Kharis’ waifu, the high priest of Karnak is to boil nine tana leaves and administer them to Kharis to make him move around and kill people–but the high priest is warned never to boil more than nine. Too much tana tea would make Kharis too powerful to control and he’d probably be a little upset with the whole setup.
Take a step back and look at the situation.
Pharoah and the priests of Karnak had a way to make themselves immortal, but were so pissed at Kharis for his simping that they instead used it to transform him into a tortured immortal ghoul servant whose one purpose in life, if you can call it life, is to make sure the woman he tried to bring back to life stays in her coffin.
They set up an entire cult that lasted longer than the office of Pharaoh, longer than the worship of any Egyptian deity, to make sure Kharis stayed alive and his waifu didn’t.
Overkill?
Naw.
The ancient Egyptians were truly a wise race. They understood better than we do how to deal with simps.
The Mummy’s Powers And Abilities
Every night during the cycle of the full moon, the high priest of Karnak is tasked with boiling three tana leaves and administering the fluid to Kharis. This taste of tana leaf tea is what keeps Karis’ heart beating down through the aeons. If any obnoxious occidental observers show up to violate princess Ananka’s resting place, then the high priest of Karnak is to boil nine tana leaves which will, for a time, allow Kharis to move so he can do the dirty work of inflicting a cruel and violent death to those that dare defy the will of the ancient gods, often in the form of wringing their neck with his left hand.
Oh who am I kidding? It’s always in the form of wringing their necks with his left hand. And it always leaves a tell-tale gray streak on their necks that the film’s scientists identify as a mold that always lets them track down whoever the high priest happens to be for the movie and Kharis.
Yeah, the films kind of developed a formula early on and stuck to it.
Here’s an easy bet that can win you a drink around Halloween–who was the first Universal Horror monster with an astonishing transformation associated with the rise of the full moon? They’ll say wolf man. It’s not the wolf man. It’s Kharis. The Mummy’s Hand was 1940. The Wolf Man was 1941. To further flex your monster kid power level, you can then point out that it only specifically became a full moon that changes a werewolf from man to man-wolf in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943.
That’s an extra Halloween treat for you.
It is implied through speculation by a scientist in The Mummy’s Ghost that the presence of the full moon is more than just a way to schedule Kharis’ doses. The moon may do something magical to the tana leaves and activate within them whatever property it is that allows for the reanimation of and empowerment of flesh.
You will note that I say “flesh” instead of “the dead,” and that is because Kharis isn’t one of the undead. His heart still beats, and will forever beat so long as whoever the high priest of Karnak happens to be at the time remembers to brew his tana leaves.
Tana leaves only work if you’re mostly dead, not all dead.
Here’s another trick for your Halloween treat–which of these monsters is undead–Kharis the mummy or Larry Talbot the wolf-man?
It’s Larry. Dude was dead and finding his peace for eternity until grave robbers took the wolfsbane off his coffin. From that opening scene in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man onwards, Larry is one of the undead. But Kharis, in the words of the high priest from The Mummy’s Hand, “Never really died…”
Given that Kharis tried to use the tana leaves to resurrect princess Ananka who was dead, its possible tana leaves could be used to raise the dead. But it’s also possible it was just a desperate, useless blasphemy.
As a tana leaf powered not-undead, Kharis is superhumanly durable. Gunfire is a joke to him. In all his movies people shoot at him with handguns, shotguns, and rifles and it does nothing to Kharis. It doesn’t slow him down. It doesn’t even make him flinch. Kharis is also superhumanly strong, but not to the impressive level of his durability. Kharis can walk through most barriers and knock down metal doors, but only after hitting them a few times. WIth just a shove, he can send a man flying across a room. His favorite move (and really, his only move) is to grab a victim by the throat with his left hand and strangle them to death leaving a tell-tale grey streak on their necks that the film’s scientists identity as–
Yeah, you’ve heard this already…
Kharis has two weaknesses. The first is that he, like Frankenstein’s monster, has a fear of fire from the second movie onwards as he was burnt during the end of the first movie. The second is that he’s not the most agile of monsters. The dude’s a shambler. While all his limbs do work, he often drags his left leg and keeps his right arm curled up in a bandage. Speed blitzing is not something this character is going to be able to pull off. He’s as slow as the sands of Egypt.
It’s teased in the first movie that Kharis would become “A monster unlike anything the world has ever seen!” if he ever gets the fluid from more than nine tana leaves in his system, but unfortunately we never get to see this happen. It’s a bummer, but a supermode never used is a supermode never used, and for this fight Kharis only gets nine tana leaves.
The Mummy’s Feats
The Mummy’s Hand
–Pistol shots don’t even slow him down.
–At the end of the film, is set on fire and burns for an indefinite period of time. This immobilizes Kharis, though he does get better, if the three sequels weren’t enough of a clue.
The Mummy’s Tomb
–Shotguns and pistols do nothing.
–Has a fear of fire now, which is understandable since he probably burned for hours during the last film.
–Knocked over a fence by walking into it.
–Knocked a man across the room with a shove and repeated the move.
The Mummy’s Ghost
–Another fence bites the dust.
–Bang Bang goes the guns. Stalk Stalk goes the mummy.
The Mummy’s Curse
–Kharis knocks down metal bars from a stone wall and then a metal door after a few shoves.
The Creature From The Black Lagoon
“I’d like to ask you something, I’m not a very educated person. This Gill-Man, this thing I have seen with my own eyes, it doesn’t belong in our world. It should have died out long before man was born. But still it exists. Why?”
“Well I’ll try to explain it to you. Sometimes a species gets isolated in time. If the conditions are right, it reproduces itself–without change, skipping a chapter of evolution. Way back, there must have been some major link between marine and terrestrial life. It’s just possible this is it. Well, that’s all there is to it.”
“Now I’ll tell you what I believe. This beast exists because it is stronger than the thing that you call evolution. In it is some force of life, a demon driving it through millions of centuries, and it does not surrender so easily to weaklings like you and me. This is the thing that you hunt for. Think on it.”
–Wise captain of the Rita to unwise scientists
Creature From The Black Lagoon Comic Adaptation, With Art By Art Adams!
Creature From The Black Lagoon Full Movie
Revenge Of The Creature Full Movie
The Creature Walks Among Us Full Movie
The Creature From The Black Lagoon Pinball!!!
The Creature From The Black Lagoon…Musical…
Technically, the creature is called the Gill-Man, but everyone knows him as the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The Gill-Man is my personal favorite of the Universal monsters. I love how he’s an atomic age Universal monster. He’s not Universal’s only atomic age monster, but he’s the only one that had the heart of a classic monster. The Deadly Mantis and the Tarantula were just giant engines of destruction. The Metaluna Mutants and Mole People were just minions. Gill-Man was the only Universal monster from the 50’s to take Universal’s classic sympathetic monster formula and successfully update it for a new generation by mixing in elements of drive-in creature features. You got nosey scientists, a primordial creature locked in stasis, and plenty of sex appeal through Julie Adams in a swimsuit.
I also just think he’s neat. Look at him! He’s cool!
The Creature From The Black Lagoon’s Powers And Abilities
As a Denisovan throwback, the Gill-Man is semi-amphibious. He naturally lives in the water, but can function on land for a few minutes. While he lives in a lagoon in Brazil, it is likely that the Gill-Man evolved in deeper waters given his superhuman strength. He’s able to bend metal in his bare hands, tip over boats full of men, kill a man by squeezing his skull in one hand, and burst through cages.
A lagoon is a body of water separated from the sea by a coral reef or sandy bank. It’s implied that Gill-Man survived the aeons because he became trapped in the Black Lagoon and was thus spared whatever got the rest of his race out in the sea. In this respect, the Black Lagoon is similar to Maple White Land from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World as a primitive world trapped in time through isolation.
Gill-Man’s scales afford him a degree of superhuman durability. When shot with a harpoon gun, he just pulls the harpoon out and carries on. He is bullet-resistant, but not bullet-proof. He’s survived being shot full of holes, but whenever he’s shot he retreats from the wounds.
Gill-Man is not stupid. He’s been shown to sneak up on his prey throughout the films. Though he doesn’t go on land unless he has to, he can nonetheless walk quickly and silently. He even created a log jam to prevent a boat from escaping his lagoon once its crew picked a fight with him. When the boat tried to move the jam with a winch, Gill-Man understood what was happening and unhooked the winch.
It’s debatable whether or not Gill-Man truly has the intelligence of an average man, but he’s certainly smarter than a dumb man. In the words of a hunter that narrowly survived encountering Gill-Man in The Creature Walks Among Us, “He is smart…not like man, but devil!”
The Denisovan era was one marked by the evolutionary transition from fish to land mammal, and Gill-Man has an interesting ability based on that fact shown in The Creature Walks Among Us. When his normal aquatic functioning is impaired, his body can adapt to life on land.
When Gill-Man is accidentally set on fire by hunters, his gills burn. Scientists fear he’s a goner, but then something really weird and 50’s sci-fi happens. In a transformation compared to that of polypterus senegalus, once-dormant lungs start to move in his chest, his scales fall off, his gill slits close, and Gill-Man ends up looking like a cross between Uncle Fester and the goombas from Super Mario Bros: The Movie.
The terrestrial Gill-Man (Gill-less Man now) is just as strong and durable as his previous self, though the scientists mention that his skin is sensitive without its scales. The major change to the terrestrial Gill-Man is that he can no longer breath water which leads to a sad scene where the poor creature has to be saved from drowning as he tries to go back into the water.
Gill-Man just exists to suffer.
For this fight, we’re going to be sticking to the aquatic Gill-Man. I think it’s obvious why.
The Creature From The Black Lagoon’s Feats
The Creature From The Black Lagoon
–Snuck into a tent and killed a man.
–Shot by a harpoon and retreated into an underwater cave.
–Snuck aboard the Rita and killed Chico. Not Chico!
–When caught in a fishing net, he pulled against it hard enough to make the Rita lean and the boom crack and then clawed his way out.
–While drugged on rotenone, a powerful pesticide that in real life is used to kill off entire populations of fish within lakes, the Gill-Man still had enough strength to crush a man’s head with his flipper-claw and grab Julie Adams before succumbing.
Did you know that acute and prolonged exposure to rotenone can cause Parkinson’s? The poor Gill-Man just exists to suffer.
–Breaks out of a bamboo cage, the kind that held Rambo.
–Trapped the Rita in the lagoon by damming up the mouth with fallen trees.
–Was shot in the side by a harpoon again and just takes it out. Stabbed by a diver’s knife to seemingly little effect.
–During the final confrontation of the film, the Gill-Man is stabbed in the chest only to lift and throw his attacker. He’s then blasted 6 times by rifles and staggers back into the water presumably to die–if there weren’t sequels.
The Creature’s Revenge
–Survived an explosion.
–Was unable to free himself from a chain around his ankle built by people aware of his strength, but broke it when he swam against it.
–Knocked a car downhill.
–Was shot in the shoulder with a pistol and retreated into the Florida Everglades.
The Creature Walks Among Us
–Lured his pursuers into an ambush.
–Knocked over a boat holding five men.
–Was shot twice with drugged harpoons that he pulled out of his body then survived burning alive for a few seconds by jumping back into the water. He then had enough strength to start picking up a tree, presumably to throw at his attackers, but passed out from the drugs and his wounds.
–Protected his sheep friends by killing a cougar with his bare hands.
–Burst through a metal cage designed by people well aware of his strength in an instant, bending the metal in his hands.
–Knocked over a brick post and a gate by walking into it.
–Hoisted a man over his head and threw him to his death.
–Was wounded by a point-blank shotgun blast, but survived to walk five miles to the sea.
So Who Wins?
Gill-Man unwraps the Mummy.
This fight came down to strength vs durability. Kharis is certainly more durable than Gill-Man. While Gill-Man has endured being shot full of holes, bullets have forced him to retreat while Kharis doesn’t even flinch from bullets. Gill-Man also nearly died from being set on fire for a few seconds while Kharis burned until the flames died out and was still alive. But while Kharis has the edge in durability, Gill-Man has the advantage on strength. Kharis never did more than knock down fences and choke people to death in his films until The Mummy’s Curse where he got his best strength feats by knocking metal bars out of a stone wall and eventually knocking down a metal door after enough strikes. That’s not enough to match Gill-Man’s history of strength feats. When Gill-Man gets upset enough, things designed to imprison him fail. In The Creature Walks Among Us, he even bent metal, something Kharis has never been shown to do.
With his superior agility combined with his superior strength, Gill-Man can easily overpower Kharis. Gill-Man would have to work to damage Kharis, but Kharis would also have to work to damage Gill-Man. Gill-Man doesn’t have the same level of durability as Kharis, but he’s durable enough that when it’s taken into consideration along with his agility and strength it means Kharis is going to have a harder time hurting Gill-Man hand-to-hand than Gill-Man will have hurting him.
There’s also several factors that help swing the fight in Gill-Man’s favor. Gill-Man is smart and understands how to set up an ambush. He also knows to retreat to the water if he ever feels in danger. But Kharis is a single-minded avenger. Once he has his target, he pursues that target until he’s got his moldy fingers around their neck. It is very likely that Gill-Man could lead Kharis to the water where he would unquestionably have the advantage over Kharis. If Kharis was ordered to kill Gill-Man, he probably would straight-up jump in the water after him. Even if Kharis had enough control to stop at the water’s edge, Gill-Man has the strength necessary to pull Kharis into the water.
Gill-Man can also beat Kharis just by running the clock. Eventually, Kharis is going to need his tana leaf tea to keep going. We aren’t sure exactly how long Kharis can go on one dose of nine tana leaves. At the very most, it’s 24 hours as he’s supposed to be given a dose every night during the cycle of the full moon, but it’s likely shorter given that the high priest used vials of tana leaf fluid to direct, reward, and empower Kharis during The Mummy’s Hand.
Even if it takes a whole 24 hours for Kharis to run out of juice, Gill-Man would just need to outlast Kharis to win, and Gill-Man is very good at surviving.
Given that Kharis ultimately met his end sinking to the bottom of a swamp, it’s appropriate that he’s defeated by an aquatic creature, don’t you think?
Music Track Name Ideas
C Rank: Silver Screen Screams
B Rank: Monsters In Love
A Rank: The Deep Abyss Of Time
S Rank: Time, Love, and Death
Don’t recall which film but Kharis one handed pounded his way through the side of a barn, and quickly. Might be the same one where he casually walked through that heavy fence. He’s about equal in strength to Gil.