Hollywood, for obvious reasons, loved doing movies about Egypt thanks to its long history and exotic locations. Even in the days before they could do a lot of location shooting, there were still movies made about Egyptian themes in all sorts of genres. Even a comedy team like Wheeler and Woolsey got into the act with Mummy's Boys.
We don't actually Wheeler and Woolsey until four or five minutes into the movie. There's an establishing scene first at the mansion of Phillip Browning (Frank M. Thomas). He's one of those rich men who wanted to make a name for themselves in posterity by doing something noteworthy, which in his case meant sponsoring and heading an expedition to Egypt to look for the hidden grave of one or another old pharaoh. His expedition was on the face of it successful, expect that the pharaoh Pharatime had a curse, or so the legend goes, and since returning to America, people on the expedition have a way of winding up dead. Phillip wants to take all the artifacts back to Egypt and reburying them, before he or his daughter Mary (Barbara Pepper) wind up dead. Fellow expedition member Dr. Sterling (Moroni Olsen), one of the few survivors, scoffs at the idea of a curse.
It's only after this opening scene that we meet Wheeler and Woolsey. Although they're much too old for it, they're playing a pair of ditch-diggers on a government welfare project. Wheeler plays Stanley, who is forgetful unless he can sleep on something, while Woolsey is Aloysius, who's more of the schemer of the two, sort of manages Stanley. The two get fired, but fortunately Aloysius sees a classified ad from Browning who is looking for people to go on that expedition to Egypt to return the artifacts. Their stupidity gets them the job, since you expect that somebody in the movie is more than willing to sacrifice the pair.
Everybody gets on a boat for Egypt, and near-disaster keeps heading for the passengers, which might be a sign of the curse in action. After one of the disasters, a stowaway named Catfish (Willie Best) is found, and he's brought into the crew because he says he's from Cairo, although he's actually from Cairo, Illinois. They all make it to Egypt, but more danger awaits them once they get there. As you might guess, there's not actually a curse, but a sinister plot afoot. Wheeler and Woolsey, however, foil it and all the good people get to live happily ever after.
I know that Wheeler and Woolsey aren't going to be to everybody's taste. Further, as the series went along, the humor becomes more and more trite, as though they're coasting. I can't help but think that's in part because the humor was becoming dated, and possibly because of Woolsey's health issues. In the case of Mummy's Boys, though, it's also definitely in part down to a weak script that relies on fairly insipid tropes about Egypt and has Wheeler even stupider than ever.
If you want to see what Wheeler and Woolsey were about, I'd definitely recommend watching the earlier movies before Mummy's Boys.
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