"Cleopatra has not camel-droppings on me!"
Queen Forah was an antagonist on the 1975 Filmation Live Action Saturday Morning kids' show, The Ghost Busters. The ghost of a fictional queen of Egypt, she returned to the land of the living on a quest for immortality, never defined in the show but presumably restoring her to full life and invulnerability. She was accompanied by her fully mummified unnamed henchman, who she only ever really calls 'You Fool'. She possessed the ability to appear and disappear at the use of the word 'Sarcophagus'; the mummy possessed the ability to mummify anything he touched. They appeared in the series' seventh episode, 'A Worthless Gauze'.
Their quest involved an ape sorcerer named Simios, who could summon a being named Spen-zah, who possessed the secret to immortality. As was a running gag for this show, these two beings just happened to match the descriptions of two of the Ghost Busters, Tracy The Gorilla and Eddie Spencer, who just happened to be practicing stage magic tricks when they learned that partner Jake Kong had a birthday the next day. Annoying Kong with their awkward efforts to not ask him about his birthday, the pair are sent to collect their next audio-recorded assignment from unseen employer/mentor Zero.
Tracy shows his usual reality-warping powers (something he kept even into the sequel 1980's animated series) in both light slapstick and doing stage magic, in this case switching places with Eddie in the passenger seat by waving his wand. Unfortunately, these on-and-off undefined abilities do not keep the message from Zero intact, and all they get is that the case involves a queen. Scrying with a crystal scarab, Queen Forah sees the two, hears Spencer's name, and runs with the the very worst impression, though her efforts to leave their lair (the same castle from all the episodes of the short-lived series)
Going to the Ghost Busters' office, Queen Forah is insulted and enraged when the exceedingly dim Eddie claims that she is actually Jake Kong in disguise, sniffing out secrets of his surprise birthday party. The unspeaking Mummy fares no better, leaving the office when Spencer and Tracy keep trying to grab him (thinking he too is Jake), this in contradiction of his orders from Forah not to touch and thereby mummify the pair before they can pass on the secret of immortality. Forah vanishes with the Mummy, leaving the blame for the broken office door with the two dimbulbs.
With Jake's research on dead Queens yielding no results, the heroic trio proceeds to the cemetery, correctly reasoning that the Queen will be in the castle just beyond it. Sensing their presence, Forah, after an annoying attempt to reason with her mummy, proceeds to the graveyard. After another go-round of thinking Forah is Jake Kong, the pair finally tumble to the thought that Jake cannot be disguised as two different people in the same spot, and start running. Encountering the ghosts, a back-tracking Jake joins his friends in making a run for the castle. After their usual stumble-bum routine of getting past the front door, the trio are again confronted by Forah, demanding the secret of immortality, which Jake tells Eddie to make up. Eddie gives the secrets of immunization, and to make matters worse, the trio see the Mummy touch a flower, mummifying it. After a chase, the Ghost Busters get their Ghost De-Materializer, which makes quick work of Forah. The Mummy, on the other hand, is protected by a dust cloud, making the device unable to fire past it. The Mummy retreats for its sarcophagus (ironically the first time it has actually entered the thing correctly), but they manage to trick it back out (Tracy impersonates a telegram delivery and knocks on the lid of the sarcophagus) and finally banish it. Jake's birthday party is free of ancient Egypt, but when Tracy and Eddie use a vanishing cabinet trick, they really vanish and are unable to re-emerge as the episode ends.
Trivia
- Forah claims at one point that she and her mummy have been seeking the secret of immortality for 5000 years. Egypt simply did not have that many queens regnant (ruling in their own right and name), and the name Forah is not among these.
- Forah is played by actress Barbara Rhoades, a veteran of roles on a great many classic television series, according to Wikipedia and IMDB. Her most prominent villain role is that of One Life To Live's scheming Irene Manning, false friend to main character Vickie Lord, and mother of anti-villain Todd Manning. Ironically, Todd, occasionally among the most vicious characters on the show, takes a back seat to his estranged (and at present, deceased) biological mother for true uncaring evil.
- The Mummy was played by Richard Balin, a veteran actor and writer who would also appear as a silent dimwitted henchman in the show's final episode.
Template:Ghostbusters 1975 Villains