Das Grab der Mumie

THE MUMMY'S TOMB (Universal, 1942), directed by Harold Young, the third installment in the Mummy series, the second to feature Kharis and the first starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the living creature under wraps. A  sequel to THE MUMMY'S HAND (1940) released two years earlier, this legend of Kharis continues, set thirty years later, with Dick Foran, Wallace Ford and George Zucco reprising their original characters sporting middle-age makeup consisting of gray hairs, glasses and wrinkles.

The story opens in a town of Mapleton in Massachusetts, with the middle-aged widow named Steve Banning (Dick Foran) relating his scientific expedition to his sister, Jane (Mary Gordon), son, John (John Hubbard) and Isobel (Elyse Knox), John's fiancé, on how he, his now deceased wife, Marta (played earlier by Peggy Moran) and his friend, Babe Hanson (Wallace Ford) encountered the ancient burial ground of Kharis, the mummy. The next scene shifts over to Egypt where High Priest Andoheb (George Zucco), who amazingly survived three bullet wounds shot into him by Hansen and his long plunge down the temple steps (told via flashback), assigns Mehemet (Turhan Bey), to guide Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) to America where his next assignment is to avenge the surviving members of the expedition, doing away with the Banning family and finally Babe Hansen, whose character arrives later in the story.

Taking a new direction from its previous successors by shifting Kharis from Egypt to the United States, with similarities to Dracula (1931) where Kharis on board the ship, resting inside his tomb, bound for his destination with Mehemet as his guide in the similar fashion to Dracula's Mr. Renfield. Once in Massachusetts, Mehemet takes up residence as a cemetery caretaker with Kharis feeling right at home surrounded by tomb sweet tombs of buried beings. Like Dracula, Kharis stalks his victims at night and rests by day.

While THE MUMMY'S TOMB tends to be original, it mostly borrows from other horror stories, including its predecessor where Mehemet captures Isobel to make her his bride as his predecessor Andoheb tried to do with Marta in THE MUMMY'S HAND. Besides resurrections and revisions, the film delivers towards its final half with chills and thrills, and Kharis meeting the same fate as the Frankenstein monster, who doesn't appear here.

Supporting players include Frank Reicher (Professor Matthew Norman); Cliff Clark (The Sheriff); Virginia Brissac (Ella Evans); and Otto Hoffman (The Cemetery Caretaker).

Strictly "B" material for the juvenile crowd, THE MUMMY'S TOMB is a fast-paced if not entirely incredible 62 minutes. Without the flashback and stock material from the previous film, this movie would have been ten minutes shorter. Minus the over abundance of comedy relief stressed out from THE MUMMY'S HAND, TOMB has all the familiarities from other Universal horror films from the 1940s, especially the stock musical score by Hans J. Salter. Although THE MUMMY'S TOMB did not become a top of the line Mummy show, it did lead the way to the next installment of THE MUMMY'S GHOST (1944), considered by many to be the best of all the "Kharis" thrillers.

Footnote: For anyone paying close attention to detail, it should be noted that since the first Kharis film installment obviously takes place in 1940, then this sequel, which looks very much like modern-day 1942, is set thirty years into the future, namely 1970. Otherwise if this is 1942, then the earlier film should have taken place in 1912 with actors in futuristic 1940s attire.

Other than local television presentations prior to 1985s Fright Night/Chiller theaters, and availability on video cassette and later DVD format, it's cable broadcast history consists of the Sci-Fi Channel (1990s) and American Movie Classics (2000-2002).(**)

This 61 minute sequel begins with roughly about 10 minutes of stock footage from the previous film (THE MUMMY'S HAND), but it should be taken into account that these first two Universal installments were released a couple of years apart back in their day, and it was during a time in our history when we didn't have the luxury of television, much less "home video". Today we can watch these films over and over, and back to back; but in the early '40s it wouldn't have been so easy to recall where the story of Kharis the mummy left off two whole years ago, and that's in the context that this repetitive footage should be considered.

After being refreshed of the last films' Egyptian exploits of novice archaeologists Steve Banning and Babe Jenson (now mistakenly referred to as Babe "Hanson", an error which is NOT as easily excusable!) we move ahead 30 years where the mummy of Kharis (newly played by Lon Chaney) is stuck in America with current high priest Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey). Why it's taken so long is anyone's guess, but Mehemet now has a vengeance mission to unleash the mummy on Steve and Babe (Dick Foran and Wallace Ford, reprising their parts in senior citizen's makeup) for daring to defile Kharis' tomb three decades earlier.

This is strictly a "B" level programmer without many trimmings, but it's still a fairly entertaining one . Lon Chaney looks menacing in his ravaged mummy outfit which properly shows some of the effects of the fire which consumed him once upon a time. Chaney absolutely hated playing the restrictive part of Kharis, yet he wound up grumbling through it for two more sequels following this one. Harold Young's pedestrian direction is nothing much to get excited about, but we do get some chilling sequences of Kharis creeping around modern-day Mapleton, Massachusetts on dark and windy evenings, which are a plus. Turhan Bey is perfectly cast as the mummy's foreign protector, and lovely Elyse Knox is easy on the eyes as the pretty love interest to John Hubbard, who doesn't leave much impression as Steve Banning's son. One can nitpick on the inconsistency of these mummy sequels forever; for example, even though TOMB occurs thirty years after HAND and should therefore be set in 1970, everyone still dresses and acts like it's 1942. But what the hell -- taken for what it is, THE MUMMY'S TOMB is a fast and fulfilling hour of mindless fun.

**1/2 out of ****

This movie starts out with about ten or twelve minutes devoted to recapping the events of the prior film, The Mummy's Hand. I hadn't seen something like that since watching Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

This one is supposed to be taking place thirty years after that film, which if it took place in 1940, places this one in 1970. No effort is made to make it appear to be set in the future, apart from aging the characters from the first movie.

In The Mummy's Hand, Babe shoots four shots at point-blank range into an Egyptian High Priest, who then falls down a long flight of stone steps. Even though we are shown this clip, later in the movie we see that priest as an older man, initiating his son, the way he'd be initiated in The Mummy's Hand. He claims he'd only been shot once, in the arm. Yeah, right.

The Mummy is also back, after having been shot at and burned in the prior film. The only difference seems to be that he has no eyes now (I'm not sure how he gets around, maybe by sound like The Blind Dead, who director Amando de Ossorio thought of as mummies, not zombies?). He's got old bandages wrapped around him. His old bandages should have burned, so presumably he was re-wrapped with old bandages (since if new ones were used, he wouldn't be as scary). Additionally, while Kharis needed to have potions of Tana leaves planted on the premises of people he was supposed to kill in the last film, here he can be sent out without that.

The young Egyptian gets a job as a cemetery caretaker in America, where the Banning family lives, so he can set the mummy on them for having violated Princess Annanka's tomb. He doesn't seem to have any plans to try to get her or her treasures back from the museum, which is never seen. He seems set on killing the Bannings, apparently not knowing about Babe - who had shot his father! He only goes after Babe after Babe shows up and figures out the mummy is back, and the priest overhears him. Likewise, the priest doesn't seem to know or care about finding out what happened to the magician and his daughter. The daughter, we learn, died, but the priest never hears that. The magician, I suppose, disappeared.

This Egyptian priest, like his father before him, and like Kharis before them, falls in love with a woman who does not have any feelings for him. Like his father, he uses the mummy to try to retrieve her.

Seeing the mummy hobbling about in suburban American neighborhoods seemed fairly absurd. It would have been easier for the priest to go into the homes of the people he wanted dead and shoot them! Also absurd is the point at which all the townspeople go hunting for the mummy with torches! Would anybody in 1970s American be able to produce and light a torch at a moment's notice, like nineteenth century European villagers in a Frankenstein movie? They also start to burn a house down to get the mummy, thinking nothing of destroying the house. They don't try to kill him in a more efficient way, and seem to give no thought to the welfare of the mummy's captive. Some also try shooting him when he is struggling with someone, giving no thought to the bullets passing right through him. Of course, no one is harmed. Additionally, while the mummy seems afraid of fire, torches are thrown at him to no effect, and he also walks through fire a few times without burning.

Overall, this is a pretty flawed movie. Still, watching it was sort of fun, and it's hard to dislike a classic Universal monster movie.

Fun, typical Universal"B".. In what must've amounted to a cost-cutting measure, over 10 min. of the film's 60 min. running time, is made up of scenes from 1940's The Mummy's Hand"!! This flick would mark Chaney's first of 3 appearances as Kharis. Look for Glenn Strange[Frankenstein's Monster from '44-'48]in an unbilled "bit" as a farmer calming a horse, during the Mummy's first attack sequence.

The Mummy's Tomb is the 2nd part of the original "The Mummy" franchise following on from The Mummy's Hand (1940).

It's set 30 years after the events of the first film and the mummy has returned under new guidance, this time to kill off all surviving members of the Banning family who were responsible for foiling the evil plans in the first movie.

This time there is no comedy, the entire tone of the movie is considerably darker!

For this reason it doesn't have the same charm as the first movie but it makes up for this with better cinematography and continues the story perfectly.

It does suffer all the tropes of movies of this era (And there are many) but it could have been considerably worse. For fans of classic horror cinema this is a watchable continuation of the franchise.

The Good:

Looks better than the first part

Follows on very well

The Bad:

Remaking scenes from the earlier film is a tad silly

Very cliched

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Mummys are excellent climbers

If in doubt, cry witch!

Playing dead works against Mummys