La Tombe de la momie

Well, I like it anyway! As before, the first 10 minutes are spent in a series of flashbacks, this time out of a total running time of 57 minutes.

30 years on the Mummy and Zucco have actually "survived", Zucco enrols Bey to take the Mummy to Hicksville, America and eliminate the surviving tomb raiders. The plan is carried out but derailed by Bey's instant lusting for the heroine, much to the Mummy's disgust. It's an utterly preposterous (and monstrous) plot of course, and without the usual nominal Universal production values would not even have the charm I like in Golden Age movies. In 1952 this would have been an out and out clinker, a Plan 9 competitor. But with those production values also come the familiar nitrate film/atmosphere/sets/actors and decent photography that I love to watch over and over again. The crematorium in The Black Cat was used, and in this they even set fire to the Winslow house - would that Hugh Herbert's character had been inside! That was never Lon Chaney Jr playing the Mummy, and it was Tom Tyler in the flashbacks, they just used Chaney's name to help sell the picture.

The local doctor examining the mould from a victim of the Mummy announced that they "were in the presence of the living dead" - sadly I get that feeling every time I trot an old Hollywood film out!

Like I said, I like it but frankly I think I'm in a tiny minority!

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.

As Dick Foran and Wallace Ford put the torch to Kharis the Mummy in The Mummy's Hand there's no way that Universal Pictures was thinking about a sequel. Otherwise they would have made sure to identify the fact that the action was taking place in 1912 and had everyone wear costumes of the period.

So it looks a little ridiculous to have Dick Foran and Wallace Ford now elderly beginning The Mummy's Tomb made up as elderly gents with Foran reminiscing about those days on that dig in Egypt where he bested the cult of Kharis and Princess Ananka and brought back the Princess Ananka's mummy with the treasures of her tomb. The first 10 to 12 minutes of this film is a flashback synopsis of the previous film.

But it turns out that Wallace Ford didn't really kill George Zucco with those bullets fired at point blank range. George has been waiting for 30 years, but he and the cult want some payback. Kharis survived too and Zucco before he dies turns him over to a new handler in Turhan Bey. They've even got a cover story with Bey getting a job as cemetery worker, the better to bring Kharis over from Egypt.

The Mummy's Tomb takes the unusual step of having Kharis kill the heroes of the previous film. But Foran left a grown son in John Hubbard who has taken up the fight against the undead. And Bey deviates from the mission because he's decided he wants Hubbard's intended bride Elysse Knox all for himself and he sends Kharis out to arrange it in his inimitable fashion.

I think you see where this one is going, but Universal did this one in their usual Gothic horror style. But The Mummy's Tomb is not as good as its predecessor and none of those films involving Kharis are anything approaching light years as good as Boris Karloff in the original The Mummy. Universal did not do as good as it did with Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolfman.

Mummy films are the runt of Universal's litter.

When I first watched this, some 4 years ago, I remember being very disappointed with it and recall labeling it a lazy overall effort, especially as it heavily borrowed footage not only from the previous film - THE MUMMY'S HAND - but also FRANKENSTEIN (1931), BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) and THE WOLF MAN (1941) for its mob scenes at the climax! However, coming back to it now - and despite having just watched the other "Kharis" films - I found it to be quite enjoyable, atmospheric and competently handled (especially during Chaney's various rampages and the fiery finale). It was nice to see Dick Foran, Wallace Ford and George Zucco (why on Earth did he wait 30 years to exact his revenge?!) reprise their roles from THE MUMMY'S HAND, if only briefly, as it was to have Mary Gordon - Mrs. Hudson of Universal's contemporaneous "Sherlock Holmes" series - as one of Chaney's victims. As for Chaney himself, I thought that his first stab at the role wasn't bad at all: suitably brutish when required but with a hint of emotion seeping through the wrappings on occasion to provide a balance (especially when Turhan Bey, yet another misguided High Priest of Karnak, is liable to jeopardize their 'mission' of restoring Princess Ananka to life by conveniently falling for leading lady Elyse Knox).

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