The Mummy's Tomb

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.

I loved the very first Universal Mummy movie with Boris Karloff in all his spookiness. It has a connection to mysteries of Egypt and Books of the Dead. Most of the other films from this genre have a real sameness to them. There is the man who travels with Kharis, the poor creature, buried alive and wrapped in cloth. His agenda seems to be to protect Kharis but he fails sometimes. This one hearkens back to the Mummy's Hand where the characters have now aged and gone on to a new generation. There is lots of death in this one, where people who the mummy realized were responsible for his struggles are done in. Soon the mummy has found a new love, and so he sets out to make things happen. Jealousy plays a role in this offering and sets the scene for another movie.

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).

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.

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 ****