I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…
Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points
Universal Studios, hip to the success of their horror films, were starting to churn them out by 1940 – every big hit was being sequalised while the audience was still hungry for more. The Mummy’s Hand is the first follow-up to Boris Karloff’s The Mummy of 1932, though actually the two films don’t share any plot crossover. This is more of a spiritual sequel, reusing the same mixture of low-level horror, Tutankhamun iconography and xenophobic representations of Egypt. Oh, and it’s the first truly dreadful entry in this series.
The focus is on two American archeologists who buy a vase in a Cairo market for $75. The buffoonish Babe Jenson thinks it’s a piece of junk, but his more strait-laced colleague Steve Banning (Dick Foran) accurately deduces that markings on the exterior will lead to the long-lost tomb of Princess Ananka. Ignoring condescending telegrams from their museum back in New York, the men organise an ad-hoc expedition to the location. For funding they conveniently get chatting to a stage magician in a bar and the Great Solvani (Cecil Kellaway from The Invisible Man Returns) agrees to help. Meanwhile, a high priest called Andoheb (George Zucco) is growing obsessed with Solvani’s daughter, Marta (Peggy Moran) – and he has a secret weapon: the mummified body of an Ancient Egyptian called Kharis (Tom Tyler) who is being kept alive via magical means…
After a reasonably spooky prologue, setting out the sub-Tolkien mumbo-jumbo of Kharis’s backstory, there’s no real horror until the 43-minute mark when the mummy awakens. In a film that’s only just over an hour long, that’s quite a chunk without any real thrills. In its place comes some low-energy comedy in the form of mild bickering between Abbott and Costello clones Babe and Steve. There’s also now the unintentional humour of a lead character called Babe, resulting in several straight lines that take on a different meaning to modern ears: ‘What’s all the excitement, Babe?’, ‘Babe, those jackals give me goose pimples.’ By the way, Babe is played by Wallace Ford who, despite the Brooklyn accent and attitude, was born in Bolton in the north-west of England.
The movie lacks any kind of vim, with a simplistic plot and boring characters struggling to fill a short runtime. A sense of going through the motions is also confounded by the budget-saving choice to recycle sets, music and even some footage from earlier Universal films. We don’t even get any star power from the mummy character when he does finally join the action. Boris Karloff’s dignity and sincerity have been replaced by a more shambling, ‘monster’-ish take by Tom Tyler.
Four trick revolvers out of 10
Next: The Invisible… Woman?!
Ian Farrington 