The Mummy's Hand (1940)

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #152

By 1940, it must have been pretty obvious to the bigwigs at Universal Pictures that their monsters were money-makers. They could keep churning out sequels and audiences would keep buying tickets.

There had already been three sequels to Frankenstein and one to Dracula. The introduction of the Wolfman was still a year away, but both The Mummy and The Invisible Man would be getting sequels.

Well, The Inivisible Man Returns is definitely a sequel, even though the title tells a bit of a white lie in that it's a different guy turning invisible this time around, so the original not really returning. The Mummy's Hand, though, can be seen as a reboot. The 1932 original featured a resurrected mummy using the name Ardeth Bey and who could pass as a regular human. The 1940 sequel involves an entirely different mummy (named Kharis) who, over the course of a total of four films, never gets out of his mummy wrappings. Or, for that matter, get any dialogue.

Still, he's an effective monster. Played by Tom Tyler during a lull in Tyler's B-Western films, he glares out at the world through pitch-black eyes and shambles through the night in search of his victims. He's legitimately creepy.

The Mummy's Hand is very low-budget. It reuses scenes from the 1932 film, lifts its score from Son of Frankenstein and employs sets built for another movie. The end result is 2nd-Tier Universal Monsters, but even 2nd-tier U.M. can be a lot of fun.

Archeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his comic-relief sidekick Babe (Wallace Ford) are in Egypt and have picked up a clue to the location of the three thousand-year-old tomb of Princess Ananka. They talk a vaudeville magician into financing an expedition. The magician's pretty daughter Marta (Peggy Moran) tags along because she's initially convinced that Steve and Babe are con artists.

What none of them know is that there is a secret organization dedicated to making sure no one ever defiles the princess' tomb. Also, there's a mummy entombed outside Anaka's resting place. 3000 years ago, Kharis tried to use the forbidden Tanis leaves to resurrect Ananka after she died. As punishment, he was buried alive. The secret society is able to use the juice from Tanis leaves to bring him back to life if necessary. 

And that, of course, is what happens. Steve's expedition finds the outer tomb and is close to finding the entrance to Anaka's tomb. The leader of the society (played with quiet menace by George Zucco) brings Kharis to life. The mummy kills a couple of people. But both he and Zucco's character are distracted by Marta, taking her alive rather than killing her as well. And, to be fair, she is awful pretty.

The Mummy's Hand takes a little too much time to get to the mummy and some of the comic relief falls a little flat. Though, to be fair, the magician (Cecil Kellaway) has an hilarious scene when he tries to explain to his daughter what he's done with the last of their money. Also, the character of Babe is actually useful in the expedition. If his comedy scenes are only mildly funny, Babe at least serves a useful purpose in the narrative.

I also like that both Marta and Steve use their brains to figure out stuff at key moments. It's Marta who deduces there's a secret entrance to Anaka's tomb somewhere in the first tomb. It's Steve, using his knowledge of hieroglyphics, who finds a way to get to that tomb in time to save Marta.

And, as I said, Tyler's mummy is sincerely creepy. It is apparently completely destroyed at the climax, but--as we all know--it's very, very hard to permanently destroy a Universal monster.

By the way, there are several plot points here (most overtly the existance of a secret society protecting an ancient tomb) that were re-used in slightly altered form for the 1999 reboot of The Mummy.

But that raises an important question that all good nerds are forced to consider. Is The Mummy's Hand a reboot of the 1932 film? Or is it set in the same universe with another mummy popping up as a result of another curse? After all, in a world where one mummy can exist, there's no reason why there can't be a second mummy.

Well, I like to think of the Universal Monsters all existing in the same universe (with the exception of one Invisible Man film which simply can't be made to fit). So I think the 1932 film and the four movies that begin with The Mummy's Hand are indeed in the same universe as Frankenstein, the original Mummy, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man, Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It means that, in ancient Egypt, there were two separate incidents in which a guy is cursed to be a mummy after falling for a princess. But those princesses were darn good-lookin', so I'm okay with that idea. 

Soon, we'll look at the next film in the Mummy series.