The Mummy's Hand.

Review #1735: The Mummy's Hand.

Cast: 

Dick Foran (Steve Banning), Peggy Moran (Marta Solvani), Wallace Ford (Babe Jenson), Eduardo Ciannelli (the High Priest), George Zucco (Professor / Andoheb), Cecil Kellaway (Tim "The Great Solvani" Sullivan), Charles Trowbridge (Dr. Petrie), Tom Tyler (Kharis), and Sig Arno (The Beggar) Directed by Christy Cabanne.

Review: 

Believe it or not, the Univeral line of horror movies was not a constant cycle that just churned out interesting monster after monster; sure, Universal opened the door with The Phantom of the Opera (1925), but it was Dracula (1931) that set the stage for a craze of films in the next five years that generally adapted literary material such as the works of Edgar Allan Poe or H.G. Wells. The Mummy (1932), however, was instead inspired by the public interest in Egyptian tombs and curses. By 1936, the cycle of these films would take a pause because of the power struggle that came about over ownership of Universal Pictures, which struggled with financial overruns with the Laemmle family in charge. Until the fall of 1938, there were no plans for future films...until Universal heard about the positivity coming from the Regina-Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills, which showed a double feature of Dracula and Frankenstein and attracted crowds, including Bela Lugosi being used to promote it; they would make their own prints to show around (while having Lugosi do a wide tour) and soon found themselves in a decision to return into the world of horror. As such, Son of Frankenstein (1939) started a new cycle of horror films from the company, which would include old and new monsters with features such as The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Wolf Man (1941), and others. However, with the Mummy series, a re-imagining would be done for the four feature films done in the 1940s (each with the title of "The Mummy's [blank]" with this one, Tomb, Ghost, and Curse). The 1931 film featured a mummy by name of Ardeth Bay / Imhotep, while this one features a mummy named Kharis, which would be the name for each of the subsequent films (this does not include the Abbott and Costello crossover film, which spelled it as Klaris). The story was done by Griffin Jay, who also did the screenplay with Maxwell Shane; the film was made on a modest budget of $84,000 while having a bit of footage re-used from the original feature (because why re-stage something you already shot in a time where you couldn't just watch the other film on a whim?) and sets re-used from Green Hell (released the same year, incidentally directed by James Whale). At the helm of director was Cabanne, a stage/film actor-turned-director that would turn out films at a proficient rate from the 1910s all the way until his last film in 1948, with a good deal of them being Westerns. Oddly enough, it was a guy known for Westerns that would play the title character for this film with Tom Tyler. One can imagine why anybody would only want to do one feature where cotton is glued to the face for wrinkles (I imagine it took less than eight hours to get the job done this time around).

This, along with a handful of the horror films of its era, belong to the B-movie classification, ones that could be slickly made and shown out to fill the billing for whatever theatres needed in the era of the 1940s, for better or worse (Frankenstein would turn into a monster mash with varying results, for example). One could probably do better with 67 minutes than to watch a curiously average affair that this film proves to be, one that has a bit more of the Mummy than the original but without as much interest in actually doing anything useful besides attempts at building a quartet that go about as well as riding a bike blindfolded. Technically, the only interesting presence is Zucco, who certainly had a knack for playing the heavy (whether suave or mad), although Tyler and a frame-by-frame blackening out of his eyes is a close second (incidentally, Lon Chaney Jr would play the title character in the next three films, while Zucco would appear in two of them). The effects are fairly decent here too for the character, so there is that to consider. To add one more Western connection, Foran was actually known for his performances in Western musicals and supporting roles. For such a wooden time, he is probably the better of the main four, if only because he fits the requirements of a calm middle man with the bare minimum (the same could be applied to Moran, but playing the one in distress on a slab doesn't help). Nay, the flaws rests with the attempts at making comic relief with Ford and Kellaway. Sure, each actor had a handful of films to show their stuff as character presences, but they seem wasted here because the comic stuff just isn't that interesting. With such a short time to spare (particularly after spending the first few minutes with Zucco in relaying the plot), one doesn't have much patience with goofy things that revolve from trying to trick a magician in a bar to talking about a trick with a pebble. Besides, the mummy doesn't exactly have as much threatening power if all it does is being used as a tool to kill everybody but the main group (involving extinct leaves being turned into tana liquid). The climax is especially annoying in this regard, since Zucco and Ford get to engage in a short gunfight where they somehow shoot at each other but only one manages to hit anything (and if you remember correctly with Zucco, this means nobody really shot the other!) while the mummy stumbles around with a tied up person (brought in by Zucco because he wants to be immortal with her because...guarding the mummy isn't enough?). Honestly, besides torching the mummy, the quarter getting spoils of the tomb they eventually found is probably the most insulting thing, because we are here for the tiniest bit of horror, not fortune. As a whole, the film served as a quick way of getting folks back in the seats for a mummy after eight years of seclusion, and while I can't say I liked the film, it might prove a curiosity for anyone wanting quickly-done horror or for folks already interested in just where Universal liked to go with their monsters.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Next Time: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.