Movie Info
Movie Name: The Mummy’s Tomb
Studio: Universal Studios
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): October 23, 1942
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Your breath is bad!
Andoheb (George Zucco) and Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) have survived their encounter with Stephen Banning (Dick Foran) and his friend “Babe” Hanson (Wallace Ford). Thirty years later, Andoheb plots his revenge. Sending an agent named Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) to America with Kharis, Banning, his family, and friends are targeted. The curse falls upon Banning’s son John (John Hubbard) and his girlfriend Isobel Evans (Elyse Knox)…and Bey wants Isobel for himself.
Directed by Harold Young, The Mummy’s Tomb is the follow-up The Mummy’s Hand of 1940. The movie received mostly negative reviews, but still is considered a classic among horror fans. It is often found collected with Universal’s other Mummy pictures.
The Mummy’s Tomb like the previous entry decided to focus more on the mummy than the original Mummy of 1932 and is a direct sequel to The Mummy’s Hand. The movie advances the story thirty years and moved the setting to the United States.
I was young, but not I’m old…because I have gray hair and smoke a pipe
The biggest problem with the movie is the story. The first chunk of the movie is a retelling of The Mummy’s Hand and the movie itself isn’t very long. Once the story is retold, the killing begins and all of the characters that you kind of liked from the first one are killed by Kharis…I’m not a big fan of films when they negate the fight of the characters from the previous film (Alien3 is a classic example of this or even Friday the 13th Part 2). The story just meanders like the mummy until the mummy’s fiery end.
The story brought back most of the cast from The Mummy’s Hand (with bad “old man” makeup), but the female lead Peggy Moran and her father played by Cecil Kellaway had “died” in the years that had supposedly passed between the films. Tom Tyler did not return as Kharis and was replaced by monster master Lon Chaney, Jr. John Hubbard and Elyse Knox were brought in as the new blood for the series and George Zucco’s younger replacement was Turhan Bey.
Oh Kharis…you’re so kooky
Visually, the movie has its moments. I still love the design of the mummy and the character looks great, but the movie does suffer from bad sets which look like bad sets. It is kind of what you expect from a Universal Monster movie at this point, but it still doesn’t have the production value of the first two films.
The Mummy’s Tomb is a rather poor follow-up in a series that I’ve always contended looked better than it really was. I’ve never loved the mummy story, but at least this Mummy like the previous entry had a mummy in it. The Mummy’s Tomb was followed by The Mummy’s Ghost in 1944.
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