Mummy Monday: The Mummy’s Tomb

Eyes That Crawl With Madness! Hands That Creep Like Cobras!

You just can’t get the High Priests these days. After a wrinkly George Zucco explains how he survived Babe’s bullet and how Kharis escaped the flames at the end of The Mummy’s Hand, he charges his replacement with killing the entire Banning clan, warning him not to fall foul of temptations (in other words a bit of skirt). Whoops. Mehemet Bey is Mr Focussed until he spots flighty Isobel and then, yup, out with the plans of revenge and in with the plans to kidnap the girl. Haven’t we seen this before? Oh yeah, in the previous film.

Of course, we also saw entertainment in the previous film. Shame there’s none in evidence here. First we have to endure 10 minutes of flashbacks to The Mummy’s Hand. Then when we finally get into the action –and I use the word loosely – we are treated (oops, there I go again) to turgid direction, flat lighting and appalling acting. Even Dick Foran and Wallace Ford, reprising their roles as Banning and Babe, are stilted. Sure, they’re playing men who have aged 30 years (bizarrely meaning that the movie is set in the 1970s) but there’s no joy in the performance. Indeed, Babe has lost his sense of humour, gained a bad ‘tache and apparently, for no apparent reason, changed his surname from to Hanson.

Then there’s Kharis. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman, I like him as the Son of Dracula and don’t mind him as Frankenstein’s Monster, but here he plays the Mummy with the subtlety of a football hooligan who’s had too many pints of wife beater. He’s not helped by the increasingly rubbery make-up, but there is no soul here. Kharis is a brute, nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, he’s a brute who is as scary as a lump of granite.

Next time on Mummy Monday: The Mummy’s Ghost