The Mummy’s Hand (1940)


 The Mummy’s Hand (1940)


Rebooting the Universal Mummy series even before there was such a term, we start once again in ancient Egypt with a new dead princess and Kharis, her secret lover, stealing into the tana leaf reserves in order to resurrect her.
Kharis is caught and sentenced to captive, mummified immortality as her guardian to ensure no one else ever bothers her eternal sleep. Odd that, choosing the precise wrong person to guard against what he himself would do; not that it has a bearing on anything.

In contemporary times, (maybe 1940? mentioned only because it will affect the later timeline), a pair of would-be American archaeologists find the piece of pottery holding partial clues as to the princess’s tomb location. Obtaining the funding from a father and daughter on their way back to America, (and thereby ruining the performing couple’s plans), they organize an expedition to the Egyptian wilderness.

Unbeknownst to them a secret, religious society charged with mummy maintenance in perpetuity, or at least as longs as the reserve of life-giving tana holds out, was organized to stop anyone from doing exactly that. While initially not seemingly villainous, (they are simply guarding their heritage against foreign despoilers, after all, and simply warn of a danger,) it's not long before they prove to be a bit less than innocent, especially when the remains of a previous expedition are found.

Despite an impressive temple set with a humongous central stone statue, the set designers could not be bothered with approximating anything even close to Egyptian architecture.
The outside of the temple with its Californian landscape and topography aren’t also likely to fool anyone, but never mind; this might be the film that precisely delivers the thrills a young Monster Kid might expect.

While the original The Mummy featuring Karloff is an eerie, poetic, but still very sedate affair, this one has mysterious, murderous figures in the background; plenty of comedy relief; romance, and an actual wrapped mummy which threatens to transform from being simply a monstrous minion to becoming a genuine deadly menace by simply overdosing the prescribed number of leaves in its tea.
Add to that a last-minute high priest who decides he wants the young lady for himself. That's more like it! Clearly not even close to the same level of filmmaking, but certainly a lot more fun.

The mummy as a monster is, for once, used properly.

A mummy with a paralyzed leg and arm would not be able to realistically chase and capture any able-bodied person, and so its attacks here rely on properly set up surprise situations. In Diary of the Dead, George Romero spoofs this goofy aspect of mummy movies, but it is not yet present here. The mummy’s mobility is carefully explained by the fact that Kharis never died, and despite his age, his body remains still pliable, (in George Romero’s Tales from the Darkside we get a very desiccated mummy which not only decreases its body mass, but detracts from its potential to menace as well); but at one point the production decision was made to blacken and optically empty out his eye sockets giving the monster a very creepy look. This would go against the already established living-mummy logic and would additionally result in a blind monster, but it remains a nice effect.

As the movie series went on, logic would be abandoned again and again, the nature of the monster ceased to make even the slightest bit of rational sense, and an event timeline would be established which would push the later chapters far into the future.

Another notable aspect is a scene with the mummy dropping to the floor to drink the spilled life-giving tana leaf tea, which was quoted, and improved upon, by Guillermo del Toro in his breakout film Cronos.

Because of its emphasis on tana leaf brew, I am certain I had seen this before adapted into a XETV Disasterpiece Theater episode. That means it was edited down to an even shorter length and intercut with jokes and comedic host segments, the original footage made such a small impression that I better remember the interruptions than the film itself.
Short and sweet, (clocking at just over an hour,) this hardly needed any such ‘sweetening’ for proper enjoyment. And, as it’s the first chapter of a renewed series, it’s also a stand-alone chapter.

With Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, Wallace Ford, Eduardo Ciannelli, George Zucco, and Tom Tyler.

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