Lon Chaney
(now permanently marketed without the ‘Jr’) continued his rising name status in
Universal horror films through 1942. Having established himself as the only
actor to ultimately inhabit The Wolf Man
role the year before, the studio had already transferred him to one existing
franchise in The Ghost of Frankenstein.
Now they wrapped him up in a second sequel of The Mummy series as the bandaged behemoth Kharis in The Mummy’s Tomb. The extreme physical
demands of Jack Pierce’s make-up wound him up in more ways than one in a part which
almost totally obscured his features, yet it positioned Chaney once again for
maximum marquee value, a compromise that would not be lost on him.
Another new
factor that Ghost ushered in was the
demotion of their horror output to B-movie status which meant that less money
was spent on the budgets. Corner-cutting was evident from the beginning of Tomb. The plot takes place thirty years
after The Mummy’s Hand (1940),
allowing the producers an excuse to pad out the first eleven minutes of its
brief sixty to be dominated by highlight scenes from the former.
The
principal players are back including the welcome return of Dick Foran’s hero
Steve Banning, now gracefully aging hero with glasses and a more careful
movement. Foran still has the relaxed charm of his previous horror roles
without falling into the trap of forgettable blandness. The same cannot be said
for John Hubbard as his son Dr John, another in the classic horror movie
‘double-breasted suit and moustache’ mannequin romantic leads who are required
to look like Ronald Colman and hopefully not get in the way. Since Steve is now
the elder statesman, the mantle of hero passes to him and Hubbard fumbles it
with some distractingly weak physicality as we shall see.
More
promising is the wholesome, perky Elyse Knox as his girlfriend Isobel for whom
this was a first lead role. Her looks made her a pin-up girl during WWII and
then the steady girl in Monogram’s Joe
Palooka series. Strong Scots motherly warmth is provided by Mary Gordon as
Steve’s sister Jane, a type she specialised in most notably as Mrs Hudson in
the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes
series.
In the
villains’ corner there is formidable opposition top-lined initially by the
surprise revival of George Zucco’s Andoheb. We thought he was shot dead by
Steve’s sidekick Babe (Wallace Ford) outside the Princess’s temple in the
climax of Hand - however “The bullet
he fired into me only crushed my arm. The fire that consumed Kharis only seared
and twisted and maimed”. I would say you can’t keep a bad man down but actually
one of the strengths of this sequel is that we shall find no character is
assured of survival.
Like Steve,
Andoheb has his own protégé, a beguilingly tranquil 20 year-old Turhan Bey as
Mehemet Bey. In a long Hollywood career stretching from the Forties through to
TV’s Babylon 5 in the Nineties, this
Austrian-born Turkish actor supplied an ethnic exoticism that fits here like a
silk glove. He has an eerie poise and a feline inscrutability to his
machinations. A wizened old Andoheb has just enough puff to bestow on Mehemet
the sacred duty of the new High Priest before he sinks back, seemingly expired.
In keeping with the curse of Amon-Ra, Kharis must be re-activated to kill every
member of the Banning blood-line, fuelled by the miraculous Tana leaves as
before.
As the
titular mummy, fuller-faced than Karloff or Tom Tyler, Lon Chaney would have
found the eight-hour make-up sessions less gruelling if there was a gratifying
chance of being recognised in the role. Instead, Kharis is a thankless pursuit
as he could be anyone under the linen shambling along like the Bandaged
Strangler bereft of any real personality. Karloff had the benefit of a dual
role that permitted his face to be seen clearly as the High Priest. He and Tyler
were also mummified in a way that crucially emphasised their eyes. Admittedly Tyler’s
were augmented with a partly-successful inky blackness in post-production,
whereas the English actor knew that his own beamed out a genuine and
unforgettable haunted soulfulness. Chaney was hamstrung by being obscured in
the left eye and in long-shots by a time-saving rubber face-mask.
Kharis is
shipped over to America with Bey to begin their tea-stoked rampage, setting
himself up as the new caretaker of the cemetery in Mapleton, Massachusetts
where the Bannings live. From this base Bey sends out the mummy to gradually
snap off each branch of the family tree, starting with Steve. “One who would
dare defy our ancient gods”. This is a shame as it would have been satisfying
to position him as a Van Helsing-like mentor during the ensuing carnage. Instead,
Kharis throttles the better hero out of the franchise - (See what I mean about
the 24-style unpredictability of cast
life-spans?) - leaving the action man status to Hubbard who runs with an odd
campness and looks awkward throwing a punch.
Kharis
clocks up the second victim of a targeted four by strangling Jane. This brings
me to an endearing feature of Golden Age Hollywood movies, that of the fictional
newspaper headlines that assumes their readership is always familiar with even
the minor players in a story. “Jane Benning second victim” trumpets one such
edition here.
Cliff Clark’s pipe-toking Sheriff now takes an
interest in the unsolved murders. To be fair, his office is hardly used to
supernatural shenanigans. His deputy observes: “This is the first time I’ve
ever had a shadow for a suspect”. Over the course of the film, more influential
guns are recruited, necessary reinforcements since Dr John refuses to stretch
his mind either: “I’m a doctor. I just can’t believe in a live mummy”. One
pleasing addition is to call back Wallace Ford’s Babe for whom time has dulled
his swagger somewhat and replaced it with a sober concern over his partner’s
sudden death. He identifies mummy mould on Jane’s neck and realises their old
nemesis Kharis is on the loose, backed up by a Professor who pinpoints from a
linen scrap that he matches the same period as the explorers’ original objective,
Princess Ananka.
Actors Ford
and Chaney would have been glad to see each other on set - it was Ford that
cast Chaney in Of Mice and Men in the
Broadway run that brought him to Hollywood’s attention. On screen they meet
under deadlier circumstances with Kharis strangling him in an alleyway not long
after he enters the story. By now the film has pulled off the rare feat of appearing
to erase all the returning cast from the first sequel (although Zucco the
indestructible would come back for The
Mummy’s Ghost in 1944).
Bey is now
presented with only the happy about-to-be-wed couple of Dr John and Isobel to
bump off, and here is where the plot takes an interesting turn. He goes rogue,
shunning the obligatory chastity of the High Priest in favour of claiming the future
Mrs Banning for himself. Kharis is dispatched to kidnap her and only here does a
glimmer of real character sparkle within the mummy. George Robinson’s excellent
facility for shadow shrouding captures an evil glint in his working eye like a tiny diamond in a coal-face – a fanciful flash of sorrow too perhaps for his lost beloved
Princess.
A less sentimental
sight is the mixed gathering of Mapleton locals and national reporters in front
of the Sheriff, spoiling for some thoughtless applied violence and a hot lead
respectively. His rousing speech sums up the situation: “A creature that’s been
alive for over three thousand years is in this town and it’s brought death with
it. We’ve got to run it down!” The hardened newshounds must have infected the
townsfolk with their city cynicism as this astounding statement creates only subdued
murmurs – until he starts dishing out the clubs and flaming torches. Now they’re
engaged and ready to march on the cemetery.
Beset by
rampaging folk, Kharis pulls off the remarkable move of climbing up the ivy outside
the Banning mansion whilst carrying Isobel – all with a lame right arm miraculously
restored. Speaking of lame, he tangles with limp noodle Dr John in a paltry
fight scene before once again the building around him consumes him in fire.
Kharis manages one last bravura touch of raising a defiant left arm as he goes
down. He knows something more about longevity than these mere mortals.
The
aftermath prompts a uniquely funny version of the spinning newspaper front page
cliché. Below the expected shrieking headline: ‘MAPLETON ‘MONSTER’ DIES IN
FLAMES’ (which begs the question as to why the use of quote marks when the
assailant clearly was a monster), just below and to the right in smaller type
there is the equally promising ‘Greek island reported sunk. Engulfing 200’. Far
be it from me to play into the stereotyped view of insular American media, but
the sudden sinking of an inhabited landmass surely qualifies for competitive sensationalism?
The Mummy’s Hand very much betrays its second feature
status, but with its courageous deck-clearing it created a second reboot for
the franchise that would shamble on for two more sequels giving Lon Chaney top
billing. The hieroglyphics were on the wall though for Universal who were now clearly
taking each of their monster icons’ series into a downward spiral of quality.
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