THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1942)

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.