The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Director: Christy Cabanne

Starring: Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, Wallace Ford, Eduardo Ciannelli, George Zucco, Cecil Kellaway, Charles Trowbridge

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The tomb of a thousand terrors!

Plot: A couple of comical, out-of-work archaeologists (Foran and Ford) in Egypt discover evidence of the burial place of the ancient Egyptian princess Ananka. After receiving funding from an eccentric magician (Kellaway) and his beautiful daughter (Moran), they set out into the desert only to be terrorized by a sinister high priest (Zucco) and the living mummy Kharis (Tyler) who are the guardians of Ananka^Òs tomb.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? Not sure but probably not.

It seems like so many horror pictures of the 30s and 40s had at least one character to provide some comic relief. The only thing I can say about this one is Ford excels at it and his character isn't as obnoxious as a lot of them were back then. But still, I'd rather not have any funny in my Mummy movies at all. The picture's also only 67 minutes long and they waste 10% of it re-capping the ancient legend that was told in the first picture. That's a lot of filler. Of course whenever there was to be a clear shot of Boris Karloff (filmed for the 1932 film), they cut away to a newly-filmed actor. I understand why they did it, I just didn't want to watch it again. They clearly didn't know that Universal was going to put out a box set of the Mummy films and I would watch them so close together. The rest of the picture is OK but it sure was lazy and there certainly wasn't much attempt at horror. Comedy? Yes. Horror? Not really. I want a straight up horror picture with some great Mummy action. If I want comedy, I'll bust out Abbott & Costello.