Tuesday, October 29, 2024

The Mummy's Tomb

Now this is more traditional fare.




Made 2 years after The Mummy's Hand we jump three decades in plot time with a new priest and Kharis venturing to Massachusets to destroy the bloodline of Steve Banning from the first movie because revenge and curses just go hand in hand, as the town of Mapleton has to contend with a murderous mummy. What surprised me twofold from the movie's start is the time period and the return of Dick Foran and Wallace Ford from the first movie, I figured Hand was pretty much the 1940s but on further investigation could have been anywhere from the start of the 1900s to 1940 cause it sure as hell doesn't look like 1970 in this movie but very much is centered in the 40s, and for a Universal monster movie to have this level of continuity of both plot and characters between films is like Marvel levels today! I think I can easily say this is my favorite of the bunch so far dropping the action comedy shtick and giving us atmosphere and horror while still basically treading the same plot as before with some appreciated variation. The cemetery, the woods, the amount of shadow play on sets, the reused music from The Wolf Man, this makes a superior sequel that pushes my buttons in all the right ways. True our leads aren't as interesting as Steve and Babe, this time being Steve's son John and his fianceè Isobel but with a runtime of one singular hour there isn't a lot of room for character depth but they act it just fine and dandy. Turhan Bey though not as slimy as George Zucco in Hand, has a real good presence and is the standout performance for me. Lon Chaney Jr. who was pretty much the main movie monster star of the decade is on the same level as Tom Tyler neither better or worse, I feel is carried aloft higher through the direction and atmosphere giving Kharis a lot more scare factor and upping the body count gives it a proto-slasher vibe. I do kinda wish the Mummy movies of this decade were longer to give more breathing room and thusly better quality, but who ever said having a fun sized length monster movie was a bad thing? I give it 3.5 stars, 7.5/10!

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