THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940)
When it comes to monsters,
at one point UNIVERSAL PICTURES was the un-disputed king. The Mummy, Invisible
Man, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, all of those icons as far as film goes
emerged from the studios over at Universal. THE MUMMY’S HAND runs just over 66
minutes (which is actually pretty characteristic of this time period) and we
are treated with some amazing acting. Oddly a lot of these performances look
like they probably inspired some of the secondary characters in INDIANA JONES
and of course THE MUMMY series of the 2000’s.
In this one 3,000 years
ago a man steals some forbidden leaves after his love dies and he plans to use
them to bring her back to life. For his crime the man is killed and has his
tongue taken out and he is buried with a batch of the leaves he tried to steal.
Now two out-of-work archaeologists (Dick Foran and
Wallace Ford) somewhere in Egypt find evidence of the tomb of the ancient
Egyptian princess Ananka. They find a magician and wind up talking him
into financing their trip and also wind up taking his daughter along with them.
After the set up, they have like under 35 minutes to wrap it all up (no pun
intended). Let’s just say they don’t find what they expected.
We get a lot of sub-par
sets and un-necessary attempts at comedy thrown in along with the obligatory “death
in the hills” and fanatical priests that are tracking their moves. The fanatics
also take plenty of time to tell the expedition group just how stupid a mistake
they have made and find a way to make them pay for it.
Of all the movies in
this genre that I have seen recently I have to give this one a 4 out of 7. It
is not bad, just not much of a horror film even by 40’s standards. Rating
definition : VERY GOOD This movie
leaves you with that feeling that although everything may not be okay, girls
can kick butt and one man can save the world with either one bullet left in the
chamber some special power he discovered 5 minutes ago. This movie is a good
time and makes you wonder how many people you can tell about its awesomeness
the next day at work.
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