A Review of "The Mummy's Hand"

“They dared the curse of the ancients…to solve the most amazing mystery ever encountered by mortal man!” Running at only 67 minutes in length, The Mummy’s Hand leaves much to be desired. After a lengthy flashback sequence to The Mummy (1932), of which this film is a sequel to, and numerous, pointless excursions en route to the climactic, semi-dramatic ending, this film contains very little substance and begs us to ask the question, “How short is too short?” Would another ten or fifteen minutes have mattered for story and/or character development? I really can’t say, because while the filmmakers here had a chance for a decent sequel to a landmark film, they flubbed it with a rush-job full of hammy acting, sub-par special effects, and countless side stories and bits of supposed humorous dialogue that bordered on dreadful and distracting, and had nothing to do with the plot except to tack on running time, and it barely succeeded at that. The ending was as abrupt and silly as the rest of the movie, where a cult was attempting to revive the mummy to have it kill anyone who would enter the tomb of an Egyptian princess, and may have served to answer the question I asked above with, “Thankfully it’s over. Even at that length, enough was enough!” While the humor I mentioned is often welcome in a horror movie, this one went out of its way to be funny, and the character of Babe Jensen, played by Wallace Ford, who can be compared to a Lou Costello-type character, seriously detracts from the plot by not adding anything useful or serious. In fact, the only acting performance worth anything in this film is that of Eduardo Ciannelli as the High Priest, who played a very similarly chilling and heartless role in Gunga Din (1939) as the Guru. While the sets were not bad and the makeup job on the mummy, this time played by Tom Tyler, with its named changed to Kharis, was actually pretty good, this truly is a forgettable film in the mummy area of the horror genre. You might want to give it a try, considering the running time, and maybe you’ll see something I don’t, but for me, it simply sits as a lost opportunity. The film also had nothing at all to do with a “mummy’s hand”, except that the mummy has one, err…two of them. Also starring: Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, and George Zucco. Directed by Christy Cabanne. Final Verdict: So Bad Its Good.

Shared from: https://pictureinparagraph.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/review-the-mummys- hand-1940/