13. ALL THINGS BEING SEQUEL: …As long as it isn’t a Part 1.

Universal brought back Frankenstein’s Monster with 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, a movie that boasts a deranged Lionel Atwill as a police officer obsessed with his fake arm. It did so well that they reintroduced the Invisible Man a year later in The Invisible Man Returns. Success in Hollywood means more of what works, so the Mummy would come back in this movie, which is a sequel in that it’s very similar without being an actual sequel and yet, it would have a sequel, The Mummy’s Tomb and third in this series, The Mummy’s Curse.

Unlike the days of major league money thrown at these movies, like when the first movie was made in 1932, Universal did this on a budget, reusing sets from James Whale’s Green Hell, uses stock footage from The Mummy and steals the entire score of Son of Frankenstein. The crew was working from 6 a.m. to 4 a.m. some days, grinding down contracted talent and crew.

Andoheb (George Zucco) has come to the Hill of the Seven Jackals to speak with the dying High Priest of Karnak (Eduardo Ciannelli). There, he learns the story of Kharis, a man who loved the bride of the pharaoh, Princess Ananka, and stole the tana leaves that can bring the dead back to life to save her when she was killed. When he was caught, his tongue was torn out and he was mummified alive, used to guard the tomb of the princess for the rest of eternity.

This start of the film got me all fired up for Kharis to rise and destroy, but no, like all Mummy movies, I had to suffer through the humans in this, Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford), who are supposed to be heroic and comedic, respectively, but just made me want to see them get choked out by the curse of the pharaohs. Along with  the head of the Cairo museum, Dr. Petrie (Charles Trowbridge), The Great Solvani (Cecil Kellaway), a stage magician, and his daughter Marta (Peggy Moran), they decide to enter the tomb.

Andoheb makes it seem like he’s an educated man of Egyptology, but he’s also here to protect the treasure, so he raises Kharis (played here by Tom Tyler, who play Captain Marvel the next year) and finally, after what seems like years of comic relief, I get what I want: tannis leaves, bandages and sweet death. That said, Andoheb makes the mistakes of falling for Marta and he tries to take the leaves for himself, making the two of them immortal. The white bread hero ends up shooting him and setting Kharis on fire, making it back to America with all of the riches of the pyramids and the mummified remains of Princess Ananka. This is a happy ending to some. Not to me.