The Mummy's Hand

The Mummy’s Hand

Released: 1940

MPAA Rating: No rating

Genre: Monster

Nuts and Bolts: An American archaeology team searches for the lost tomb of Princess Ananka. But what they find instead is the mummified remains of her pissed off boyfriend Kharis!

Summary: We kick this puppy off deep in the deserts of Egypt, but not altogether TOO far away from the ultimate party town known as Cairo. There’s this old fucker known as the high priest of Karnak. He’s getting on in years and decides to hand his mantle down to a local museum curator known as Professor Andoheb. The old duck explains to Andoheb about how he is the guardian of the tomb of Princess Ananka. As they stare into the waters of Karr, they see Egypt of 3000 years ago. In the Valley of the Jackals King Amonophis buries his daughter the Princess Ananka. But Ananka’s one true love Kharis breaks into her tomb and steals the sacred Tana leaves, which has strange mystical properties. For his crimes, Kharis is mummified and buried in the sands of Egypt. The slave workers who buried him are killed and Kharis’ body is moved to a secret cave. The flashback ends and the old geezer reveals that he has the secret urn containing the sacred Tana leaves. He gives his medallion to Andoheb before going to that big old folks home in the sky. Andoheb is now the High Priest of Karnak.

Across town, we come upon two American archaeologists. Steve Banning and Babe Jensen work for the Scripps museum in Brooklyn. Their last gig turned out to be a bust and now they are nearly broke and assigned to return to America. They go to a local bazaar where Steve finds a beggar selling a broken piece of pottery. After examining it, he realizes that the piece contains a map to the tomb of Ananka. He spends their last 70 bucks on the urn and races off to Doctor Petrie and Professor Andoheb of the Cairo museum to ascertain its authenticity.

Andoheb naturally realizes that the urn is real but he tells Steve that it is a clever fake. He offers to buy it from him anyway but Steve refuses. He is convinced that the artifact is genuine. Andoheb pretends to fumble the thing and it shatters upon the ground. Meanwhile, Babe is consistently whining about their lack of funds.

That night, they go to a local cantina wondering how they’re going to earn money to return to America. They meet the American stage magician the Great Solvani. They learn that Solvani’s got some ready cash and they convince him to finance an archaeological dig to the Valley of the Jackals. Solvani is pretty amicable and after a few drinks he readily agrees.

The old man returns to his hotel room where he tells his daughter Marta that he has invested in a great find. Marta is furious because she believes that her father had been taken in by two con men. Armed with a trick gun, Marta goes to Steve and Babe’s hotel room and try to force them to return her father’s money. Steve tells her that he no longer has it as he has already used it to hire workers and equipment for the dig. Marta has little choice but to join the three fortune seekers on the quest for Ananka’s tomb.

Before long, they come upon the Seal of the Seven Jackals and uncover the remains of the mummy Kharis. But since its Ananka that they are looking for and not Kharis, the group is suitably unimpressed with the find. That’s ok though, because Professor Andoheb sneaks in through the back door and makes off with the mummy.

Andoheb is duty-bound to protect the location of Ananka’s tomb and thus, he uses the Tana leaves to revive Kharis. He brews three leaves and pours the gunk into Kharis lip. This is enough to wake him up, but he needs a total of nine leaves if he expects Kharis to keep any lead in his pencil. He shows Kharis’ mummy to Steve’s colleague Doctor Petrie. Kharis comes to life and strangles the shit out of the old man. Petrie falls over dead.

Now here’s where it gets strange. He basically tells Kharis that the Tana leaf extract is the only thing that will fully revitalize him. He sends a slave servant with a supply of Tana juice into the expedition camp and instructs him to leave it there. Kharis is then ordered to find where the juice is and kill whoever happens to be in the area at the time. To me this seems like a really labor intensive effort. Be that as it may, the servant performs his duty and leaves some of the stuff inside one of the tents. Kharis slumps his gimp self over to the tent and kills the team guide, Ali.

A short while later, Steve, Babe and Marta find Ali’s dead body. They also find Doctor Petrie. They both notice a strange gray dust surrounding the bruises on their throats. But this doesn’t seem to overly impress anyone. Just another day in the salt mines I guess. They all decide to go to bed. Uh-oh…one of the Tana leaf bottles is inside Solvani’s tent.

A few hours later, Kharis rips his way into the tent and tries to kill Solvani. Marta screams her head off (As leading ladies are wont to do) and Kharis has decided he has had enough of this bitch. But because the screen actors’ guild of 1940 firmly stipulates that no shambling monster shall ever strangle a leading lady, Kharis decides to kidnap her instead. He hefts her over his shoulder and takes her back to the temple of Karnak.

Steve and Babe hear all the commotion and give chase. Andoheb’s pesky toady tries to run interference but Babe shoots him down. (By the way, the toady also happens to be the beggar that sold Steve the pottery in the beginning of the flick)

Now while Steve finds a hidden passage into the inner bowls of the temple, Babe takes the express route and encounters Andoheb. He holds him at gunpoint, but the Professor claims that Babe is too swell a guy to shoot an unarmed old man in cold blood. Shows what he knows. Babe drills him five or six times with his pistol and the old fucker takes a header down the steps.

Steve meanwhile gets down to the temple arena where Kharis has Marta strapped down to an alter. The two wrestle around a bit and Kharis throws Steve against a wall on the other side of the room. All the guy really wants is his Tana leaf extract (brewed from the best stuff on Earth). He begins guzzling it down when Babe finally shows up. Babe shoots the shit out of Kharis’ hand and it splashes all over the floor. Just to show how much of an addict Kharis really is for the stuff, he gets down on his hands and knees and begins licking it up off the floor. Poor bastard. Steve takes advantage of his window of opportunity and dumps a flaming brazier on top of the mummy. Kharis bursts into flames and presumably burns to cinders. Steve frees Marta and the group head on their merry way.

All this and they don’t even find that bitch Princess Ananka.

Acting/Dialogue: The acting and dialogue in this is actually a slight bit better than one would expect from a Universal monster flick. There’s a great dynamic between Steve and Babe and it comes off as a long running Abbot and Costello skit. Even Solvani is a fairly likeable old fucker with his constant bumbling and silly magic tricks. Fortunately, director Christy Cabbane knew when it was time for humor and when it was time to get back to basics. The film is pretty light hearted for the first act, but once Kharis appears its all business. Not too shabby.

Gore: There’s no gore here but Kharis’ soulless black eyes make for an extremely eerie effect.

Guilty Pleasures: I saved the best part of the movie just for this section of the review. Right before the scene where Andoheb gets shot, the group is captured and taken to the inner sanctum in the Valley of the Jackals. There they engage in this wild blood orgy and they each take turns ass pounding Marta until she squeals like a menstruating piglet. Kharis ties her up with his bandages while Andoheb smacks her in the face repeatedly with his dick.

Okay…that’s a lie. None of that really happens. But damn it, it would have been pretty fucking cool if it DID though, wouldn’t it?

The Good: Believe it or not, this flick ain’t half bad. That is to say, it’s a fair sight better than its less-than-stellar sequels. Now while The Mummy’s Hand can never match the 1932 Boris Karloff film for overall intensity, this is the first of Universal Studios’ mummy flicks that actually features the classic slow-footed shambling bag of bandages monster, which has become a trademark for Mummy films the world over (A detail that was sorely lacking in the Karloff flick).

I’ve already commented a bit about the strong characterization but I think it bears repeating. Typically in these types of films, the monster is the only character that holds our interest while the remaining cast serves as little more than fodder for the creature in question. They are usually two-dimensional lifeless cartoons and are almost entirely forgettable. But in the Mummy’s Hand they succeed in creating Steve Banning as a likeable hero. He’s a tough guy but he’s got a soft side as well. And of course he gets the girl. Babe Jensen is the portly sidekick who pines away for a long distance love named Poopsie. Why the hell he would date anyone named Poopsie is anyone’s guess. In fact, he even buys a little hula girl doll in her name. He keeps it as his good luck charm. Marta herself is quite the firecracker. She’s got some spunk, but eventually she dissolves into the typical damsel in distress.

The Bad: Now while the Mummy’s Hand is the first and best of the Universal Kharis films, there are some elements that really need to be addressed. The first of which is the mummy himself. There’s one niggling little flaw that chaps my ass about every one of these flicks. And that is, we can clearly see the mummy’s hairline through the bandages. Now while that may seem like a petty detail, its such a glaring eye sore that it’s difficult to ignore.

Then there’s the issue of Andoheb’s game plan. He plays cat and mouse with Kharis by having his servant plant a supply of Tana juice in the tent of the person he wants Kharis to kill. This seems kind of ridiculous to me. They clearly show that Andoheb has control over the mummy so why doesn’t he just order him to kill the people who seek to desecrate the tomb of Ananka? Why play games? Seems to me like ole Andoheb has just a wee bit too much time on his hands.

The Mummy’s Hand is a movie worth watching, but don’t expect anything all that great coming from this camp. A much better version would be the 1959 Hammer Horror remake starring Peter Cushing as Steve Banning and Christopher Lee as Kharis.

Great Lines:

You are very beautiful... so beautiful I'm going to make you immortal. Like Kharis, you will live forever. What I can do for you I can do for myself. Neither time nor death can touch us. You and I together for eternity here in the Temple of Karnak. You shall be my high priestess. –Andoheb

Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads.

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