Review of The Mummy's Hand (1940) by Jeff B — 28 Sep 2014

Digging up the Mummy name for a new story of Hieroglyphic Hocus Pocus, the bizarrely comic but often entertaining Mummys Hand has nothing to do with a certain appendage but introduces the title character as a rag-wearing shambler who kills on command. With this deuce, the franchise wraps itself in the B-Movie threads that audiences would associate with the brand more than Karloff. Lead-footed silent creature? Crazy cultist using said creature to enact revenge? Damsel carried away by creature? Yep, these boxes all get checked. Fun more than frightful, however, The Mummy's Hand strangely stands on its own ragged feet.

In this continuation of the Universal horror series, an ancient mummy is revived to destroy those that would invade the 3,000 year old tomb of an Egyptian princess.

Interestingly, Abbott and Costello weren't the first comic duo to bring slapstick to this creature feature. In an overlong buildup to the action, Dick Foran and Wallace Ford enact hi-jinks. Oh, and they get an American magician to bankroll their expedition! Its oddities like this that distinguish this follow-up from its forebear and in other ways what was to follow. Though future installments took their story cues and characters from this go-round, the tone was never this freewheeling again, for better and worse.

Bottom line: Pyramid Scheme.