The mummy’s back and he’s not happy. This is a real sequel in that it is very heavily influenced by The Mummy’s Hand, including an extensive opening flashback to that film (the first ten minutes of the movie – and it’s only a 60 minute movie) and starring Dick Foran as the same character 30 years on.
This is a better movie because the story is cleaner and gets going earlier – the mummy is out for revenge against Foran and his family for what they did in the previous movie. This has shades of Dracula at first, with Turhan Bey as a sort of suave Renfield escorting the mummy in a coffin across the seas, but then the film more turns into Frankenstein, with the monster roaming the countryside and abducting a girl and the townsfolk getting whipped up into a frenzy, lighting up the torches and turning into a mob to save the day.
There are two great shocks – major characters from the earlier film are both killed, even though they're old (they survived the first one through being a romantic male lead and comic sidekick respectfully; but here they’re old men and thus at risk – the romantic male lead here survives). While the two romantic leads are bland (the leading man is a classic wartime 4F star and it isn't helped that he leads the mob at the end - mob leaders aren't terribly sympathetic), Bey shines in a silky youthful villain turn (like Zucco in the first film he falls in love with the leading lady a bit too conveniently); also it’s great to see George Zucco again, and there’s the bonus of Lon Chaney Jnr playing the mummy (though to be fair it is hard to tell he’s there under that make up).
Mummy movies lack the humanity of vampire or Frankenstein films – since you don’t really see the mummy’s face there’s not the same emotion. The big advantage they do have is the ancient Egyptian connection, with ensuing atmospheric mumbo-jumbo.
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