For those who came in late, audiences are brought up to date about the mummy history and the havoc it’s wrecked on various expeditions by a withered old George Zucco and then a university professor, Professor Norman. Both characters were in the previous film, giving the series a sort of continuity, though the roles of both men are small.
In this one Zucco sends off another minion – John Carradine – with the mission of bringing the mummy back to Egypt to guard the tomb of the dead princesss. He cooks up some leaves, which is apparently enough to get the mummy rising from the swamp… whereupon he promptly kills the professor (thereby continuing another tradition i.e. if you survive one mummy film, chances are you’ll be killed off in the next one).
The professor’s at a college where one of the students conveniently turns out to be a reincarnation of the princess. (This dodgy coincidence would be repeated in Hammer's 1959 Mummy.) Carradine ends up falling for her- which sets off the mummy – which is the most interesting thing about the movie, but that all takes place in one scene. The rest of it is just the mummy killing people and the reincarnated princess feeling weird.
Carradine always looked like a fire and brimstone preacher, so he’s well suited to play what essentially is an Ancient Egyptian version of the species, all lean fanaticism. His performance is the best thing apart from the movie, apart from the Universal black and white photography and the mummy mumbo-jumbo; Lon Chaney is the mummy but again it’s hard for him to show much character (though the mummy has more in this one, getting angry at Carradine… but as previously stated too little is made of this).
The male lead is a particularly wet college student complete with sweaters and one of those triangle flags on his wall, played by a 4F leading man; at least it’s a neat twist that he loses the girl in the end (no kidding – she winds up submerged in a swamp).
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