Films: 1940s
(1942) The Mummy's Hand
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Mummy's Hand
Director: Christy Cabanne
Release: 1942
As director Karl Freund made with "The Mummy," 10 years earlier, director Christy Cabanne makes dramatic mistakes with "The Mummy's Hand" in 1942.
Chiefly, Cabanne spends every available on-screen minute ignoring the one thing that makes the film worth something, Tom Tyler as Kharis the Mummy.
Instead, "The Mummy's Hand" spends no less that 37 minutes on exposition, attempting at first to be an occult drama, as Eduardo Ciannelli, playing The High Priest, desperately attempts to transform his thick Italian accent into something vaguely Egyptian. All is lost, however, when he informs disciple (and so-to-be priest ascendant) Andoheb (Greg Zucco) that the tomb of princess Ananka is "on the other side of dis mountain." Nonetheless, the stage is set, for Andoheb becomes the high priest and must care for the mummy of Prince Kharis, buried alive for seeking to reanimate Ananka during dynastic times.
Back in Cairo, Cabanne launches a wooden buddy film with clunky episodic scenes starring Dick Foran and Wallace Ford.
Foran plays Steve Banning, a down-on-his-luck archaeologist and Ford plays Babe Jenson, his moronic sidekick. The two loiter in markets, making vague fun of Arabs, until Banning discovers a priceless vase, pays next to nothing for it and attempts to convince the Cairo Museum to fund an expedition based on its hieroglyphic markings.
As it turns out, in screenwriter Griffin Shay and Maxwell Shane's universe, Andoheb is a professor at the museum. He manages to dissuade the nice professor, Dr. Petrie (Charles Trowbridge), to ignore the duo's request, dismissing their vase as a fake.
Dejected, Banning and Babe make for the nearest bar, where Babe continues his nonsensical behavior and performs magic tricks for booze. They cross paths, soon enough, with the whimsical-yet-wealthy Great Solvani (Cecil Kellaway), a professional magician just on his way out of Cairo with his beautiful daughter Marta (Peggy Moran). Solvani is so taken with Babe's failed card tricks that he sits down for some heavy drinking during which Banning and Babe convince him to sink money into their Ananka search.
Andoheb's spy (Sig Arno) follows the expedition, which locates not Ananka, but Kharis. Andoheb, just over the rise in Ananka's tomb, sets Kharis on the rampage - fueling him with an elixir from the tanna leaf. First Petrie is slain, then the digging crew foreman Ali (Leon Belasco).
Kharis then kidnaps Marta for Andoheb, who has decided he'd like to mummify her, and himself, for what one would presume is an infinite sexual romp. Banning and Babe struggle against Kharis and Andoheb to recapture their girl, Banning motivated by Marta's sudden stated decision that he is "just a swell person."
If none of this sounds particularly gripping, it's not. The dramatic build towards the dig is protracted and prolonged by unnecessary displays of Kelloway's skill at prestidigitation and an inexplicable trick shooting scene with Marta.
Cabanne has constructed a whopping dud of a film, punctuated only by the occasional question about Babe and Banning's sexual orientation (there is one scene between Marta and Babe in which he all but admits he's in love with Banning) and by Tyler's awesome shambling mummy.
Tyler's face is a mask of inscrutable hunger. A post-production trick of blacking in his eyes makes the mummy truly unsettling in close-up. Unfortunately Cabanne apparently filmed only one close up of the creature, which he intercuts each time the mummy closes in on a victim. It's a bit distracting, as the shots rarely match.
Another distraction: the sets are oddly disjointed, at times looking like a desert, but mostly looking like the hills of California or Italy. Cabanne took advantage of leftover temple sets from James Whale's Incan horror film, "Green Hell" (1940), and while they're impressive, they also look Incan. "The Mummy's Hand" is set in Egypt.
For all his pedestrian moves, Cabanne executes one hands-down arresting tracking shot as Kharis lumbers into the temple carrying Marta. The lens follows Kharis from the doorway, tracking laterally, lifting into the air, coming in from the center towards the altar as Kharis turns and walks away from the camera toward Andoheb and then back down and close to the trio at the center of the chamber. All in one shot. It is almost worth the price of admission.
Other than that, there is one moment about race and empire in "The Mummy's Hand," when Andoheb defines his motivation to Marta, before she knows he's evil. He visits her early on to plant seeds of doubt about Banning and Babe. He tells her that foreigners come to his country, rob its graves and leave with its riches. Cabanne's camera linger on Zucco's face just long enough to emphasize the point, it seems. The point never returns, but the moment is interesting for its placement at the start of the revenge arc in Shay and Shane's story.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
The Mummy's Hand, 1942
For all his pedestrian moves, Cabanne executes one hands-down arresting tracking shot as Kharis lumbers into the temple carrying Marta. The lens follows Kharis from the doorway, tracking laterally, lifting into the air, coming in from the center towards the altar as Kharis turns and walks away from the camera toward Andoheb and then back down and close to the trio at the center of the chamber. All in one shot. It is almost worth the price of admission.
