Films: 1940s
(1942) The Mummy's Tomb
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The Mummy's Tomb
Director: Harold Young
Release 1942
Thirty years after explorer Stephen Banning and his team excavated Kharis, the mummy and took his eternal bride Ananka out of Egypt, the Cult of Arkan wants revenge.
Director Harold Young tells the somber tale of "The Mummy's Tomb." Markedly darker than "The Mummy's Hand," Young subjects his characters to Griffin Jay and Harry Sucher's vengeance-soaked script.
Stephen Banning (Dick Foran, reprising his role) lives in the rustic New England town of Mapleton, near his son John (John Hubbard) and John's girlfriend Isobel Evans (Elyse Knox, future mother of actor Mark Harmon).
Living in a sprawling estate with his sister Jane (Mary Gordon), Stephen has retired from expeditions, and tells the tale of his fateful encounter with a living mummy from a comfortable chair in his living room. That comfort is soon to dissolve.
Andoheb, high priest of Arkan, sends Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) and the fire-disfigured but surviving surviving mummy Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) to the United States to eradicate the living violators of Ananka's tomb, as well as their family. Mehemet leaves with the warning to avoid the temptations of the flesh that nearly undid Andoheb.
On the other side of the ocean, Mehemet takes a job as Mapleton's cemetery caretaker and subsequently sends Kharis into the night, fueled by his life-sustaining tanna leaves. First Kharis slays Stephen, then Jane, then Stephen's friend Babe (Wallace Ford, also returning from "The Mummy's Hand"). John and the sheriff (Cliff Clark) raise a mob, but not before Mehemet falls to the vision of John's now-fiancee. Attempting to use Kharis to kidnap Elyse, the caretaker fails in precisely the fashion against which Andoheb warned. A final showdown ensues at the cemetery and at the Banning mansion. Death comes to both sides.
What is remarkable about Young's film is how assuredly he injects the previous ridiculous story of Kharis and the Cult of Arkan with anger, and how fearlessly he dispatches the American characters.
While "The Mummy's Hand" only hinted at cultural and ethical outrage at a cast full of tomb robbers, "The Mummy's Tomb" turns their world into its title's namesake, a house of death. Not only is the curse attached to breaking into an Egyptian grave for profit on Banning and Babe's heads, but a psychic wrestling match between youth and old age, mortality and the power of religion plays out just behind the sets of Young's film.
Jane's interaction with Stephen brings the interplay of family into focus. While Stephen is content to while away his evening lost in the past, where his now dead lover Marta still seems real to him. Jane chides him for this essentially purposeless practice, even though John and Isobel find it charming. Jane tells him when to go to bed, and is the surrogate parent for Stephen's idle man-child.
A mirror of this relationship exists between Mehemet and the outgoing Mapleton cemetery caretaker (Otto Hoffman). The caretaker wonders why a young man like Mehemet would take such a position. Mehemet, filled with a singular purpose, says that the cemetery is a place of solitude where he may exist without distraction. The opposite of Stephen's fantasy life, Mehemet's quest is equally at odds with his place in life.
Through this moves Kharis, signifier of death, silent and emotionless (until later). At the behest of Mehemet, Kharis doles out a brutal cultural justice, but in other scenes he plays his deeper, more essential, role more explicitly.
A couple kisses in a car. Kharis' shadow passes over them - they feel a brush with mortality, part and move on.
Removed by one generation, in a nearby house, a couple sleeps in separate beds. Kharis' shadow passes over them and they spring from their isolated beds. For the rest of the film, they are close to each other physically, telling their story together - united by their shared perception of the coming of death.
But Kharis is also judgment in Young's film. Singularity of purpose is rewarded, but when Mehemet lusts for Isobel - repeating the mistake Andoheb made over Marta in "The Mummy's Hand," Kharis attempts to kill Mehemet. Only his powerful control over Kharis prevents instant strangulation. Kharis is the hand of Mehemet's god in this case - but one that is far too dependent on its last few living adherents to behave in an overtly deific manner. The power of religion is diminished by the aging nature of its sect - and there are precious few Arkanites left in the "Mummy's" world.
A small note should be made about the inferable racism in the part of Mehemet. His twitching observance of and zombie-faced fantasizing about Isobel borders on the portrayal of Black men lusting after white women in D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation." Intentional, environmental, or accidental, it is uncomfortable.
Otherwise, this grim universe of dwindling family is portrayed with subtle and artful camerawork by cinematographer George Robinson. Elegant dissolves, coupled with economical use of time by editor Milton Carmuth lend "The Mummy's Tomb" with a sense of forward motion and visual surety. Only the expository beginning, which makes too much use of Christy Cabanne's preceding film, gets in the way.
By far the darkest and most interesting of the 1940s Universal "Mummy" films, Young carves out a solid contribution to the category of textured genre picture.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
