The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

A while ago I looked at The Mummy's Hand, the 1940 Universal programmer that relaunched the studio's Mummy series, redefining it and establishing most of the conventions of the Mummy genre.  This is the 1942 sequel, The Mummy's Tomb, which moves the plot on several decades and takes Kharis, the living mummy to contemporary New England on a mission of revenge against the defilers of Princess Ananka's tomb. It is a pretty stodgy concoction, lacking the nightmarish feel of the previous film's climactic scenes.  It never really gets into its stride, bogged down by too much exposition, illustrated with flashbacks to The Mummy's Hand.  Even at only an hour long, it drags badly.  Notably, it does bring back the stars of the previous film, suitably aged, before killing them off pretty quickly.  Even George Zucco's High Priest - last seen filled full of lead - reappears for just long enough to tell his successor the back story and send him on his mission, before expiring.  

One of the film's biggest problems is the replacement of Tom Tully with Lon Chaney Jr in the title role.  Chaney hated the hours in the make up chair necessitated by this role, so an inflexible plaster mask was substituted for the more elaborate (and convincing) facial make up of the previous outing.  Consequently, it could have been anyone under the bandages and, in reality, stuntman Eddie Parker doubled for Chaney for the more physical action sequences.  Kharis becomes a lumbering, not particularly frightening, presence in the film, in stark contrast to the far scarier and malignant version previously played by Tully.  Turhan Bey plays the new High Priest, one of many such 'exotic' foreign types he played in B-movies during this period, (despite being cast as Egyptians, Indians and various Middle Eastern types, Bey was actually Austrian).  Perhaps the most notable aspect of the film is the fact that it lent most its main plot to the 1959 Hammer remake of The Mummy.  While this latter film took its Egyptian sequences, including the tomb opening and Kharis' revival, from the 1932 Karloff original, the action quickly moves forward several years to England and roughly follows the revenge plot of Tomb.