For those hording toilet paper

Kharis reaches out to touch someone.

Watching The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), I do get why Zucco’s high priest (quite ancient after 30 years, in aged Pierce makeup and a trembling hand to signify the difficulties of old age) Andoheb wants revenge, to tell the truth. That foreigners would enter their sacred lands and dig up and unearth their buried treasures, tombs, and take artifacts for their museums. Plundering their people’s lands seems perfectly reasonable that Andoheb would give his high priest of Karnak, Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey) a mission of death towards the Banning family (Dick Foran and his buddy, Wallace Ford, both in aged makeup, are the main targets). Foran and Ford’s characters at least go to live for thirty years into old age before shambling mummy, Lon Chaney, Jr. snails over to grab them by the throat with one hand. Bey’s desire for Elyse Knox as she is snuggling with John Hubbard (playing Foran’s son), looking on from the bushes seems included just so he fails in his mission. I like to watch the rather blah sequels for the Universal sets and Pierce’s mummy makeup. I think the Mummy movies cease really being quality films after the second film, when Foran and Ford were the leads, reduced in this sequel (which has Foran, much older, telling his loved ones gathered in his living room his past, allowing Universal to save money by incorporating plenty of flashback footage) to basic cameos. Zucco was also good fun as the villain in the previous film, just given a few minutes to hand out instructions to Bey. The fiery climax is rather a cool closing set piece with the mummy Kharis unable, it seems, to escape…although he would for two more sequels. An IMDb horror board friend made a good point about how the Mummy sequels almost resemble the template for the monster/slasher films to come decades later where someone or thing would pick off victims one by one. As much as I love Chaney, Jr. I think he’s a terrible mummy. I’ve always been critical of his work in the sequels but that isn’t Pierce’s fault…he still provides excellent makeup for Kharis. Just the same, I'm such a Universal monsters fanboy that even the lesser sequels make for decent Saturday morning time wasters, and the running times are quick enough that the sequels don't overstay their welcome. And the B-movie casting is typically always good, no different here.