The Mummy's Tomb

At the conclusion of The Mummy's Hand, both the High Priest of the Temple of Karnak and Kharis-The Mummy had been dispatched in such a way that future Mummy films would prove an impossible task. Well, you can't keep a good mummy down and in The Mummy's Tomb; we find that Kharis (now Lon Chaney, Sr.) was in fact merely burned very badly and the high priest escaped the battle with only a shattered arm. (How he only "shattered" his arm through a hail of bullets and a very long fall down the temple steps is beyond me ;-)) Anyway, the high priest is turning over his duties to a younger less-damaged man in the person of Mehemet (Turhan Bey). Their current plan is to avenge the defiling of Ananka's tomb by traveling to America to kill the Banning family and everyone involved in the desecration of her tomb. One by one, the members of the Manning family meets a grisly end at the hands of the mummy. With their deaths, everything is going according to plan until the love bug bites Mehemet. While planning his next murder, Mehemet stumbles upon the younger Banning and his girlfriend "nekkin" in the woods and for Mehemet, it's love at first sight. Instead of sending the mummy out to do away with another Banning, he ships him out to collect Isobel, Banning's girlfriend. Mehemet plans to force Isobel to drink the tana fluid and become his love slave. Before his plan can be put into action, the townspeople find out and set upon Mehemet and the mummy with torches and fists and you guessed it, another chapter in the Mummy saga comes to a flaming end! The Mummy's Tomb much like The Mummy's hand is an awful lot of campy fun and makes for another great chapter in the seemingly never-ending tale of the Mummy!

Audio/Video

The audio for both films is presented in the mono platforms that they were released with in 1940 and 1942 respectively. The dialogue is easily understood however; there is a "hiss" in the background that accompanies each film. The "hiss" is not a detraction and is easily ignored. The video segments on each film are presented in their original 1:33.1 full frame and look incredible. The B&W presentations are really clean and have great detail. There are scratches and flecks in each film however; the imagery is very, very good.

Extras:

The Universal double feature series is really the "extra" itself. While the initial batch of first rung titles boasted an exhaustive look at the "making-of" each feature with before, during and after the film production information, these titles carry a trailer for the film, production notes and cast information. Again you are getting "Two Movies for the price of one!. In any event, the information presented on the original Mummy release explains everything and more about the Mummy and each feature that followed (including these films). On a technical aside when you load the disc, you'll be given the choice of viewing whichever title you'd like to watch first. The order of the films is actually reversed on the menu by its placing of The Mummy's Tomb on the left-hand side of the screen your player will automatically select The Mummy's Tomb. That's Ok if you don't care about continuity in the series. The Mummy's Hand actually came first and it's just easier to start the series at the beginning rather than at the second feature IMHO.

Overall:

Universal delivers the goods again and presents great films with great transfers and two per disc to boot! It's really a no-brainer. Each Mummy entry is a great way to spend a Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon! Recommended