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 Kharis is a 3000 year old mummy played by Lon Chaney, Jr. Kharis gets shipped
from Egypt to America with Mehemet, the high priest. They are going to "wreak
vengeance on the family who defiled the sacred tomb of his beloved Princess
Anaka." Kharis gets tana leaves to keep him alive and he and Mehemet go to
Massachusetts to find Steve Banning (from the previous Mummy movie). The last
survivors of that expedition all killed one by one, but Mehemet falls in love
with Banning's son's "beautiful fiancee." Mehemet tries to use Kharis to get
the fiancee (Isobel) but a "fiery mob" messes that up by destroying him and
Kharis. They finish up on the box by saying this one is a "classic chiller." 1942, 71 minutes, VHS
Two years after the first sequel to The Mummy, Universal churned out the third Mummy movie, The Mummy's Tomb. Two years? Well what the heck took so long? I know that many of you big
fans of The Mummy's Hand are wondering if any of your favorite characters made it back. Yep, some of
them sure did. Did they live happily ever after? That is the subject of this
movie. Universal realized that there may have some people who for whatever
ever reason passed on The Mummy's Hand, but decided to give this new and improved Kharis Mummy flick a chance so they
start this picture off proper! That's right, those of you groaning,
"flashback,' have been paying attention. The first several minutes of this
already short film are wasted, I mean devoted, to rehashing the astounding
events of the previous mummy adventure. In the current film, it is thirty
years after the events in The Mummy's Hand. Steve Banning, the Mummybuster from that film is now an old geezer. Oh,
it's still Dick Foran under that cheesy grey mustache, hair, and wrinkles, but
now he's really old. How old? Well, he smokes a pipe, lives with his sister
(Marta croaked offscreen years ago), and delights in recounting the fantastic
tale of Kharis, the Living Mummy to his disbelieving son and his
girlfriend. Just to make sure we know he's really old, he also plays checkers
and goes to bed "late" at 11:00 p.m. I bet he eats dinner at Bishop's Buffet
at about four in the afternoon as well, but that's just an educated guess. So,
he rehashes all that and then the movie shifts to the treacherous sands of
Egypt.
There the high priest from the last flick is explaining to the new guy he's
just hired to be the next high priest, his versions of events. Yes, he was
shot, but it only crippled him. Yes, Kharis got set on fire, but it only left
grill marks on his bandaged behind. Yes, I am about to die and appoint you to
be high priest just like in the last movie. It turns out that the old high
priest and Kharis still hold a grudge against Steve Banning for all the
monkeyshines years ago. Come on, it's been thirty years, can't we all laugh
about it now? Kharis and the new guy are assigned to go to America and exact
their dastardly revenge on Steve Banning by killing him and everyone else
involved with the defiling of Princess Anaka's tomb. This also covers all
Banning family members. Wouldn't want to be that sister living with Steve
Banning, if you know what I mean. This new high priest is a real go-getter. The next thing you know he (Mehemet)
and Kharis (who's been put in his doggy cage) are aboard a steamer headed
straight for Mapleton, Mass (home of world famous mummy guy Steve Banning!).
Mehemet even has a plan. You see, he'll be undercover as the new caretaker for
the cemetery just outside town and Kharis will be undercover as the mummy that
tries to kill everyone he shambles into. Somehow it's all been arranged for
Mehemet to get this sweet gig at the cemetery and no one is suspicious at all
when he mysteriously appears with a gigantic crate marked "Mummy Enclosed -This
End Up." On the boat, Mehemet gives Kharis a pep talk and throws some tana
juice his way. Yes, the tana leaves are back. I think they babbled about the
moon, too, but Kharis seemed to running around pell-mell most every night so
I'm not sure how strictly enforced that rule was in this movie. Mehemet gets
all moved in to the cemetery and wakes up Kharis to go spook the locals and do
some killing. Let me make a comment here about the cemetery. This is one of
those monster-movie cemeteries, the kind that just scream "indoor set." It's
the kind of cemetery where the gravestones just seemed to be propped up at
funny angles and in no particular order. Some of these tombstones are right
next to the road. Did they bury these people on the shoulder? Wouldn't you
like
to attend the graveside service for those people? "Could everyone move down
into the ditch for a moment while this semi speeds past? Thank you." Also
there seems to be fog rolling about and strange lighting when it should be
nighttime. Luckily there is big ole crypt available for Kharis to max and
relax in
after a hard night's stalking and a strangling.  Kharis starts moseying into town. First his shadow scares some teenyboppers
who are making out at Inspiration Point. Then he disturbs some inbred farm
couple from their sleep. He spooks horses and dogs. Finally he gets into town
to start his murderous rampage. He strangles some people (assorted Bannings
and friends) and scares Banning's dogtrainer to death. After the first
death or so, people go to the sheriff to find out what he's going to do about
it. He says it's probably just "one of those fiend murders." What does that
mean? After he said that he did try assure all of us that he was going to do
everything he could to find whomever was responsible, but by then all of us
knew the sheriff just wanted to go back home and go to sleep. Kharis then
attacks Steve Banning himself. I've got to say that even though Steve was
thirty years older, he acted like he was a hundred years older and got
completely dominated by the Mummy. Steve was
running away, yet couldn't outrun Kharis who isn't exactly Michael Johnson if
you know what I mean. Anyway, Kharis gets his revenge and chokeslams Steve
into that big tombraider's paradise in the sky. What a loser. The Mummy came
into Steve's own house and treated him like a red-headed step child. Of
course, the death of world
famous wuss Steve Banning makes the papers and soon all the nosey reporters on
the eastern seaboard have descended upon Mapleton to find out what's up with
all these "fiend murders." About this time, guess who decides to make an unfortunate appearance. The Babe!
That's right! Babe Jenson, the comic relief sidekick from the last picture
has made a triumphant return. He is old and you can't really recognize him
under the bogus make up, but there is no mistaking his ugly Brooklyn accent.
Can't somebody teach those people who speak properly? It makes my skin crawl
whenever I have to hear some idiotic comic sidekick from these old movies talk
about Coney Island, the Dodgers, and "youse dames." I'm assuming Hollywood
just put them in these movies to make fun of them. So this doofus struts into
town to let the townsfolk in on the awful secret. Naturally no one believes
him, so he heads off to the local tavern. Maybe the drunk losers there will
buy his tall tale of killer mummies and ancient curses. While there he meets
up with a reporter and tells him his tale. Then Babe leaves the tavern.
Everyone else has scurried to the other side of town because there was a
sighting of the fiend or a sale at Penney's or something. So Babe is all alone
when he walks down the street. He is immediately confronted by the Mummy.
You would think that Babe of all people would know how to handle himself around
Kharis, but noooooo! He stands there peeing his Depends and very slowly tries
to get away. Since Kharis is very slow and the Babe would have escaped
otherwise, the script has Babe suddenly trapped in a dead end alley. Never
mind that seconds ago he was on the main drag in front of the most popular
watering hole in town! Babe tries to scramble over the wall, but to no avail.
Kharis strangles the life from him. Utterly idiotic.  Eventually some egghead with a microscope examines pieces of cloth from the
"fiend" and compares it to the marks left on the victims and somehow comes to
the conclusion that by golly, it was the work of a living mummy on a murderous
rampage! So the sheriff decides to assemble a mob at the Banning house to go
get this mummy. I think he actually says something like, "we've got to
assemble a mob of townspeople." This is the first time in one of these flicks
I've actually seen the mob of angry citizens used as law enforcement option
(let's see, we've got a K-9 unit, a SWAT team, and a mob). Some guy in the mob
at the Banning house says that he thinks that the new caretaker from Egypt over
at the cemetery might know something about a rampaging mummy from Egypt. So
the sheriff hands out torches and clubs and heads over with the Welcome Wagon
to pay Mehemet and Kharis a visit. About this time it becomes known that
Kharis has hijacked Steve Banning's son's fiancee. Mehemet has got the hots
for her after spying on her in the woods or something and decides that this
blonde-haired huss would be just right for the recently created position of
high priestess. The mob confronts Mehemet who actually goes out to meet them
by himself. He pulls a gun on Banning's kid but is shot by the sheriff. What
was Mehemet's plan? Even if he shot Banning the rest of the mob would have
gotten him. If the intent was to kill the Banning kid all along why not just
do it and not fart around with his skank? If the plan changed and he wanted to
kill Banning and keep his woman, how did he think he was going to accomplish
that by having one gun against a mob of angry townspeople complete with fiery
torches, clubs, and three 12-packs? Anyway Mehemet gets wasted and everyone
runs back to the Banning house where Kharis has taken the fiancee. The Banning
son goes in after him and tells everyone to torch the joint if Kharis tries to
get away. Dude, that's your house your talking about! Well, there's some brawling and scrapping and
slapping in the house and the kid gets pushed down the stairs. Kharis takes
the girl onto the balcony and every retard with a torch starts chucking them up
at him. He still has the girl, dopes! Eventually Kharis gets himself shot,
the girl is rescued, the son and sheriff escape the burning house and
everything is too suh-weet! Completely stupid. Trying to burn everything up
while he still had the girl, also didn't anyone listen to Steve Bannings crazy
mutterings whenever he told the story? How did they beat Kharis the last time?
By burning him. How did the beat him this time? By burning him. Do you see
the problem? Do you understand why there are still two more sequels? As you
can see, this lacked any internal logic and all the characters existed solely to
be knocked off by the mummy except the two lovebirds that we never got to know
(because we spent so much time knocking off losers from the previous film).
You just wished that Im-Ho-Tep would appear and drown
everyone involved in his magical reflecting pool.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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