“Now nothing shall stand between us and the fulfillment of our vows.”
One evening Steve Banning (Dick Foran) recounts the story that happened 30 years previously of Kharis to his friends and family. His story ends with the destruction of the mummy. In Egypt we find that Andoheb (George Zucco) did not die. Now older he in turn tells the legend of Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) to his follower Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey). A passing of the torch. Andoheb also instructs Mehemet on the use of the tana leaves. He assigns Mehemet the job of destroying the remaining members of the Banning expedition and their descendants for desecrating Ananka’s tomb .
Mehemet, with mummy in hand, goes to America and takes a caretaker's job at the town cemetery where Banning now lives. First on the list to kill is Steve Banning. The sheriff (Cliff Clark) and coroner (Emmett Vogan) are stumped. Babe Hanson (Wallace Ford) arrives after learning of the death of his friend. When Babe hears about the dust marks on Steve’s throat he gets suspicious. When Steve’s sister Jane (Mary Gordon) is killed Babe is convinced it’s the mummy. No one else believes him. Then Babe is killed. Steve’s son John Banning (John Hubbard) contacts, his friend, Professor Norman (Frank Reicher) to identify the gray marks on the throats of the dead. Norman proves that Babe was right.
The last person that Mehemet and the mummy need to kill is John Banning. John is planning to marry Isobel Evens (Elyse Knox). Mehemet is in lust with Isobel. In a deviation of his mission he decides that Isobel should be his wife and will be the mother of a dynasty of High Priests. He wants to use the tana leaves to make both him and Isobel immortal. He sends Kharis to bring her to him. This hubris is not lost on Kharis. He has seen before how a High Priest of Karnak who is sworn to protect the tomb of Ananka has taken it into their head to think with the wrong head. After all, that is how Kharis got into his mummy suit to begin with. That kind of thinking never bodes well.
“The Mummy’s Tomb” was released in 1942 and was directed by Harold Young. The movie picks up thirty years from where “The Mummy’s Hand” left off. At only 61 minutes long it’s a bit of a rip off. Footage from the first movie is used to set the scene for the second movie (which itself is actually the third Universal mummy movie.). Jack Pierce did the mummy make-up. Anyway, the mummy is now played by Lon Chaney. He will play the mummy in three of the Universal movies. In “The Mummy’s Hand” Wallace Ford’s character is named Babe Jenson. In “The Mummy’s Tomb” his name is now Babe Hanson. Turhan Bey adds a level of sophistication to the movie. Something it desperately needed.
The sequel seemed a little haphazard. It's suppose to be thirty years in the future but it still looks like 1942. I’m not sure why the High Priest of Karnak would wait thirty years to avenge the desecration of the tomb of Ananka. The only real action is at the end. To me the Hammer Studios version of “The Mummy” has a similar plot to “The Mummy’s Hand”. Only Hammer did it better.