SHOW ME: The Mummy's Hand (1940)

Who's The Mummy? Tom Tyler as Kharis
Mummy's Love? Peggy Moran as Marta Solvani
Where? Egypt
How Long? 67 minutes

Rather than a sequel to the original Mummy movie, The Mummy's Hand was a re-imagining and it was this film that spawned several B-movie sequels.

In late 1930's Egypt, washed-up archaeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his incredibly irritating (and casually racist) 'comedy' sidekick Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) come upon clues to the location of the undiscovered tomb of Princess Ananka.

Unable to raise the funds for a proper expedition from academic sources, they go into partnership with travelling stage magician The Great Solvani aka Tim Sullivan (Cecil Kellaway), and head out with Sullivan's daughter, Marta (Peggy Moran) in tow.

Little do they realise that the tomb of Ananka, in the Hill Of The Seven Jackals, is guarded by a sleazy priest (George Zucco), who has been masquerading as antiquities professor Andoheb and - through the use of sacred tana leaves - has control of the living mummy of Ancient Egyptian Kharis (Tom Tyler) to protect Ananka's final resting place.

Devoid of the subtle menace of the original, The Mummy's Hand has a grating slapstick quality to it thanks almost entirely to the presence of the Babe character, although the surfeit of magical tricks from The Great Solvani outstay their welcome as well.

Coming in at just over an hour, there's hardly time to develop a story, but The Mummy's Hand does alright in that department by sacrificing depth and sub-plots on the altar of pulp adventure.

What this film does bring to the franchise though is the iconic imagery of lumbering, bandage-draped, mummy - especially when he is carrying Marta's unconscious body into the temple.

Before the Brendan Fraser action romps of the early 2000s, this was how the general public perceived cinematic mummies - in much the same way they believe all zombies crave brains, even though that's not part of that creature's formative mythology as set out in George Romero's movies, but rather an element from the comedy horror of 1980's Return Of The Living Dead series.

Unlike The Mummy, there's no great time-crossed love story in The Mummy's Hand, even though belatedly skeevy Andoheb reveals a plan to kill and resurrect both himself and Marta so they can be lovers for all eternity (a plan she is most definitely not okay with, as she only has eyes for square-jawed Steve).

The Mummy's Hand also uses more exteriors than The Mummy, although our first view of the temple on the Hill of the Seven Jackals, when Andoheb is summoned by the dying High Priest of Karnak (Eduardo Ciannelli), is laughably un-Egyptian.

And, although unconnected with the earlier movie, it does feature footage from it: most notably when recounting the backstory of Kharis where it uses much of the silent 'film-within-a-film' from The Mummy (that explained Imhotep's story), but re-edited with Tom Tyler instead of Boris Karloff and tana leaves instead of The Scroll of Thoth.