Halloween season simply
isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day
this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal
Horrors!
#17. The Mummy’s Hand
(1940- dir. Christy Cabanne)
The neat thing about The
Mummy’s Hand is that it may be Universal’s only monster movie in which the
screenwriter wrote some actual people to go along with the monster. In fact,
the heroes are much more fun than the monster, who has officially lapsed into
the mindless shuffling and strangling with which the Mummy is now most
associated. No matter when Dick Foran and Wallace Ford as archaeologists and Peggy
Moran, and Cecil Kellaway as magicians are such a gas. It’s a pleasure watching
characters who so genuinely like each other. I loathe the next Mummy sequel, The Mummy’s Tomb, because of the cruel way it reimagines this delightful
cast.
