If you liked "The Mummy's Hand" (1940) - I didn't - then you might like this, its sequel, "The Mummy's Tomb," since it's largely the same film. Even the first 10-or-so minutes of it are mostly comprised of clips from its predecessor as recollected by one of its survivors. While the footage is cannibalized from the prior installment, the remembered narrative device itself is a lesser variation on "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), which included the framing story of Lord Byron recapping the 1931 "Frankenstein" before the original author Mary Shelley told the new main story. Fortunately, the narrator's remembrances here don't include the awful comic relief of "The Mummy's Hand," and this sequel is devoid of such stupid attempts at humor. Memory is a faulty thing, though, and despite carrying over one of the same writers, this one changes the last name of Babe from Jenson to Hanson ("Dracula's Daughter" (1936) likewise screwed up the name of "Von" Helsing) and retroactively pushes the setting of the prior film back 30 years so that this one may be set in contemporary time and still be 30 years later than its predecessor.
After the cheap B-picture expediency of recounting the last film, "The Mummy's Tomb" moves on to re-enacting "The Mummy's Hand," with an elderly high priest once again passing the torch and control of the zombie mummy Kharis to a younger man. While seeking revenge, once again, the lascivious foreigner priest falls for the girl (there's a laughable series of superimpositions to represent his newfound love), has the beast Kharis carry the screaming-and-fainting beauty to him so that he can strap her down--the same damsel-in-distress bondage stuff from the last film. Also repeating itself is a foot-dragging and slow-moving Kharis only being able to attack anyone because they're all incapacitated, either physically or mentally--because all you need to do to avoid this monster's clutches is walk away. He's that slow. There's a new emphasis here, carried over some in the subsequent films in the series, on the mummy's shadow, which seems appropriate given how much this sequel shadows the prior mummy movie. The main difference this time, besides the absence of comic relief and shadow business, is that the colonialism is reversed, with the Egyptians invading America rather than the Americans looting Egypt last time. There's also the addition of that Universal shocker staple of a mob hunting the monster, and there's what would become a horror film cliché of teenagers in a parked car being interrupted by the fiend.
After the cheap B-picture expediency of recounting the last film, "The Mummy's Tomb" moves on to re-enacting "The Mummy's Hand," with an elderly high priest once again passing the torch and control of the zombie mummy Kharis to a younger man. While seeking revenge, once again, the lascivious foreigner priest falls for the girl (there's a laughable series of superimpositions to represent his newfound love), has the beast Kharis carry the screaming-and-fainting beauty to him so that he can strap her down--the same damsel-in-distress bondage stuff from the last film. Also repeating itself is a foot-dragging and slow-moving Kharis only being able to attack anyone because they're all incapacitated, either physically or mentally--because all you need to do to avoid this monster's clutches is walk away. He's that slow. There's a new emphasis here, carried over some in the subsequent films in the series, on the mummy's shadow, which seems appropriate given how much this sequel shadows the prior mummy movie. The main difference this time, besides the absence of comic relief and shadow business, is that the colonialism is reversed, with the Egyptians invading America rather than the Americans looting Egypt last time. There's also the addition of that Universal shocker staple of a mob hunting the monster, and there's what would become a horror film cliché of teenagers in a parked car being interrupted by the fiend.