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...for sixty-seven minutes of The Mummy’s Hand (1940).
If one were to reboot the Mummy movies in the spirit of the 1999 version, you could do worse than adopt this one’s starting premise: our grad-student hero has the expert opinion of exactly one respected archeologist on his side, but the only financial backer he and his comic sidekick are able to find is stage-magician The Great Solvani, so naturally the old vaudevillian and his beautiful daughter/assistant Marta come along on the expedition as well. Imagine the fun a remake could have with Solvani and Marta using their sleight-of-hand or escapology skills in the course of the movie’s adventures. You could also use a streetwise Marta* as the cisswapped version of Rick in the 1999 Mummy, with archeologist Steve as the adorable nerd. Steve’s sidekick “Babe” is annoying in the way of 1940s comedy relief, but not unfixably so. His love interest is an eight-inch-tall windup doll he calls “Poopsie.”
The mummy Kharis is powered by tanna leaves and can only move around by the light of the full moon, which adds a quasi-werewolf theme to the story that a modern screenwriter might be able to link up to the location being called “The Tomb of the Seven Jackals.” He’s controlled by Prof. Andoheb, secretly the high priest of Karnak, who’s supposed to just use him to destroy trespassers who find the tomb, but who oversteps the bounds of his duties as soon as he gets a look at Marta.
As noted above, the movie’s only a little over an hour long, so you’d need to build a second half — making Kharis harder to kill and giving him some characterization would be a good start. I hadn’t watched this one in years and had forgotten the plot, so I spent the last fifteen minutes waiting for Kharis to turn on Andoheb the moment he realizes the latter is less interested in guarding Princess Ananka’s tomb than he is in kidnapping American stage performers and obtaining immortality, and there you go— at least twenty-five-per-cent more plot you could throw into your remake.
*1940 Marta starts off strong, pulling a pistol on the men she thinks have swindled her father, until they manage to prove they really are archeologists; but unfortunately she gets shoved into the damsel-in-distress role once they’re out in the desert.
If one were to reboot the Mummy movies in the spirit of the 1999 version, you could do worse than adopt this one’s starting premise: our grad-student hero has the expert opinion of exactly one respected archeologist on his side, but the only financial backer he and his comic sidekick are able to find is stage-magician The Great Solvani, so naturally the old vaudevillian and his beautiful daughter/assistant Marta come along on the expedition as well. Imagine the fun a remake could have with Solvani and Marta using their sleight-of-hand or escapology skills in the course of the movie’s adventures. You could also use a streetwise Marta* as the cisswapped version of Rick in the 1999 Mummy, with archeologist Steve as the adorable nerd. Steve’s sidekick “Babe” is annoying in the way of 1940s comedy relief, but not unfixably so. His love interest is an eight-inch-tall windup doll he calls “Poopsie.”
The mummy Kharis is powered by tanna leaves and can only move around by the light of the full moon, which adds a quasi-werewolf theme to the story that a modern screenwriter might be able to link up to the location being called “The Tomb of the Seven Jackals.” He’s controlled by Prof. Andoheb, secretly the high priest of Karnak, who’s supposed to just use him to destroy trespassers who find the tomb, but who oversteps the bounds of his duties as soon as he gets a look at Marta.
As noted above, the movie’s only a little over an hour long, so you’d need to build a second half — making Kharis harder to kill and giving him some characterization would be a good start. I hadn’t watched this one in years and had forgotten the plot, so I spent the last fifteen minutes waiting for Kharis to turn on Andoheb the moment he realizes the latter is less interested in guarding Princess Ananka’s tomb than he is in kidnapping American stage performers and obtaining immortality, and there you go— at least twenty-five-per-cent more plot you could throw into your remake.
*1940 Marta starts off strong, pulling a pistol on the men she thinks have swindled her father, until they manage to prove they really are archeologists; but unfortunately she gets shoved into the damsel-in-distress role once they’re out in the desert.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-14 06:02 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2021-02-14 08:57 pm (UTC)From:Peggy Moran as Marta Solvani
Wallace Ford as “Babe” Jenson
George Zucco as Prof/ Andoheb
Cecil Kellaway as The Great Solvani
Charles Trowbridge as Dr. Petrie
Tom Tyler as Kharis
Ford, Zucco and Kellaway I’ve seen in a number of other things. Tyler later played Captain Marvel in the Adventures of Captain Marvel serial.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-15 12:06 am (UTC)From: