Mummy in Manhattan (1936)

D. Raoul Walsh
B&W

It made sense in 1936 to cast Jimmy Cagney as a tough hitting private detective. It meant that Cagney could do all the things he was good at, but actually do it on the right side of the law. So he could intimidate guys by yelling at them, as long as they were bad guys; he could slap guys about and shoot them with aplomb, as long as the guys with bruises and bullet wounds were bad; and he could cuddle up with dodgy dames, as long as he led them on the path to redemption rather than further down the rocky road to badness. What’s more he got to live at the end of the movie and the audience could cheer him as a hero. Yes, Cagney could be the same wild and violent and dangerous Cagney we all loved as long as he was being wild, violent and dangerous for the powers of truth and justice. It’s the American way.

Of course having gone down the road of making Cagney a big bad, but actually virtuous and good, detective in New York City, there’s no real explanation as why on Earth his antagonist is a long dead Egyptian Pharaoh.

Welcome to ‘Mummy in Manhattan’!

This is the kind of genre mesh-up which is common today but must have been like splitting the viewer’s skull open and stirring the contents around with a spoon back in the 1936 – a hard-hitting detective, supernatural horror movie, with some broad comedy thrown in just in case anyone felt short changed.

When the adopted daughter of the Egyptian ambassador disappears, Cagney is called into investigate. At first he thinks it’s her ex-boyfriend, but gradually his investigation leads him to the Museum of Natural History where a special exhibition is taken place – a tomb of the evil boy king “Totem-Munara’ has recently been discovered in Egypt and now the artefacts have made it to New York City. But it seems that old Totem is not as lifeless or as harmless as the smug museum administrators imagine.

It looks like noir in its shadowy black and white, but it’s also clearly channelling Boris Karloff in a way which must have had the lawyers at Universal twitching. (Although the fact that both were leaping on the recent discovery of Tutankhamun meant they didn’t have an artful hieroglyphic leg to stand on.) The film is stagey as hell with all the shocks signposted, but Cagney is having an absolute ball. It’s great to watch him sneer at his adversary, as who else would have the guts and gall to sneer: “Come on, bandage boy, you think you’re tough but I can take you down with scissors, see”?

At first glance this would look to take Cagney out of his comfort zone, but what makes it so brilliant is that Cagney just makes it his comfort zone.