Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald
Short Synopsis
At the Metropolis Museum the Egyptologist Dr. Jordan is found dead before the sarcophagus of the boy-king Tush, a syringe of poison by his hand. His assistant Jane Hogan, who removed the syringe, is convicted of his murder. Days later Dr. Wilson calls Clark Kent with evidence of her innocence, and Lois, suspicious of Clark's excuse, tails him. In the museum's reconstructed catacombs Wilson tells the story: Tush's father ordered his giant guards to protect the boy for eternity, and when the young king died they drank poison to follow him. Jordan had injected the mummified guards with a recreated Fluid of Life, apparently without result, and had been trying to open the sarcophagus. Clark finds the button on its side that fires a poisoned needle, the real cause of Jordan's death. The lid opens, light from the king's amulet wakes the giant mummies, and they attack. Thrown into a sarcophagus, Clark emerges as Superman, saves Lois and Wilson from being pitched into a fire, and brings the catacombs down on the guards. Clark boasts of scooping Lois for once.
Why It Matters
- It is the series' horror film, with the giant bandaged guards lumbering through torchlit catacombs in the manner of Universal's Mummy pictures, and Myron Waldman's animation of their slow awakening is the best thing in the later Famous Studios entries.
- The Mummy Strikes is also the only Superman cartoon that is a murder mystery with a wrongly convicted suspect, and the one in which Clark, not Lois, gets the story. Its copyright lapsed with the rest of the series and it circulates freely.
Notes and Trivia
- King Tush is a thin disguise for Tutankhamun; the Tut craze was then twenty years old.
- The poisoned needle is never explained to the museum staff, and the convicted assistant is freed on Clark's word alone.
- See also: Superman: Destruction Inc. (1942), Superman: The Underground World (1943).
