Dr Fu Manchu – along with Bulldog Drummond – is now a bit of a hot potato in adventure fiction and a liberal shorthand for the shockingly racist excesses of our past culture. Indeed, Sax Rohmer's books – initially a trilogy in the mid-1910s before several more appeared in the '30s – were borne out of a xenophobia for East Asia grandly termed 'the Yellow Peril' and were offensive to some even then. Surprisingly, the character himself rarely showed up in his own franchise. Most of the action followed his enemies, the Holmes and Watson avatars Sir Denis Nayland-Smith and Dr Petrie, in a series of exotic, ludicrously pulpy plots.
The 1960s saw contentious producer Harry Alan Towers revive the character for a cycle of five independent British films so cheesy that the ushers must have handed out crackers on the way in. Christopher Lee – best known at the time, of course, as Dracula in several wonderfully schlocky Hammer productions – played Fu Manchu in yellow-face in what basically amounted to a series of extended cameos. The Holmes and Watson connection remained with the starring of Douglas Wilmer, who had played Holmes on television for the BBC, and Howard Marion-Crawford, who had been Watson to Ronald Howard's Holmes in the drily amusing 1954 TV series. This third film jettisoned the director of the first two films, Don Sharp, and replaced him with Jeremy Summers, who had made the deservedly obscure Gerry and the Pacemakers film Ferry Cross the Mersey but also episodes of many of my favourite ITC series.
The plot in this one is thin but does the business sure enough. After previous encounters with his English foe, Fu Manchu is so hungry for vengeance – hence the title – that he forces a plastic surgeon to change one of his servants into a doppelgänger for Nayland Smith. As the servant is also Oriental, we get a reverse Gustav Graves from Die Another Day.Is it me or do many of these bad-guys make the most unreasonable demands? So while the real Nayland Smith is captured and brought to Fu Manchu's wilderness lair, the lookalike replaces him, moves around like a robot and commits murder. He is then arrested, tried and scheduled to hang, thereby ruining Nayland Smith's reputation as one of England's finest. Fu Manchu plans to do this to several other prominent law-enforcers across the world, thus undermining that whole law and order thing that bothers him so much. Meanwhile, he plays host to a seedy man in a cowboy hat who is apparently – and this bit I loved – the Ambassador of the American Underworld.
There's a fair bit of filler, of course – a boring meeting with Interpol, a nonsensical fight on a boat, a sprawling bar fight with sailors, an FBI character who does nothing at all and an unnecessary lounge number – but there is some surprising shots of the Chinese mountains and a couple of exciting ninja scenes which, while doing nothing for the Bruce Lee fan, does bring the energy up. Christopher Lee is listless as ever while Douglas Wilmer somehow keeps his dignity while he is bundled into a crater, a prison cell and a hay cart and inexplicably walks around with what appears to be a door around his neck. It's all wonderfully silly and, despite lagging at some points, is exciting enough. As long as you're in the mood for some cheesy fun, it's worth a watch.
