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Fu Manchu Double Bill DVD: Castle Of Fu Manchu And Blood Of Fu Manchu
01/05/2007 . Source: Rod MacDonald 
region 2 DVD. Optimum Home Entertainment OPTD0814 180 minutes 2 films 90 minutes each. Price: £12.99 (UK). stars Christopher Lee. Buy Castle Of Fu Manchu in the USA - or Buy Castle Of Fu Manchu in the UK  check out website: www.prismleisure.com/
This Double Bill DVD presentation contains two movies, 'The Blood Of Fu Manchu' and 'The Castle Of Fu Manchu', first released in 1968 and 1969 respectively.
The Fu Manchu character first appeared almost a century ago with the trashy novels of Sax Rohmer. Capitalising on the civil unrest in China following the Boxer Rebellion, his novels were rather xenophobic to say the least. They portrayed the archetypal sinister Chinese character, devilishly cunning and ruthlessly cruel. The Yellow Peril, to give it its common name, was set to sweep over the civilised western world! Neglecting the fact that Chinese were our allies during the Second World War, a resurgence of Chinese phobia appeared in the sixties after the Cultural Revolution instigated by Chairman Mao. Those of you old enough will certainly remember the axe swinging taking place outside the Chinese embassy in 1966.
Despite the fact that Fu Manchu was no communist, this was sufficient encouragement to make the series of Fu Manchu films from the late sixties to the early seventies. Starring Christopher Lee, they all had one thing in common in that they were utter rubbish! Everyone involved in the production must have regretted their part at sometime in their life but it was a way to make a living.
Why Optimum has released Fu Manchu is a mystery. Maybe they want to cash in on the renewed xenophobia instigated in some minds by the phenomenal success of Chinese marketing enterprise? Strangely enough, 100 years ago, the Chinese were complaining that they were importing too much from the West, including cotton manufactured goods, to the extent that their own workers were out of work. The tables have been turned so there is obviously a devilishly cunning plot here!
Both movies have atrocious plots, dialogue, settings, action sequences, directing and both suffer from a lack of believability and impetus. Long before each movie has finished, you're wishing for it to end.
Fu Manchu is hellbent on taking over the world in any way possible but his methods defy logic. Of course, what would you expect from a mad Chinese mandarin! The West is good and the East is bad. The Chinese are not shown up in a very good light. One third of the world's population are rotten devils!
In the first movie, 'The Blood Of Fu Manchu', world domination expects to proceed by a deadly kiss delivered from mesmerised young ladies who have been bitten by a poisonous snake. Though they do not die themselves, their bodies are so full of deadly poison that even a kiss imparts death to someone else. For some reason, the setting is somewhere in Central America and it's the poor Hispanics who come out worse in some of the scenes. Richard Green, of Robin Hood fame, has a part but otherwise the actors are relatively unknown.
The method of world domination in the second film, 'The Castle Of Fu Manchu', is even more ludicrous. Fu Manchu decides to freeze the Earth's oceans! As you can imagine, shipping and commerce is adversely affected. The question is why doesn't he just build up an army and try world domination in the conventional way? He would have more success. Of course, this would be too straightforward. Fu Manchu has to be devilishly cunning. He probably can't even go to the toilet without being devilishly cunning.
The Fu Manchu series suffers in the same way that many westerns did in the old days by having the important Native American parts played by white people. All it required to be Chinese was a bit of sticky tape to make the eyes slanted! Why was this the case? Where were the Chinese actors? There were actually plenty about, especially in Hong Kong, but it just wouldn't do to have a Chinaman play a leading role, would it? Apart from amateur productions of, say, the Mikado, such an action would be completely unthinkable today. However, to give the production company an excuse one could probably say with some truth that there were not many Chinese actors in Britain at the time and because such films were made on a very strict budget, importing actors from Hong Kong would have been far too expensive.
There were several films made in the Fu Manchu series. It is sincerely hoped that Optimum do not bring out the rest on DVD. Apart from the fact that they are exceptionally bad, hopefully we have moved on from the last vestige of our colonial days 40 years ago. The portrayal of Chinese people in these films is in very bad taste. This sort of thing is just not acceptable today in the same way that, for example, the TV series 'Love Thy Neighbour' isn't.
Who will want to purchase this DVD? I suppose there will be some people out there who will think this is great stuff but I don't think their numbers are large. Rather pathetically, Optimum in their website gave a description of each movie but got the titles mixed up. 'The Blood Of Fu Manchu' was about the freezing seas, so they say, and vice versa, which, on reflection, is the final nail in the coffin for this waste of good plastic.
Rod MacDonald
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