The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)

"This is Fu Manchu.", 12 July 2007

Even if it's only two or three sentences, I generally like to begin one of these with a brief plot outline. In the case of The Castle of Fu Manchu, that's pretty much impossible. The movie is a mish-mash of ideas that don't necessarily fit together to form a coherent plot. The movie may start out with Fu sinking a ship, but that storyline is quickly abandoned in favor of another . . and another . . and another. In the end, I'm not sure what the movie's about or what happened.

But the biggest single problem with The Castle of Fu Manchu is that it is extremely dull. You would think that any movie that included a ship sinking, a fight for a castle, explosions, kidnapping, and other 1960s secret agent type trappings would be action packed. Well, you would be wrong. The movie has no pace, no zip, and no energy. It's as if the life had been sucked out of the movie. Add to that some less than stellar acting, abominable lighting, amateurish editing, and no continuity and you've got one fine mess of a movie.

On the positive side, The Castle of Fu Manchu does feature Christopher Lee and Rosalba Neri. Also, there's the…err…uhm...did I mention Christopher Lee and Rosalba Neri?

I have now seen The Castle of Fu Manchu twice – once with and once without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary. And, as hard as this might be to believe, I actually prefer this one without the MST3K treatment. This MST3K episode has to be one of the worst I've so far seen. The jokes don't work. And, I was really put off by some of the comments that showed a complete lack of understanding about how European movies of the 60s were made.

2/10