The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)

User Rating:

2.3/10   

Director:

Jesus Franco

Writers:

Jaime Jesús Balcázar (dialogue: Spanish version)
Manfred Barthel (screenplay)

Release Date:

1972 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Crime | Horror

Tagline:

He's Back!!! The World's Most Evil Man with a Fiendish Plan of Conquest

Plot:

An evil Chinese mastermind plots to freeze the Earth's oceans.

Plot Keywords:

Chinese | Interpol | Fu Manchu | MST3K | Super Villain

Cast

Christopher Lee	...	Fu Manchu
Richard Greene	...	Nayland Smith
Howard Marion-Crawford	...	Doctor Petrie (as Howard Marion Crawford)
Günther Stoll	...	Curt (as Gunther Stoll)
Rosalba Neri	...	Lisa
Maria Perschy	...	Marie
José Manuel Martín	...	Omar Pashu (as Jose Manuel Martin)
Werner Abrolat	...	Melnik (as Werner Aprelat)
Tsai Chin	...	Lin Tang

Also Known As:

Sax Rohmer's The Castle of Fu Manchu (UK) (USA)
Assignment Istanbul
Die Folterkammer des Dr. Fu Man Chu (Germany)
El castillo de Fu-Manchu (Spain)
Fu Manchu's Castle
Il castello di Fu Manchu (Italy)
The Torture Chamber of Fu Manchu

Runtime:

Germany:85 min | Spain:92 min | USA:92 min | USA:98 min (DVD version)

Country:

West Germany | Italy | Spain | UK | Liechtenstein

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:PG | Singapore:NC-16 (DVD rating) | Singapore:PG | Australia:M | USA:PG | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Estudios Cinematográficos Balcázar, Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

Company:

Balcázar Producciones Cinematográficas

Trivia:

The dam bursting scene is footage taken from the Dirk Bogarde film Campbell's Kingdom (1957). Bogarde is in the green checked shirt and Stanley Baker in the red shirt, both are recognizable in this footage.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Despite being set in the 1920s, a 1960s-style car can be seen on the harbor in Istanbul during the sequence where Lin Tang is having her secret meeting on the ferry.

Quotes:

Omar Pascha: I am Omar Pascha.
Denis Nayland-Smith: And I am Nayland-Smith of Scotland Yard.
Omar Pascha: I thought I could smell a policeman.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Nightmare Theatre's Late Night Chill-o-Rama Horror Show Vol. 1 (1996) (V)

The world didn't hear from him again!

What a difference a decent transfer makes. For ages only viewable in muddy, heavily cut, nearly unwatchable prints, The Castle of Fu Manchu is now available, thanks to Blue Underground, in all of its colorful, zoom-laden glory. The last of producer Harry Alan Towers' five-film Fu Manchu series, and generally considered to be the worst, The Castle of Fu Manchu is actually a fun, trashy time waster, and far better than the previous film in the series, The Blood of Fu Manchu, which was burdened by a tedious bandito sub plot that dragged the film to a grinding halt. Directed with a certain pulpy vitality by the highly erratic but occasionally brilliant Jess Franco, Castle has a tacky comic book verve that is hard to resist, and that is certainly more entertaining than many of the expensive, highly touted bombs that Hollywood has been dropping lately. Contrary to what others have reported on this site, Christopher Lee is in excellent form, delivering his lines with distinctive aplomb and offering a stunning, iconographic series of facial expressions as he attempts to overact under the restrictive 'Oriental' make-up. The great Tsai Chin (soon to be seen as 'Auntie' in Memoirs of a Geisha), as Fu's devoted, sadistic daughter, Lin Tang, is terrific as always, and looks particularly fetching in her white Hejab. Best of all, Rosalba Neri shows up as a tough, Fez-topped lesbian, of whom Fu says "Keep her alive. She might be useful to us. She fights like a man." Peter Welbeck's screenplay may be incomprehensible rubbish, but they don't write lines like that anymore.