The Blood of Fu Manchu

The evil Fu Manchu continues his endless quest for world domination but first; he has developed a plan to eliminate his arch-enemies (of which Scotland Yard's Nayland Smith is top priority). So our oriental master-criminal has kidnapped 10 of the most beautiful women on the planet and stuffed their bodies with the world's deadliest poison. Their orders are to seduce the enemies and kill them with "the kiss of death". His fiendish plan almost succeeds but Smith survives the assault and goes after Fu Manchu, who shelters in the jungles of South America. The premise of this sequel sounds promising enough but, don't be fooled, it's a terribly boring and unexciting film. There are so many things wrong with this production I don't even properly know where to start. For starters, the screenplay introduces way too many characters and actually none of them are worth mentioning. There's no tension and there's a total lack of gore and sleaze, as well (considering Jess Franco signed for the direction, I was at least hoping for this). There are a lot of battle sequences but they're painfully tame and tedious. Franco makes no use of the great jungle-location at all and the editing is lousy. Judging by his emotionless performance, Christopher Lee wasn't interesting in repeating the Fu Manchu role for the fourth time at all. Jess Franco also directs on automatic pilot, meaning without the slightest bit of passion or motivation. For him this was just another easy-money job in between some euro-trash cinema highlights like "99 Women" and "Marquis de Sade: Justine". The absolute best Fu Manchu film remains the 1932 "Mask of Fu Manchu" (starring Boris Karloff), although Don Sharp's efforts "the Face of…." and "The Brides of …" are pretty good as well. There's absolutely nothing to recommend about this one, so avoid unless you're a perfectionist...or really REALLY bored.

This solid, sumptuous adaptation the Fu Manchu series (the director's first of two) is further evidence of both Christopher Lee's tremendous character acting and that Spanish director Jess Franco actually did make some good movies. This movie is not "perfect" by any means, but Franco milks the meager budget for every dime and delivers maximum scale for this bizarre pulp epic. He delivers on all the sex, violence, and the macabre you would expect from a Franco flick and also manages to create a sense of dignity and responsibility about the whole thing (with much help from Lee's focused performance). Anyway, good stuff. Especially if you are in to adventure serials and/ or jungle exploitation films. Don't miss out on a newly discovered classic. Blue-Underground's DVD of the uncut, beautifully rendered remastering should revert many of the film's most passionate critics into true believers.

The 4th of the 5 Fu Manchu movies with Christopher Lee takes the villain to a new hiding-place in Brazil. He uses a snake venom to blind and kill his enemies. Immune girls are passing on the poison to the victims by a kiss of death. Carl Jansen (Götz George) finds Fu Manchu, and Nayland Smith urgently needs help because he's been kissed already. The whole movie makes no sense at all (even the trip to Brazil isn't necessary for Nayland Smith, since the antidote was available in England from the girl who gave the kiss), but I didn't worry much about logic because it is so much fun! Just a handful of examples: Dr Petrie is unshaken by any danger, but cold tea really upsets him... A bandit steals a book, then throws it away: "No pictures, only words! Terrible!" he says with the justified wrath of the illiterate. The governor keeps Jansen prisoner for three days under false accusation - and apologizes that "good chess players are hard to find"!

Ricardo Palacios as Lopez makes a much better co-villain than Horst Frank in the previous movie because he provides such a great difference: the short, fat, sweating, ugly bandit compared to the tall, lean, stiff, ascetic mastermind. Lopez is the first one with the guts to ask: „How much do you pay?", and Lee dryly replies: „Freedom is not measured in terms of money..." Brilliant moments, and the camera work with its close-ups and focusing is looking much more creative than the traditional job in „The Vengeance of Fu Manchu". Last not least, more sexy girls than ever before! I voted 7/8/5/7/4 for the five movies.

Blood of FuManchu, The (1968)

1/2 (out of 4)

This here is technically the fourth film in the Christopher Lee/FuManchu series, although most fans just consider the first three to be a series and the final two just the work of Spanish director Jess Franco. No matter how you consider the series to work, there's very little doubt as to how bad this film actually is. FuManchu (Lee) and his daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) are hiding out in the Amazon jungle. FuManchu comes up with a new idea to take over the world and it's to send out ten beautiful women with poison on their lips to kill various world leaders. THE BLOOD OF FUMANCHU was released under countless titles including KISS AND KILL but no matter what you call it there's no doubt it's a horrible little picture that doesn't have a single thing going for it. Jess Franco has made a lot of bad films in his career but there's no question this here is the worst of the decade, which for the most part had some decent films that even non-fans thought were at least good. The biggest problem is that the entire story is a complete mess as you never really know if this film is trying to be serious or some sort of spoof. Lee pretty much sleepwalks through his role and it really doesn't appear that he's having any fun. Tsai Chin is about the only decent thing in the film but she isn't given too much to do and the rest of the supporting cast appear to have some sort of poison in their system as well. The film has a comic book vibe to it but there's not an ounce of energy to be found anywhere and what fun adventure there should be isn't anywhere to be found either. This production might have had a bigger than normal budget but nothing was done with it and in the end this is just a worthless film without anything going for it.

The fourth entry in the Fu Manchu series with Sir Christopher Lee is a very mild diversion at best. Lee, playing the dastardly arch villain, appears to be just going through the motions. This time, his fiendish plan is to abduct a dozen sexy young women, and use them as assassins. Their blood is filled with poison and they are dispatched to various major world cities to murder Fu Manchus' enemies. On the side of good are Fu Manchus' chief nemesis, Nayland Smith (Richard Greene), Carl Jansen, a so-called "archaeologist" (Gotz George), Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion-Crawford), and Ursula Wagner (Maria Rohm), a nurse.

Another collaboration between screenwriter / producer Harry Alan Towers and the extremely prolific director Jess Franco, this is going to be awfully disappointing for those people that love Francos' ultra-sleazy 1970s output. Titillation is minimal. As a jungle adventure / pulp nonsense bit of entertainment, it's okay, but it falls short of any potential. Overall, it lacks style and energy, and some viewers may even find it boring. Even the action scenes aren't very exciting. The location shooting in Spain and Brazil is adequate, and there are some very fine looking ladies (also including Shirley Eaton of "Goldfinger" fame as The Black Widow) to add to the scenic value.

Lee is just okay, unfortunately, although there is pleasure in watching Tsai Chin ("You Only Live Twice") as Fu Manchus' sadist daughter Lin Tang, and the lively Marion-Crawford. Ricardo Palacios is amusing as a bandit leader, but the film simply spends too much time with his uninteresting gang. Greene, credited as a "guest star", doesn't get all that much to do.

If you're a fan of Lee and / or Franco, you could definitely do better than this.

Five out of 10.