The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu

THE STORY & GENRE -- Brief and slight hypnotic powers is about all the genre which can be mustered in this basic crime story. ASHSFF calls it "Tangential." Rowland V. Lee directs, Warner Oland stars.

THE VERDICT -- As I said, the real problem here is the acting, which drags the entirety down to mediocre. And believe me, I was looking forward to seeing Oland do Fu. There is no "racism", only characterization. If you want to get political about it, China is not a friend of the world or human rights, and Fu Manchu is a personification of that fear and reality.

FREE ONLINE -- Yes. Google also "The Red Dragon" 1929.

Film buffs might want to check out what Warner Oland was doing before his Charlie Chan days, and what Jean Arthur was doing before her Frank Capra days, but others might want to steer clear of "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu": it's stilted, static, uninvolving and overlong. Fu Manchu's deadliest power appears to be his ability to bore his captives to death; he never stops talking and talking and talking and talking. *1/2 out of 4.

Yes this movie is very dated. I've been watching movies for over 65 years, even at 10 years old I was watching the, then, oldies on television. I've experienced the full gamut of movie styles, production techniques, acting dynamics and technology, so I can happily and easily get into a movie from this era. Yes, its very melodramatic, over acted, a bit stilted like a stage play, but the story is intriguing, the acting works for the era, the sets are good, and the movie has a dynamic that works. I understand that not everyone can enjoy these golden oldies for what were, only seeing them through the eyes of the 22nd century. If you can, this is actually quite a classic and very absorbing. I liked it.

Without checking, I'll hazard a guess that very few of the Chinese characters in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu are actually from the East. Certainly none of the main oriental characters are, with Warner Oland leading the way in 'yellowface' to play Sax Rohmer's sadistic villain Fu Manchu. I guess no Chinese actor would be happy to play the role given how anti-Asian the story is, the film playing upon the West's fear of the 'yellow peril'.

The film opens in 1900, during the anti-foreign uprising in China known as the Boxer Rebellion. Reverend Mr. Eltham sends his young daughter Lia to the safety of the house of Fu Manchu (Oland); however, when Western gunfire kills Fu Manchu's wife and child, the once affable Chinaman vows to take revenge, and, years later, uses Lia (Jean Arthur) to get even with those responsible.

An early talkie, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu is technically crude, with the performers clearly struggling to make the transition from silent to sound. Thus we get quite stagey, over-the-top melodramatics from many of the cast, with Oland being seriously hammy as the antagonist. In a way, I feel that this adds to the charm of the piece, although I can see why some might find the performances a problem. My main issue with the film is that it is OVERLY talky, as though director Rowland V. Lee wanted to make the absolute most of this new advancement in movie-making: as is often the case with cartoonish villains, Fu Manchu doesn't just kill his enemies and be done with it -- he tries to bore them to death first with a long speech about his incredible intellect.

Unsurprisingly, Fu Manchu's superior mind proves no match for Inspector Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard, who outsmarts the villain, rescuing Lia and handsome Dr. Jack Petrie (descendant of a General at the Boxer Rebellion) from a gruesome death in the nick of time.

An important artifact in Orientalist cinema. Dr Fu is given a sympathetic origin story, which reads easily as a cautionary tale for the colonial collaborator. After the Brits initiated the Opium Wars in order to loot China, they mercilessly put down the \ Boxer Rebellion with unprecedented foreign imperialist support -- the US was also complicit -- and unprecedented savagery (Boxers were strapped to canons which where then fired, for example). Fu is an intellectual who is friendly to the Whites, quite blind to the carnage around him until they kill his family while cannonading Boxer partisans in his courtyard. From here, things move to the heartland of the Empire in London and Fu uses a sort of mustard gas powder to kill off the commanders who initiated the attack. One of Fu's weapons is a white girl he saved and raised. Her hypnotic trance walk and attempted assassination of an upper class Brit is the greatest scene in the film, capturing some true delirium and sensuality a la German Expressionism. Warner Oland gives it his all, charming the camera with his death jokes and cackling with great devilish chivalry as the imperialists die. The climax offers an in-joke on the pulp novels of people like Sax Rohmer, the racist hack who invented the Fu Manchu mythos. Despite these moments, the film is still somewhat set bound. But Rowland V Lee, a fine workman, keeps things zipping along. Apparently, Joseph Mankiewicz added to the script and the racy Pre-Code atmosphere is palpable, if not over the top. There were two sequels, of which the third, 'Daughter of the Dragon' with the great Anna May Wong, is especially lunatic and memorable.