The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu

Perhaps it's just me, but although I love the idea of an international criminal genius like Fu Manchu, most of the stuff I've seen hasn't been all that good. I liked the old Boris Karloff film. It wasn't great but it did entertain. The Christopher Lee films of the 1960s were, on the other hand, embarrassingly bad--especially as the progressed. Now, with the 1950s TV show, I was once again only moderately interest and nothing more. And, considering the idea for the show, it should have been great.

Like all the other Fu Manchus, this one is unfortunately played by some white guy who squints a lot and sounds a bit like Charlie Chan...a very BAD Charlie Chan. Oddly, one of the shows even had Keye Luke in a supporting role--though he would have been PERFECT in the lead. He was Asian, a fine actor and had a great screen presence. Instead, Glen Gordon does an acceptable but not particularly distinguished job as the baddie. The show is supposed to take place throughout the world--partly places like Macau and Hong Kong. But, like most 1950s TV, it was films on a cramped stage and stock footage of exteriors. SO, it only had adequate production values and looked pretty cheap. As for the scripts and acting, it was all very flat...okay, but no more. The show could have used a strong injection of energy, locales and more inspired acting--and I can see why the series was short-lived. If you are interested, Alpha Video has some of the episodes on DVD.

'The Adventures of Fu Manchu' is campy fun from the early days of American tv. As usual, Fu Manchu is played by a white actor with tape on his eyelids... in this case Glen Gordon, who resembles Christopher Lee but without Lee's acting ability. Gordon plays the role stiffly and impassively, which actually works well for this character. Fortunately, the scriptwriters avoid giving Gordon any stereotypical dialogue of the 'Ah, so! Me velly solly!' variety.

Throughout this series, there was a tendency to cast the Oriental roles with white actors whose facial structures looked vaguely Oriental, such as Leonard Strong (who gives a good performance in the opening episode as a subordinate Chinese villain, but whose Chinese make-up isn't very convincing). Weren't there any authentic Orientals available?

The plots of these episodes are painfully repetitious. Every week, fiendish Fu Manchu devises yet another scheme for taking over the world. He has some sort of super-powered television which lets him spy on anybody, anywhere, without the minor inconvenience of video cameras. Every week, Nayland-Smith and his Watson-like assistant Dr Petrie go forth to foil Fu Manchu's latest plot. Every week, Nayland-Smith and Petrie are captured and threatened with Fu Manchu's latest fiendish torture device (or hideous Oriental death). Every week, at the last possible moment, Fu Manchu's Eurasian serving-wench Karamaneh rescues the two Englishmen and helps them foil Fu's fancy finagling. Every week, Nayland-Smith and Petrie return to their bachelor quarters in time to receive a tv transmission from Fu Manchu, who always ends up saying something like this: 'I congratulate you for defeating me THIS time, Nayland-Smith. But I know that you could not have done it without help.' Every week, Fu Manchu makes it clear that he suspects someone in his employ of being disloyal to him. As he says this, Fu Manchu swivels his Sellotaped eyelids to glare suspiciously towards Karamaneh. Yet somehow, in next week's episode, Karamaneh is still on the Fu Manchu payroll, standing by to rescue Nayland-Smith and Petrie from the latest fiendish folderol of fearsome Fu Manchu. Whew!

This series is enjoyable, and less racist than the original Sax Rohmer 'Fu Manchu' novels ... which were always frothing over with frenzied warnings about the 'Yellow Peril'. But these tv episodes are more effective when viewed individually, rather than as a multi-episode marathon. When you view three or more of them in succession, the repetitive scripts become painfully obvious. Why hasn't Fu Manchu flung Karamaneh to his flesh-eating fungus?

This series was perhaps the most unique set of 39 episodic TV ever produced. The reason is sort of a dubious one, but it counts nonetheless. D'ya give? Ya wanna know the answer? Okay, now-arya ready? Let's see the show of hands, how many of yuz had ……. "Becuz it's the only show that had the bad guy as the main character? All right, good job! You can stay after and clean the erasers and blackboard! But seriously, the one thing about having the bad guy in the Star' chair is there is a certain appeal. That is, the bad guys are often time more colorful and interesting than those goodie two-shoes heroic types. In every generation that comes along, there are kids who'd rather be Killer Kane than Buck Rogers, Ming the Merciless than Flash Gordon, Dr. Fu Manchu than Sir Nayland Smith, Frank Nitti than Elliot Ness, Darth Vader than Han Solo, etc.

Beside the obvious point we've just alluded to in such a lengthy manner, there is another category that this Fu Manchu show falls into, and such an exclusive club it is. You see it is one of a handful of series done for TV by good, old Republic Pictures Corporation.

Contradictory as it may seem, Republic with its "Thrill Factory" Assembly Line operation, did not make more than a half of a dozen Television series and we can only count 5 of them. They were: COMMANDO CODY, SKY MARSHALL OF THE UNIVERSE*(1953), ADVENTURES OF FU MANCHU (1956), STORIES OF THE CENTURY (1956), RED RYDER (1958) and FRONTIER DOCTOR (1958). (If we've missed any, please in form our complaints department via the E-Mail. THANX, JTR) It is quite possible that the gang over at Republic were sitting around one afternoon, desperately trying to think of an angle to use on a new TV Detective type of a series. Suddenly somebody had a "Brain Storm" which was at once both simple, yet brilliant. It was a reference of one of Republic's many highly successful Movie Serials. It was THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU (1940), which starred Henry Brandon, as the evil, East Asian graduate of Oxford (or was it Cambridge or DeVry Institute for that matter!). All the costuming and skull caps were there, so was there the great amount of stock footage. And there's nothing that Republic Pictures loved more than stock footage.

So it was set. All purpose character actor Glenn Gordon was drafted to be in his most visible part as the "good" evil Doctor Fu Manchu, with Lester Matthews cast as Sir Dennis Nayland Smith. The rest of the cast included Clark Howatt, Carla Belenda, John George with Laurette Luez (Woo, woo, woo, woo!) as Fu's Concubine (main squeeze, Schultz!) by the name of Karamaneh.

Though the series was rooted in some stories which were nearing the half-century mark, they did manage to add some modern touches as needed. Much like the SHERLOCK HOLMES Series of Pictures made by Universal in the 1940's, The FU MANCHU Show did not attempt to make the series into a Period Piece, opting instead, as the Universal people had, in making it set in contemporary times.

Hence, we were made a part of the contemporary scene as Fu Manchu's base of operation not only set in Shanghai or Peiping (Peking, or Bejing today) but also having visitations to the then Crown Colony of Hong Kong and the then Portuguese holding of the Colony of Macao.

The series episodes were in a sort of position of being between the rock and the hard place. At ½ hour per episode, there was not a lot of time to develop a plot and characters as would a novel or a feature film. Yet, unlike the 1940's Serial of FU MANCHU, it was not a continued story in the classic Hollywood cliff-hanger sense. So they compromised by coming up with related episodes. That is each story was related to those which went before, yet they all stood on their own as a story unto itself.

We fondly recall one episode in which Sir Dennis and his henchmen were in hot pursuit of Fu Manchu in either Macao or Hong Kong, when the most sly Doctor and exponent of "the Yellow Menace" escaped from them. As the narrator then said, …." So Dr. Fu Manchu slipped across the border and got lost in the teaming millions who make up Red China!"

And they always used the same closing. After Fu Manchu had been beaten back at least for this week, we would see the Doctor back in his lair, with the "Lady Friend", Karamaneh standing attentively by his side, with her Bikini Top and all. With the most awful expression of hate and defeat on his face, the Doctor would pick up on of the chessmen off the board, breaking it in his two hands.

And as this very dramatic, albeit overworked scene was going on, we would hear this from the Narrator: "The Devil plays for Men's Souls! So does Dr. Fu Manchu!"