Il castello di Fu Manchu

The film that was to be the final entry in the new Fu Manchu series from international quickie film financier Harry Alan Towers made its belated theatrical appearance four years after it was made. In the USA, it played the bottom of the bill on the drive-in theater circuits. It crept into theaters sheepishly, victim of the commercial and critical thrashing given to its predecessor. The word in fan circles was that "Castle of Fu Manchu" was a new low, even worse than what had come before. It would be years before many of these same fans were able to see the film, which rapidly disappeared into obscurity until resurrected from its public domain limbo by the home video market. This film's non-performance at the world's box offices effectively killed the series: the contracted sixth Fu manchu film was never made.

On a technical level, "Castle" is a notch below even the low standards established by its predecessor. The shadows of the camera crew are visible in some scenes. Director Jess Franco's chronic zoom photography is more annoying and lazy here. Parts of the film are so technically shoddy, they barely achieve the level of the average home movie. The most professional scene in the film is a dolly shot of Maria Perschy crossing a Madrid street, and this was filmed by the second unit!

However, because its script is slightly better, this film can arguably be ranked above "Blood of Fu Manchu", although few fans would risk their credibility defending either film. At least "Castle" is concerned with Fu Manchu's current plot to conquer the world and does not pad out its running time with irrelevant subplots. What it does use for padding is stock footage. For its opening sequence, "Castle" lifts the entire climax of "Brides of Fu Manchu" and, incredibly, extends this sequence with footage of the Titanic from the 1958 film "A Night to Remember"! Using stock footage to supplement stock footage is either brashly clever or establishes a new standard of cheapness.

Perhaps the ultimate snub to the film came from the producer himself, who kept his wife Maria Rohm out of the cast.

It is 1969. Your on your way back to your car at the drive-inn, where your fiancé is happily sleeping off her double shift at the diner and you are about half-way through a film - Folterkammer des Dr. Fu Man Chu, Die (or the Castle of Fu Manchu) - which has already put you through two bags of popcorn and 3 cokes because the popcorn is just so much more interesting, and the worst happens - you can't find your car. Nightmares flash through your mind - maybe your fiancé was so annoyed by the cruelty of your decision to force her into a late night drive-inn triple feature full of Sax Rohmer films so she drove off, or maybe the film got her so upset that she drove off the nearest bridge. Trying to get a hold of yourself, you look up to the screen to verify that you're at the right part of the drive in. No help, all you can see is a smear of dark blue and dark red shadow across the lower part of the screen. After a minute or so, the lighting crew finds the on-switch and some out of focus people show up on the screen. They appear to be three Shriners sneaking up on an Imam who has just begun his afternoon prayer. Still no help. You resign yourself to the fate natural selection has accorded you. You , after all, decided to see this film with your intended reproductive partner, and that choice has probably ruined your opportunity to allow your genetic material to be carried on in the next generation of humans. So you decide to move to California to buy that house on the side of hill overlooking the San Andreas fault where you always wanted to live, and to pursue your dream to rekindle the Fu Manchu series this film killed. More power to you.

To be fair, I did not see the touted Blue underground DVD version of the film. Supposedly, this pressing is so much better than what I saw that it is incomparable.

Even my television objected to this film. It kept trying to turn itself off, switch channels, etc. It even unplugged the cable converter for a few minutes. Whoever it was that decided that Sax Rohmer's various B-grade stories ought to be made into movies, should be forced to watch all of them in a row - at least once. As they say, garbage in, garbage out. These films are a decidedly acquired taste. And this one is even more difficult to acquire a taste for than Sumuru... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061976/usercomments-8

Peruse the IMDb reviews - you will notice that most of the people who write positive reviews for this film do not describe the plot. There are two interrelated reasons for this - (1) there isn't one to be described and (2) they've never seen the film, and simply get a perverse pleasure believing that their opinions might be taken seriously enough to convince people to see the film (a poor assumption, at best).

Christopher Lee plays Fu Manchu - an inexplicably powerful meanie who wants something from all of the world's governments (we are never privileged with the knowledge of what in particular he wants, but I couldn't care less anyway), and is threatening to freeze the world's oceans to get it. The technology he is using has been developed by a dying scientist who he has kidnapped, and soon he finds himself having to kidnap a surgeon in order to arrange a heart transplant as well. There are various fight scenes which don't appear to be related to the film and may indeed have been found on a cutting room floor somewhere in the Middle East, or even reused from a previous Rohmer feature (I really expected Sumuru, some of her army of Amazon ninjas, or even Frankie Avalon to show up at one point). There are also a few scenes with Lee standing around looking ominous and using that great voice of his. I am not sure he knew what was going on in the rest of the film, and indeed with that voice it doesn't matter, but these scenes are, nonetheless, the ONLY remotely entertaining aspect of the film. And OH YES lest I forget, there are a few inept 007s who were likely rejected from the extras audition for Casino Royal making some roughly British sounding noises and taking all of this way too seriously.

I didn't think it was possible, but this film was even more difficult to get through than Manos: Hands of Fate, and quite possibly should replace it as the worst film of all time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/usercomments-419

To state what, in particular is wrong with TCODFM is an easy task - EVERYTHING. The acting is mediocre, the plot is idiotic, the cinematography and editing are so bad that I don't believe TRYING to make a hideous mess of a film would net you anything worse. You'll either laugh hysterically or stare at your screen until you start drooling, unless you take my advice and avoid this.

Why did I watch it? I enjoy challenges.

Castle of FuManchu, The (1968)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The fifth and final film in Christopher Lee's FuManchu series is considered by many to be the worst but I personally found it so bad that I was able to have a little fun with it. The film has FuManchu (Lee) once again trying to take over the world and by now you might be asking when the guy is just going to give up and go home. Anyway, this time he plans on freezing all the oceans in the world so he kidnaps a doctor to perform an operation on the one man who knows how to do such a thing. THE CASTLE OF FUMANCHU isn't a good movie so you shouldn't go into the film expecting anything other that pure silliness. There's no question this is a bad movie but thankfully it's bad enough to be mildly entertaining but I'm sure most people will be smart enough to hit the eject button by the thirty-minute mark. Once again Lee appears to have only enough energy to cash a paycheck as he's obviously not too thrilled about doing this picture. As in the previous film, Lee pretty much just sleepwalks through the film and offers up very little energy. The supporting cast includes Gunther Stoll playing the doctor, Jose Manuel Martin as an opium dealer and cult favorite Rosalba Neri playing an assassin. These supporting players are certainly one of the few good things in the film. The film has a bigger budget than most Franco pictures but that's not saying too much because we still get all sorts of cheapness including some stock footage from the Titanic picture A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, which certainly doesn't mix well with any of the new footage. The film does have some decent cinematography but there's just not enough here to make it worth viewing. Fans of Lee, Franco or FuManchu are bound to be disappointed with this film, which turned out to be the last in the series.

I really feel very out of step with regards to this one because scanning through the other IMDb reviews it became quite obvious that everybody else hated it! I don't really understand the universal dislike though, as this one really didn't seem to warrant this level of abuse. Don't get me wrong, it has problems. The script being a pretty obvious one. The story was very difficult to comprehend. It involved the master criminal Fu Manchu devising a method of turning the oceans into ice by using opium or something. And by way of this he would take over the world. Okay, whatever you say! Yeah, so admittedly, the narrative is a bit senseless.

But the thing is, I've seen a lot of Jess Franco movies and I thought this was quite coherent by his standards! In fact, it was from a period in Franco's career where he had more production value at his disposal, so again when people say this is ultra-cheap, I'm thinking it's quite big budget for Jess. I mean, he has even managed to hire Christopher Lee for the title role – I thought he was pretty imposing and well suited to the character to be fair. We also have Rosalba Neri as a gangster chick and she is always worth watching, so again, this is a good thing. Even the blatant lifts from other movies were entertaining enough, such as the whole opening scene that utilises scenes taken wholesale from A Night to Remember. Maybe the pacing could have been better perhaps but this is a constant Franco fault and in here it's no worse than usual. But overall, the film, while being often senseless, did have enough action and Euro cult value to keep me watching. Ultimately, I am probably the idiot for liking this but I guess I'll just have to live with that.

The fifth and final of Christopher Lee's Fu-Manchu outings – a planned sixth film was cancelled due to its overwhelmingly poor critical and commercial reception - and the second to be directed by schlockmeister Jess Franco. Played as a parody, 'Castle' might actually have been quite fun. Fu-Manchu is essentially reduced to a poor knock-off of a Blofeld (though I'm not sure he was ever much else). Lee actually brings his A-game here, having phoned it in previously in the series, lifting the ludicrous dialogue to the point where it's almost palatable, but everything else about the film seems to be mocking itself without knowing it. The production design is so camp it makes The Ipcress File look like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The action and violence is again tepid and clumsy (lest we forgot this is a Jess Franco film) and the plot manages to be confusing in spite of being threadbare. There are some babes thrown in, but this is a PG movie so, again, Franco fans expecting anything resembling titillation will be thoroughly disappointed. Unlike its predecessor, which is by far the more insipid and dreary of the two, 'Castle' has a handful of things going for it. One is Jess Franco in a supporting role, wearing a fez and dubbed to sound like… I don't really know. The score is totally derivative but actually rather nice. The wacky production design and multi-coloured fluorescent lighting add a lot of hammy fun. The attempt at seamless in-scene cutting between the various, disparate filming locations is endlessly amusing. Some of the dialogue is hilariously quotable, and played to the hilt by everyone involved. Frankly, though, the two high points of the show are the sizeable inserts from A Night To Remember and Campbell's Kingdom. While definitely a cut above its predecessor in some ways, I'm still struggling to give this any kind of recommendation.