The Knocking on the Door

In this, the seventh episode of the silent serial The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, Inspector Weymouth has not returned to his home at Maple Cottage so it's being looked after by Nayland Smith, Dr. Petrie, and Weymouth's brother James. Meanwhile, Karamaneh and her younger brother Aziz are relaxing at a hotel having escaped the clutches of that evil mastermind. But where there's a will, there's a way as much as Fu Manchu is concerned...This episode wasn't as exciting as the last one but there's quite a surprise at the end. This version I saw on YouTube had no music score which might have helped me like this a little more. So that's a slight recommendation of The Knocking on the Door.

Well, it was either that title for the review or 'Who's That Knocking At My Door?' In the seventh episode of the serial THE MYSTERY OF DOCTOR FU MANCHU, the forces of the London Police, led by Nayland Smith, are dealing with the aftermath of the previous episode: the mysterious Doctor and Inspector Weymouth vanished over the gunwales of an exploding speedboat. Weymouth was shouting, we are told, because he has been given a serum that has made him mad.

Fu Manchu was an expression of the Yellow Peril. Because of the great population of China and the expanding technological and military power of Japan, the West was afflicted with a fear of a foreign civilization and responded as people throughout history have: by terming it a peril. The idea that one man might combine ancient lineage in the East, the scientific knowledge of the West, and a desire to use both for his own advantage combined very nicely with the Evil Genius trope that was growing popular in pulp fiction.