The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)

Director: Don Sharp

Starring: Christopher Lee, Nigel Green

More info: IMDB

Tagline: Obey Fu Manchu Or Every Living Thing Will Die!

Plot: Grisly strangulations in London alert Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard to the possibility that fiendish Fu Manchu may not after all be dead, even though Smith witnessed his execution. A killer spray made from Tibetan berries seems to be involved and clues keep leading back to the Thames.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No but I'm just dumb enough to watch the 4 sequels it spawned.


I'm brief on this one. I REALLY wanted to like this. It just reeks of fun. Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu? That's an instant party on my TV! It's a party all right, the kind where everyone that shows up is a painfully shy librarian and the stripper ran off with the booze. It's New Years Eve in Yawnsville!


It saddens me that Lee was so bland. Nigel Green does OK but the problem I had was the pacing. It dragged and dragged to the point that I just didn't care...about anything. Honestly, the only thing that got a positive reaction out of me was this one line. Nayland Smith (Green) and company fought a bunch of Chinese assassins in the basement of a museum and the curator says to them as they leave...

"Wait a minute! You can't leave the museum littered with dead Chinese!"

I felt like that's what the film makers did...they littered my living room with boring shit and then walked away taking 90 minutes of my life with them. Masochistically, I'll see them again in THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU (1966).