Indicator, out now

The five-film cycle of 1960s Fu Manchu movies gets a Blu-ray premiere in Indicator’s impressive new boxset.

Christopher Lee played Sax Rohmer’s super villain from 1965-1969, following in the slippers of Boris Karloff, and over a decade before Peter Sellers would essay the role. Apart from Lee, Tsai Chin as daughter Lin Tang and Howard Marion-Crawford as Dr Petrie and Harry Alan Towers as producer, the movies have no connective tissue, with different writers and directors, and quality.

I want to address the elephant in the room, and then move on. Written at the height of the ‘yellow peril’ hysteria, Fu Manchu as a character is a dreadful racial stereotype, and not helped here by Lee dressing up as an Asian, as well as other Caucasians with eye prosthetics to make them more Eastern. I can only assume that anyone buying this set knows that Lee isn’t Chinese and is playing the role in ‘yellowface’. If this offends, then quite rightly you should avoid. If you’re happy to contextualise the movies within the time they were made, there’s much to enjoy here. There’s a very good extra included – Visions of the Yellow Peril (2020): Christopher Frayling on ethnocentrism in the Fu Manchu cycle.

Each movie follows a similar plot of super villain Fu Manchu hatching his next nefarious plan for world domination, aided by daughter Lin Tang, and invariably thwarted by Nayland Smith, played by Nigel Green, Douglas Wilmer and Richard Greene. Each movie has been restored from original negatives and they all look stunning.

The Face of Fu Manchu begins with the execution of Fu Manchu. An increase in drug killings and organised crimes in Limehouse, London suggests that an evil mastermind is orchestrating matters – but how can that be if he’s dead? Don Sharp (Rasputin the Mad Monk) competently directs both this and the first follow-up The Brides of Fu Manchu, and they’re the strongest of the series in terms of storytelling and production values. The next entry, directed by Jeremy Summers, is The Vengeance of Fu Manchu and represents a noticeable drop in quality.

But that’s nothing compared to the two final entries, The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu, both directed by prolific Spanish director Jesús (Jess) Franco (Vampyros Lesbos) – he would also direct Lee in The Bloody Judge and Count Dracula. The Blood of Fu Manchu ups the sleaze factor with women in chains and partial nudity, and with its lost city it aspires to be an adventure in the style of H. Rider Haggard, but to no avail. The Castle of Fu Manchu even cuts in tinted black and white footage from Titanic movie A Night to Remember and a dam-bursting scene from Campbell’s Kingdom, such is its cheapo credentials. It really is the end of the line, fervently scraping the barrel.

The extras are many, ranging from commentaries by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones, or Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons. Super 8 cut down versions are fun artefacts, there’s trailers, an episode from the Children’s Film Foundation and episodes from the 1920s silent serials. The 48-minute interview with Christopher Frayling about Rohmer is definitely well worth your time. In addition to a poster and stills, this limited first edition includes an exclusive 120-page book with a new essay on the Fu Manchu cycle by Tim Lucas, a look at the career of producer/screenwriter Harry Alan Towers, an examination of the work of Sax Rohmer, new writing on The Ghost of Monk’s Island and Fu Manchu silent serials, archival newspaper articles and extracts from the films’ press books. What comes across is Indicator’s desire to offer the collector with the most complete box set available – and it does not disappoint in this regard.

Verdict: A lot of love and effort has gone in to the creation of this set, featuring a cycle of movies of variable production quality. What’s never in question is the quality of this product, which surely is the last word on the Christopher Lee series. 8/10

Nick Joy