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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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2
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8 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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SNEAK
PREVIEW
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DVD Release Date: Sept.
30, 2003 |
JESUS!
No, not an oath invoking the deity or even my reaction to
this terrible movie. It's a cry of admonition aimed at the director,
Jesus "Jess" Franco, who destroyed Fu Manchu as thoroughly
as the crime lord's mortal enemy, Nayland Smith, ever hoped
to. The Castle of Fu Manchu, with
horror icon Christopher Lee again reprising the title role,
was a total stink-bomb everywhere it played, and for good reason.
Its predecessor, The Blood of
Fu Manchu (1968), wasn't very good either, but at least
that film was odd enough and cheesy enough to be mildly entertaining.
Castle just smells. It's cheap,
shoddy and dull, wasteful of a decent cast as well as the viewer's
time.
Fu Manchu's plan this time is to freeze the earth's oceans
unless the major powers accept his dictatorial rule. (You'd
think that after failing so often this so-called criminal genius
would finally get a clue and set slightly more modest goals.)
To demonstrate his power Fu creates an iceberg in the path of
a passenger liner sailing in the Caribbean. The ship strikes
the unexpected obstacle and sinks with great loss of life. Per
his usual M.O., Fu broadcasts a radio message to the world claiming
responsibility for the incident and threatening bigger disasters
to come unless his demands are met. This time, however, the
crime lord's ambitions have outpaced his ability to follow through
— his freezing process isn't quite perfected yet. In the course
of sinking the liner the machinery in his secret base overheats
and blows up, wrecking everything. Fu is forced to relocate
while he works out the kinks in his scheme.
Phase One of Plan B involves procuring a
new headquarters. In a plot thread that wastes a lot of screen
time to little effect, Fu's daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) enlists
the aid of an Istanbul gangster, Omar Pasha (Jose Manuel Martin),
to mount a raid on a castle overlooking the Black Sea, which
is occupied by a provincial governor. Omar Pasha's henchmen
— including his prized cross-dressing female assassin, Lisa
(Lady Frankenstein's
Rosalba Neri) — take care of the dirty work, eliminating the
castle guards. (The sadistic Lin Tang gets the honor of beheading
the befuddled governor.) Fu Manchu then promptly double-crosses
Omar's gang, his own flunkies wiping them out with the exception
of Lisa, who intrigues him. ("She fights like a man.")
Fu and company move into their new digs and set up shop; Lisa
is ensconced below in the Dungeon of Multicolored Lighting Gels.
On to Phase Two. Fu needs help perfecting
his freezing technique. It seems some kind of chemical compound
derived from opium (!) is used to make the special crystals
essential for the insta-freeze process. Prof. Heracles (Gustavo
Re), the altruistic scientist whose theories made the ice weapon
possible, has been kidnapped to get the proper formula. Problem
is, Heracles is rapidly dying from a defective heart. Thus Fu
has the professor's physician, German heart specialist Dr. Kessler
(Günther Stoll), abducted along with Kessler's attractive
nurse, Ingrid (Maria Perschy). Kessler is ordered to perform
a heart transplant on Heracles, keeping him alive long enough
to get the needed information. If he refuses, Ingrid will be
tortured to death. While all this is going on, Fu's nemesis
Nayland Smith (again played by Richard Greene) has tracked the
supervillain to Istanbul, where a local police captain (director
Franco himself, in a fez) points him in the direction of Omar
Pasha. Omar wants revenge against Fu for being betrayed and
to free Lisa from the Chinaman's clutches. The gangster and
the Scotland Yard commissioner team up to take Fu down.
Reviled as one of the all-time worst movies
ever screened on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Castle
of Fu Manchu was the death knell of the Fu series — thank
God the sixth contracted film never materialized. It wasn't
released in the States until 1972, three years after it played
in Europe, and then only at the bottom of the cheesiest drive-in
double bills. Sloppily assembled and tediously dull, the film
is a prime example of too little money for what was hoped to
be accomplished. (I'd bet the lion's share of the budget went
for Christopher Lee's hotel bills.) All the major special effects
sequences consist of footage lifted from other movies... Scenes
from a previous Lee-Fu film, The
Brides of Fu Manchu, pads the opening; lengthy color-tinted
clips from the black and white A Night
To Remember (1958) represent the sinking of the ocean
liner. (Yep, that's the H.M.S. Titanic slipping beneath
the waves of the Caribbean. A dam-breaking/flood sequence is
also culled from elsewhere but I don't know from which film.)
When Fu's castle is destroyed at the finale they cram in ludicrous
snippets of volcanoes erupting, even a bridge being blown up,
that don't match the principal footage in the slightest. It
positively 'Ed-Woodian' in its ham-handed ineptitude.
Strangely enough, after injecting a dose
of sleaze into his previous Fu Manchu entry —
if you're gonna throw women in a dungeon, might as well get
'em naked, I say —
Franco pulls back with this
one. No topless chicks in chains
here, a real shame considering Italian cult fave Rosalba Neri
is on hand.( As brief as her scenes are, Neri's butch gangster
gal is one of the few bright spots in the movie.) There's no
gore, either. In its uncut state Castle
is a mild PG at best. Franco must've been bored to death making
it. He seems content to simply point the camera at the actors
while they do their thing, then go ape-shit with the zoom lens.
(Close-up shot of Lee's face. Dialog. Zoom out from Lee's face.
Dialog. Zoom back in. Repeat.) One pointless sequence, which
seems to go on forever, consists of nothing but panning shots
back and forth across Fu's antiquated lab equipment.
This is arguably the worst film Christopher
Lee ever appeared in, and he's been in more than his fair share
of turkeys. The execrable dialog he's forced to recite here
probably set his teeth on edge. Obviously, there must've been
a nice golf course near the location. As the flick's hero, Nayland
Smith, the over-the-hill Richard Greene, who'd once been the
dashing Robin Hood of '50s TV, makes Roger Moore look like Jet
Li. So what saves Castle of Fu Manchu,
if only barely, from 1-point Stinker status? Well, there's the
exotic Ms. Neri (even if she doesn't take her clothes
off, goddammit) and some amusingly clumsy action scenes. My
favorite involves some of the castle guards, who, despite a
gun battle raging close nearby, continue to obliviously pace
their sentry rounds as if nothing is happening. (Which,
unfortunately, is the case with 90% of this movie.)
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The
DVD presentation of Castle of Fu Manchu
is far more lavish than the film itself merits. Comparable to
Blue Underground's edition of Blood of Fu
Manchu, the disc contains the most complete, best-looking
version of the flick ever made available for home video. The transfer
was struck from the original negative and looks remarkably good.
In its original aspect ratio (1.66:1) the film is more visually
coherent than its fullframe incarnations; one can actually tell
what's going on (sort of, I guess) in the flooded tunnels during
the climax. The digital mono audio mix is clean.
As for extras, the Castle
DVD likewise features the
trailer, an image gallery, talent bios, a continuation of Tim
Lucas' liner notes, and the same background essay on the Fu character
(The Facts of Fu Manchu) as found on the Blood
disc.
A 14-minute documentary, The Fall of Fu Manchu, picks up
where the featurette on Blood left
off. Director Jess Franco — who's quite the raconteur in these
interviews — tells some humorous anecdotes about how he was hired
by Harry Alan Towers to continue the franchise and his working
relationship, spanning a number of films, with Christopher Lee.
For his part Lee laments that any Fu films beyond the first (1965's
The Face of Fu Manchu)
were ever even made. "But," he dryly adds, "one
has to earn a living." (The Castle
of Fu Manchu is sold individually, as part of Blue Underground's
4-disc Christopher Lee Collection, and also in a "Fu
Manchu Tu-Fer".) 9/22/03 |
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