323-The Castle of Fu Manchu

Film Year:  1969

Genre:  Adventure

Director:  Jesus Franco

Starring:  Christopher Lee, Richard Greene, Howard Marion-Crawford, Gunther Stoll, Rosalba Neri, Maria Perschy, Jose Manuel Martin

MST Season:  3

The Movie

Get those hashtags ready, because we have to cancel Christopher Lee.  Not only is he here in yellowface, but he's playing Fu Manchu, one of the most notoriously racist fictional characters ever conceived.  For those who aren't familiar with the Oriental Evil character, Dr. Fu Manchu is a character created by Sax Rohmer who is basically a Chinese supervillain that the almighty Caucasian must thwart and save the day so that minorities will know their superiority.  The character first appeared in the novel The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu, and continued on in thirteen novels written by Rohmer, while the character has popped up in various other media, including a Marvel Comic run where he is portrayed as the evil father to their heroic character Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.

Fu Manchu's filmography dates back to 1923, and one thing every incarnation of the character has in common is that he's usually played by a white dude made up to look Asian, from Boris Karloff to Peter Sellers.  The distinct "honor" for playing Fu Manchu the most on the silver screen goes to Christopher Lee, who starred in five Fu Manchu movies dating back to The Face of Fu Manchu in 1965 and releasing annually.  The Castle of Fu Manchu is the fifth and final of this run, and features Lee's Fu Manchu desiring a machine that can freeze the oceans...for reasons (it could do wonders for Global Warming, just saying).  In order to get this machine to work he jumps several convoluted hurdles like highjacking a castle for opium and kidnapping a doctor to give a scientist heart surgery.

The plot of the movie is all over the map, and it really isn't that interesting.  As many weird turns as this movie takes, it never seems to be actually going anywhere.  Fu Manchu always has a setback that allows him to just sit in place and wait before he can actually do anything threatening, while good guys try to stop him while he continues waiting.  The movie is almost like a trashy Bond knockoff that tries to make the antagonist the point of interest, but without Bond to brag about his evil plan to, this supervillain often seems to just out to impress himself.  Meanwhile he gets foiled because he never actually does anything.

Well, he does do one thing.  He sinks an ocean liner in the opening.  But it's really just stock footage from the Titanic based drama A Night to Remember, only tinted blue so it looks like colorized nighttime.  As if we wouldn't notice this segment was in black and white.  What assholes.

I haven't seen any other Fu Manchu movies, mostly because of lack of interest, so I don't know how Castle of Fu Manchu stacks up to the rest of the series (let alone how Lee's tenure stacks up to other Fu Manchu films).  Most accounts seem to say it was a pretty blah series, though Castle is mostly agreed to be the worst one.  The film was so poorly received and such a box office underperformer that Christopher Lee's contract for a sixth Fu Manchu film was never taken advantage of.  I don't think anybody shed a tear for it.

The Episode

Dr. Forrester and Frank are really full of themselves this episode.  They think they've finally found the trashiest, most vile film ever made.  One to break the sanity of anyone who ever watched it.  They're wrong, but it's cute that they think they're winning.  Fu Manchu might be the worst movie featured this season (there isn't a whole lot of pain to contend with it...Gamera vs. Zigra maybe...), and yeah, the yellowface is offensive, but I wouldn't even call it the worst movie seen on the show so far.  Not while Ring of Terror and Hellcats exist.

I don't have a certain mandate on what type of films can and should be used on this series.  If they think they can do something with a film, go nuts.  Give it your best shot and let my laughter be the judge.  In the case of Castle of Fu Manchu it feels like there needed to be some reconsideration.  The film is so casually paced and dialogue heavy, and most of the riffing occurs while characters are explaining the plot to each other.  This turns a movie that already requires attention to something borderline incomprehensible, and I think the host segments featuring the movie wearing Joel and the Bots down while Dr. F and Frank gloat were mostly reactionary to how the MST episode is making this already bad movie and turning it into a complete disaster.  It's way too many words and it's hard to keep track of them all.

Is it funny though?  Sometimes.  I think it's funnier when the movie isn't endless dialogue.  Silent scenes are usually the strongest scenes in the movie, which allow Joel and the Bots to flex quite well.  There is a scene about halfway through in which Fu Manchu's thugs kidnap a couple, which is so ineptly constructed that it's pretty funny on its own, and the riffing enhances the humor of it adequately.  And there are a few cute quips here and there, with a personal favorite of mine being a commentary on the dubbing of the film:  "Why are they dubbing the British?"  I also like the jab during the end credits, which are almost illegible red text on a red background, and a near-tears Tom Servo suddenly sobs "Even the credits stink!"

The host segments are more or less just the same joke of Joel and the Bots breaking down and Dr. F and Frank congratulating each other.  There are attempts at funny skits (I like those magic carpet props), but they all end in tears.  It's a cute little meta of "We're losing this time" though it would probably be stronger if the riff were better.  These segments around Manos or Hobgoblins might be more fun, but with Fu Manchu it's a bit unearned and wasted on an overall lackluster experience.  The Invention Exchange brings the Stinky Bomb, which is an excuse for Frank to dig out his Joe Besser impression.

My concluding feelings of Castle of Fu Manchu isn't that it's a bad episode, it's that they were given a movie that they didn't quite know how to approach, so they toss a lot at it and hope something sticks.  The bitter truth is that because the experience is a bit bewildering, it's hard to maintain attention to the episode.  Whenever I find this episode in my rotation, I usually stop paying attention early on and drift off, doing whatever the fuck.  And I have to work at it to maintain that attention to write this review at all.  Because of that, it's a negative experience, and I can't really justify that.

Not Recommended

The DVD

Fu Manchu welcomed us into his castle as a part of Shout Factory's Volume XXIII release.  Audio and video were good, unfortunately assuring we could watch Castle of Fu Manchu in clarity.  Bonus features include an introduction by Frank Conniff, who is very down on the selection of this movie, feeling it didn't have a clear enough plotline and that without one it can't make a good MST episode.  He's not wrong.

Next up is a seventeen minute featurette called Darkstar:  Robots Don't Need SAG Cards.  It's kind of a mini-documentary about the video game/sci-fi simulator Darkstar, which utilized Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, J. Elvis Weinstein, Joel Hodgson, Mary Jo Pehl, and Beth "Beez" McKeever (AND Peter Graves!!!) as characters in the game.  I've never played this game, but it always seemed pretty neat.  I like the footage they showed in this look at it.  And I have to say, it's great to see Trace flex his dramatic chops.

Concluding the disc is a trailer for Castle of Fu Manchu.