The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967)
Directed by Jeremy Summers

Film Review

Three films in and Harry Towers' series of Fu Manchu films is already starting to plumb the depths of absurdity with a plot that strains credulity to the limit and beyond.  Unlike the two abysmal offerings that were to follow (directed - if that's the word - by exploitation merchant Jess Franco), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu is fun as well as being daft, and its glossy production values compare well with those of the first two films in the series.  Replacing Don Sharp as the director is an enthusiastic Jeremy Summers, who brings an energy and gutsy artistry to the film that helps to distract us from the major shortcomings on the writing front, which is just as well.

Production was split between Ireland and Hong Kong, and this works to the film's advantage, marking a clear delineation between the grimly oppressive scenes set in London (culminating in the chillingly realistic execution of Nayland Smith's facsimile) and the more picturesque scenes in China.  The production team had access to the facilities of the Shaw Brothers (one of Hong Kong's leading film studios), allowing for some stunning visuals which give the film a blockbuster feel that totally belies its modest budget.  The open sequence is particularly striking, with roving cameras lapping up the sumptuous panoramic landscape and imbuing the film with a grandeur which, alas, it cannot sustain once the plot weaknesses start to become apparent.

As screenwriter, Harry Towers lacked the ingenuity of Fu Manchu's creator, Sax Rohmer, and yet again he comes up with a derivative plot that would hardly satisfy a twelve-year old.  Fu Manchu's latest wheeze is to discredit all of the world's police chiefs by making murderous doubles of them all, in the expectation that the world's mobsters will be so impressed that they will all link hands and agree to accept him as their leader.  As far as plans for world domination go, this is pretty batty by anyone's standards, and you can imagine Fu Manchu setting up a production line to turn out thousands of police chief replicas before realising that, possibly, this wasn't the best of ideas.  Even if he could eliminate all of the police chiefs in this way (which is pretty unlikely), he'd then have to repeat the entire process to eliminate all of the men who replaced them, ad nauseum.  And does he really believe the Italian and American Mafia, to say nothing of the Japanese Yakuza, will bow down and accept him, a despotic Chinaman who keeps coming up with barmy ideas like this, at their leader?  Here's a power-crazed monomaniac who has clearly lost the plot.

On the casting front, the film suffers from the imposition of German actors (by the film's German backers) in the role of American characters, and Douglas Wilmer once again looks more like Sherlock Holmes (the character he had played in a BBC television series a few years previously) than Nayland Smith.  Christopher Lee's Fu Manchu is as coldly malevolent as ever, with a heightened sadism that makes him appear even scarier than he did in the first two films.  Some dismal characterisation prevents any of the other cast members from having much of an impact and Howard Marion Crawford is now relegated to playing a poor man's Dr Watson to Douglas Wilmer's dreary Holmes look-a-like.

The Vengeance of Fu Manchu offers a succession of impressive set-pieces and unnecessary digressions that fail to gel into a coherent whole, although not through want of trying.  The action scenes are bloodier and feistier than anything seen so far in the series and there is a move towards the kind of martial arts escapism that would prove phenomenally successful in the following decade.  If Towers had been a little cannier, this is the way the series would have gone, more towards Bruce Lee-style action/adventure with a stronger Oriental flavour, not, as it ended up doing, towards cheap exploitation trash.

Film Synopsis

Immediately after his return to China with his daughter Lin Tang, the criminal mastermind Fu Manchu puts into operation his next plan for world domination.  This time he intends to create an empire of crime by uniting all of the world's criminal gangs, with him as their overarching leader.  To gain the confidence of his future criminal associates, Fu Manchu will destroy the reputation of the world's police chiefs, starting with his own personal adversary, Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard.  He coerces a surgeon into creating an exact double of Nayland Smith, who will commit a crime in London that will result in his arrest, trial and execution.  Once he has captured the real Nayland Smith Fu Manchu will offer him a choice: to assist him in his criminal enterprise or die!