The Castle of Fu Manchu (1972)

the audience applauded

People are voting emotionally.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Even if it's only two or three sentences, I generally like to begin one of these with a brief plot outline. In the case of The Castle of Fu Manchu, that's pretty much impossible. The movie is a mish-mash of ideas that don't necessarily fit together to form a coherent plot. The movie may start out with Fu sinking a ship, but that storyline is quickly abandoned in favor of another . . and another . . and another. In the end, I'm not sure what the movie's about or what happened.But the biggest single problem with The Castle of Fu Manchu is that it is extremely dull. You would think that any movie that included a ship sinking, a fight for a castle, explosions, kidnapping, and other 1960s secret agent type trappings would be action packed. Well, you would be wrong. The movie has no pace, no zip, and no energy. It's as if the life had been sucked out of the movie. Add to that some less than stellar acting, abominable lighting, amateurish editing, and no continuity and you've got one fine mess of a movie.On the positive side, The Castle of Fu Manchu does feature Christopher Lee and Rosalba Neri. Also, there's the…err…uhm...did I mention Christopher Lee and Rosalba Neri? I have now seen The Castle of Fu Manchu twice – once with and once without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary. And, as hard as this might be to believe, I actually prefer this one without the MST3K treatment. This MST3K episode has to be one of the worst I've so far seen. The jokes don't work. And, I was really put off by some of the comments that showed a complete lack of understanding about how European movies of the 60s were made.

I own every single episode of MST3K, have seen each many times. Been an ardent fan since 1991.To this day, I find e. 323 "The Castle of Fu-Manchu" the most stomach-churningly bad one of all - not that it's the most inept, most intrinsically AWFUL Mistied movie of all time - I leave that to "Beast of Yucca Flats" and "Manos"... But for me, personally, this one punches me in the gut and kidneys. Other MisTies may disagree - but I say Bring on the Coleman Francises, your Ray Dennis Stecklers, your Bert I. Gordons... Leave me OUT of Fu-Manchu land. The levels of "bad-good" and "bad-bad" get turned upside-down when a movie is Mistied - but no amount of riffing by Joel and the bots can save this technicolor-spraypainted dog turd. So much I'm confused about - this is a Spanish film made in Turkey ? did they just completely run out of money before post-production ? Has any movie ever had worse color printing/timing ? Did they not think anyone would notice B&W stock footage spliced back-to-back with color soundstage shots ? Did they just lose 50% of the film and spliced together as best they could ? Just what on earth was it about ? What was with the ending ? What happened ?I think the reason this one MST3K movie makes me so livid mad and sickened more than any other is that, up to a certain point in the film-making process, "The Castle of Fu Manchu" had a budget and some promise - there are some nice costumes, some good casting, pretty women, and cool locations. But in the end, I feel like I've watched some guro/snuff film - physically sickened. In fact, the last time I had the flu, nauseous, retching up everything I'd ever eaten EVER until there was nothing left to reverse-peristalsyze but stomach lining, I couldn't help but have the movie's bored, listless mid-tempo title music playing in my head while I dry-heaved and my head spun and I cursed the day I was born.In conclusion, if I met this movie on the street, I would slap it in front of its own mother and spit on its shoes.Other MST3K movies suck. "The Castle of Fu Manchu" FAILS.

Director Jess Franco and producer Harry Alan Towers delivered a pretty decent thriller with THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU. Unfortunately, the same team failed miserably with this awful, incoherent disaster.The movie opens with the evil genius (again played by Christopher Lee, looking uncomfortably bored throughout) announcing to the world his plans to freeze the Earth's oceans. We then cut to a ludicrously out of place sequence stolen from an old German movie about the Titanic sinking. The shipwreck footage is in black and white, while the rest of the movie is in color. No explanation is even attempted! The rest of the movie seems to have been edited together from leftover footage from an aborted Fu Manchu project. The story goes nowhere, and the movie comes to such an abrupt conclusion, it almost seemed like the print I was watching was missing a few scenes! But, I look at Blue Underground's gorgeous new DVD proves that, no, that was the movie just as Franco and Towers made it.There's none of the bizarre trashiness of BLOOD OF FU MANCHU here, just a yawn inducing series of brainless exposition and scenes of people running down dark corridors. The only thing that really makes the Blue Underground DVD worth the purchase is the terrific documentary featuring interviews with Frano and Lee.The scariest thing about THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU is that it's a truly terrible movie, yet it's far better that 90% of Franco's other work! Skip it unless you're a die-hard completist.

I cannot believe how bad this movie is!! I should have expected it coming from Jess Franco, the schlockmaster of Eurotrash but I wasn't even prepared for the intense pain that this film caused. What in the hell was Christopher Lee thinking? Granted, he has been in some bombs but this has got to be the very bottom of the barrel. Richard Greene had pretty much become a has-been when this film was made but,unless he was desperate for money, he should have known better. I often wonder how actors can hold their heads up after appearing in films of this caliber....it must be absolutely humiliating.The faults of "Castle" are just too numerous to mention but a few of them go something like this: they were obviously having power failures during filming since the shots are either totally dark or green; the actors can't act (even Lee is bad here) and the badly written dialogue often doesn't match the "action"; the fight scenes involving overweight, over age Greene are embarrasing to watch: the premise of the story (freezing the oceans or whatever they were attempting to do)is feeble; and then there is the "doorway to eternity" which leads to the front porch! Huh?So......if you are looking for a movie so bad that it is good, this is not the one. Watch "Plan 9 From Outer Space" for those kinds of laughs. "Castle" is harmful to small children and animanls and should be avoided at all costs.....even if you are a Chrisopher Lee fan.