Fu Manchu (Warner Oland) Collection

Warner Oland

Neil Hamilton

Jean Arthur

O. P. Heggie

William Austin

Claude King

Charles A. Stevenson

Evelyn Selbie

Noble Johnson

Laska Winter

Wong Chung

Lawford Davidson

Chappell Dossett

Charles Giblyn

Donald MacKenzie

Tully Marshall

Evelyn Mills

William J. O'Brien

Charles Stevens

Rowland V. Lee

Sax Rohmer

Oscar Potoker

Harry Fischbeck

George Nichols Jr.

Lloyd Corrigan

Florence Ryerson

Crime

Romance

Thriller

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu

Paramount Pictures

Rowland V. Lee Productions

United States of America

CinemaSerf

The eponymous Chinese gentlemen is sure that his house will be safe during the famous Boxer revolution that attempted to drive the foreign devils from their country at the start of the 20th century. Reduced to just the British legation, though, the Europeans fight back and his home is accidentally struck resulting in a devastating tragedy. This kindly gent now swears vengeance on those who instigated those killings and over a period of years, he narrows down his dwindling list of targets to just the London-based "Petrie" family. Luckily, Scotland Yard's finest - "Insp. Nayland Smith" (O.P. Heggie) is on the case to try and stop the body count from mounting - but is he a match for the fiendishly clever "Fu Manchu" (Warner Oland)? It's probably about twenty minutes too long this - and most of that could be cut from the rather meandering denouement; but Oland makes for quite an entertainingly vengeful villain and Heggie turns in a decent effort too as the shrewd detective. Otherwise, the lighting needed extra wattage and the dialogue maybe a little less verbiage as the story takes us down loads of secret passages and introduces us to the unforgiving ancestors. I actually had some sympathy with the baddies all along here and quite enjoyed this mystically charged thriller.

English