Hot Picks
|
|
|
The Brides of Fu Manchu
UK/West Germany 1966
produced by Harry Alan Towers for Hallam Productions, Constantin Film
directed by Don Sharp
starring Christopher Lee, Douglas Wilmer, Heinz Drache, Marie Versini, Howard Marion-Crawford, Tsai Chin, Rupert Davies, Kenneth Fortescue, Joseph Fürst, Roger Hanin, Harald Leipnitz, Carole Gray, Burt Kwouk, Salmaan Peerzada, Eric Young, Wendy Gifford, Poulet Tu, Danni Shersdan, Denis Holmes, Maureen Beck, Michael Chow, Kristopher Kum, Tommy Yapp
screenplay by Peter Welbeck (= Harry Alan Towers), based on characters created by Sax Rohmer, music by Bruce Montgomery
Fu Manchu, Harry Alan Towers' Fu Manchu
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
|
|
|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
The daughters of leading scientists and industrialists are kidnapped,
and these scientists are then quick to act strangely and all start working
for Wireless International - now if that doesn't suggest a
conspiracy, what does? Of course, Scotland Yard's Nayland Smith (Douglas
Wilmer) is quick to take on the case, and quick to suspect Fu Manchu
(Christopher Lee) - and he's absolutely right of course. Fu Manchu you
have to know needs all those scientists' and industrialists' expertise to
build himself remote controlled bombs to eventually blow up all major
cities, and to demonstrate his power, he threatens to blow up the Windsor
Castle. And while Smith and friends do everything to evacuate and protect
Windsor Castle, where the royals are living, Fu Manchu is blowing up the
Windsor Castle, the excursion boat. Smith soon gets a handle on Fu
Manchu though, after the villain has kidnapped Marie (Marie Versini),
daughter of professor Lenz (Joseph Fürst), and when Fu Manchu tries to
get his hands on Lenz through her, Smith has him substituted by Franz
(Heinz Drache), her fiancé. Soon, Smith tracks down Fu Manchu's trail
to somewhere in Africa and storms his underground headquarters with the
French Foreign Legion while Marie and Franz start a rebellion within Fu
Manchu's realm - all that while Fu Manchu himself tries to blow up an arms
conference in London via remote control. In the end, all the good guys
get away, while Fu Manchu's headquarters are blown up because Smith had
his remote control signal jammed. Fu Manchu gets away though ... Howard
MArion Crawford returns as Smith's sidekick Dr Petrie, Tsai Chin as Fu
Manchu's daughter Lin Tang. The second of Harry Alan Towers' Fu
Manchu-films, this is pretty much your routine Euro-espionage
fare: A pan-European cast of actors ranging from the rather stiff to the
actually quite good, special effects work that's not necessarily up to its
requirements, a plot full of elements from 1930's pulp novels (when
several of the actual Fu Manchu-novels were written),
scientific inventions that are not necessarily rooted in actual fact, and
a bunch of sexy girls. All this, carried by an unimaginative directorial
effort, doesn't necessarily result in a good film of course - but a fgun
piece of nostalgia nevertheless.
|