|
|
|
The Blood of Fu Manchu
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Blue Underground Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (22nd July 2025). |
|
The Film
 After the events of The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, megalomaniacal criminal mastermind Fu Manchu (The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism's Christopher Lee) has made his new lair in a lost Incan city in the Andes where he has discovered the key to this particular tribe's secret of a poison that can be carried in the bloodstreams of women and is only fatal to men. He abducts ten beautiful women with the help of his loyal daughter Lin Tang (The Virgin Soldiers' Tsai Chin) and his dacoits in order to infect them with the poison and send them out to assassinate various important men who have crossed him, starting with British Secret Service agent Denis Nayland Smith (Sword of Sherwood Forest's Richard Greene) who is struck blind by the kiss of Celeste (Journey to the Far Side of the Sun's Loni von Friedl) in London before she is assassinated upon being caught by Nayland Smith's partner Dr. Petrie (The Charge of the Light Brigade's Howard Marion-Crawford). Knowing that his time is running out, Nayland Smith travels with Petrie to Peru where he suspects Fu Manchu is hiding after the disastrous jungle expedition to find the lost city that claimed the lives of all but his spy Carl Janssen (The Treasure of the Silver Lake's Götz George). Janssen, however, has been detained on charges of the murder of expedition scientist Dr. Wagner by Governor Mexical (Dr. Orloff's Monster's Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui) who is really just looking for a good chess playing partner. They eventually meet up through Wagner's nurse daughter Ursula (Count Dracula's Maria Rohm) who has witnessed the massacre of bandits lead by Sancho Lopez (The People Who Own the Dark's Ricardo Palacios) who has been abducted by a gang lead by "an Oriental woman." With Nayland Smith growing weaker and reports of other important world figures struck blind and staring to die, Petrie, Janssen, and Ursula mount an expedition to infiltrate the lost city in search of an antidote. Meanwhile, Lopez has endured enough torture for Fu Manchu to believe that he is not one of Nayland Smith's spies and has in turn been appointed to kill Nayland Smith and capture his compatriots with Carmen (Frances Khan) at his side to deliver the "kiss of death" when he completes his mission; but Lopez may not be as stupid as he appears. Based on characters created by turn-of-the-century British pulp novelist Sax Rohmer – previously adapted for the British silent serial The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu, Paramount's trilogy The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, and Daughter of the Dragon starring Warner Oland who would subsequently play Charlie Chan for Fox's long-running series before being replaced by Sidney Toler, MGM's pre-Code shocker The Mask of Fu Manchu with Boris Karloff, and the later Republic serial Drums of Fu Manchu and television series The Adventures of Fu Manchu – The Blood of Fu Manchu was the fourth of five films from globe-hopping, tax break-hunting British producer Harry Alan Towers starring Lee, Chin, and Crawford with revolving Nayland Smith actors starting with Anglo-Amalgamated's The Face of Fu Manchu and The Brides of Fu Manchu followed by the Shaw Brothers co-produced The Vengeance of Fu Manchu. Shot in Rio de Janeiro at the same time as The Girl from Rio, pseudo-sequel to another Rohmer property The Million Eyes of Sumuru – hence the "special guest star" appearance of Shirley Eaton (Goldfinger) even she did not know about – the film and its follow-up The Castle of Fu Manchu are generally regarded as the nadir of the series and the worst of Towers' collaborations with director Jess Franco despite them going on to make seven more films together in a short period. The Blood of Fu Manchu out of the two at least has a more coherent plot bringing its individual story threads together eventually; on the other hand, Fu Manchu has failed three times already to take over the world and his plan here is just getting even with people who have annoyed him in the past. Franco also appears to have no interest in the serious approach of Towers' script (penned again under the pseudonym "Peter Welbeck") so Greene's Nayland Smith is a bit of a dud and George's Janssen gets to do some stunt work but is sidelined for the middle of the film. Franco seems far more interested in Towers' muse Rohm – who took leading and supporting roles in the other Franco and Towers collaborations, the most impressive ones being her sadomasochistic guide to Eugenie, the Story of Her Journey into Perversion and the titular Venus in Furs – the dotty support of Crawford, and the antics of Palacios giving Lee and Chin little to do but pose. The first of the Franco and Towers collaborations has the pair finding their footing in terms of how much skin they can bare – Isaura de Oliveira does a dance in a see-through negligee, Khan gets forcibly stripped for her venom injection, there are some fleeting glimpses of the other female prisoners in some striking setups of chained women behind bars that would inform Franco's later women-in-prison films starting with 99 Women, and there is a still of a topless Rohm that may have only been for publicity rather than a deleted scene – but there is little actual eroticism and the violence is similarly blunted. The climax so obviously leaves things open for a sequel with Nayland Smith and Janssen machine-gunning Fu Manchu's dacoits but never aiming for him or his daughter who they would simply like to believe have perished in the explosion, but of course the end credits are preceded by "The world will hear from me again!" over a shot of a silhouetted stand-in that looks nothing like Lee and the final entry in the series. Although Fu Manchu would pop up in some novels with the permission of Rohmer's estate, his last film appearance to date was also Peter Sellers' swan song as actor and director in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. Towers, meanwhile, would return to Rohmer one more time in 2003 with the futuristic Sumuru starring German actress Alexandra Kamp (Dracula 3000) and Michael Shanks of the then-popular Showtime series Stargate SG-1. Franco, who was inspired by pulp fiction and comics from a young age, would affectionately pay homage to Rohmer's super villain in later films like Esclavas del crimen and would himself play a Fu Manchu knock-off in the eighties film La sombra del judoka contra el doctor Wong and the digital video-era film Dr. Wong's Virtual Hell with muse Lina Romay as both "Nellie Smith" and "Tsai Ming". A Spanish/West German/American co-production – although Towers was British, much of his initial funding for each of these productions came from an uncredited American International Pictures – the film's credits in each of those versions are a muddle with some actors in large roles uncredited in the English version, different billing order of the cast ("special guest stars" Eaton and Greene get sixth and seventh billing in the German version) and different attributions of authorship – with Manfred R. Köhler credited as co-writer with Towers as well as dubbing direction on the West German version while the Spanish credits include an "ambientacion artistica" as a confusion of art direction with "artistic direction" of dubbing actors credit for German softcore/hardcore director Hans Billian (Run, Virgin, Run) while both of them might have been quota credits since Billian was reportedly credited as director for the German version of Venus in Furs (and Franco himself directed the dubbing of some of his own films in later years as budgets and crews shrunk). 
Video
The Blood of Fu Manchu was released theatrically in the United States by Commonwealth United who handled a number of Harry Alan Towers productions from the period in an ninety-one minute version titled "Kiss and Kill" that rearranged some scenes and then in a ninety-three minute television version by National Television Associates with some Vaseline lensing of nudity titled "Against All Odds". The longer ninety-four minute version under its original title was released in the U.K. and other territories while the West German co-production version "Der Todeskuss des Dr. Fu Man Chu" (81 minutes) had its score credited to White and Gert Wilden (Hotel of Dead Guests) - who replaced White's main title theme with something more akin to a Eurospy comedy piece – while the Spanish verison "Fu Manchú y el beso de la muerte" (84 minutes) credited Wilden but featured the White score. The "Kiss and Kill" version turned up on a couple of tape editions, the American Video release of which replaced the title music with "oriental" disco music while the "Against All Odds" version appeared under that title from NTA Entertainment (later Republic Pictures Home Video) and from Star Classics in LP mode as "Kiss of Death". Although the NTA cassette featured a topless still of Rohm, no version has turned up with this shot which might have been just for publicity or shot but never used. The ninety-four minute version finally turned up under its original title on DVD from Blue Underground first in the four disc The Christopher Lee Collection and then separately along with its co-feature and a handful of other Franco/Towers films while overseas rights owner Studio Canal licensed it to DVD twice in the U.K. as a double feature with The Castle of Fu Manchu as a two-sided DVD from Warner Bros. and a dual-layer disc fromOptimum Releasing while the German Dr. Fu Man Chu Collection featured all five films in both their original English versions and shorter, rescored German cuts. Blue Underground's 2017 double feature Blu-ray regrettably turned out to be upscaled from the SD masters with a 4K restoration finally turning up in the U.K. first as part of Indicator's The Fu Manchu Cycle and a separate standard edition. Blue Underground's 2160p24 HEVC 1.66:1 widescreen Dolby Vision UltraHD and 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray transfers came from a separate 4K restoration – possibly the same underlying raw scan – with very different results. While the Indicator transfer had rather sedate colors, Blue Underground's 4K restoration features more saturated colors in line with the older DVD transfer's grade. The 4K version looks slightly darker with deeper shadows outside of the optically-compromised blacks of the opening credits superimpositions while the Blu-ray looks a tad brighter than both the 4K and the Indicator version. While fine detail is sometime subject to the pans and zooms of Franco and cinematographer Manuel Merino (Horror Rises from the Tomb) but more apparent are a number of handsome compositions in what previously seemed like a clumsily-photographed film, highlighting the film's actual production value from the Inca temple studio sets to the Rio and Spanish locations like the richly-appointed Governor's palace as well as the textures and colors of clothing (Lin Tang's dress in the opening sequence looked completely black in earlier transfers while here the top is black while the skirt is a dark blue). Greens are also more striking from the glow of the snake pit to Yuma's transparent gown and the jungle greenery and some other instances of color gel lighting. 
Audio
The sole feature audio track is an English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono mix which features plenty of post-dubbing due to both the international co-production cast and the use of voice-overs in cutaways obviously meant to cover some of the rough edges in post-production. The English track is the primary version and the German and Spanish tracks could not be included because each of those cuts runs at least ten minutes shorter. Optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are included and the former appears to have been QC'd since there are none of the transcription errors resulting from either text-to-speech AI or transcribers without an ear for accents. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by a new audio commentary by film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson who describe Towers' treatment of the Rohmer property as "Fu Manchu fan fiction" and the films coming after both the resurgence in popularity of the novels in the sixties as paperback reprints along with the impact of the Bond series in which Lee, Chin, and Eaton all appeared in different entries. They discuss the novels and earlier adaptations in the context of the "yellow scare" and the over-the-top nature of the Karloff film while speculating that the Towers series did not meet with the same controversy because Lee brings the character more dignity and less camp while the plot does not hinge on racial subjugation. They also note Lee's annoyance that Towers tossed the source stories out the window and Franco's likely input in the film's "pulpy flavor." They also note that Greene has a rather thankless role here as the supposed hero and also point out the beginnings of Franco's women-in-prison imagery and reveal that Lee's make-up was the work of an uncredited Stuart Freeborn (Star Wars). Ported from the earlier DVD and Blu-ray is "The Rise of Fu Manchu" (15:05) featuring interviews with Franco (speaking French), producer Towers, as well as stars Lee, Chin, and Eaton. Franco discusses his love of serials and pulp fiction, Towers as a producer and writer, and both his admiration of Lee as well as noting the actor's disdain for the project compared to his Hammer work that Franco describes as being made by people with no love for horror. Lee expresses annoyance that Towers did not stick to the novels as well as revealing his reticence to ask Chin how she felt about playing such a character. Chin does describe the roles as racist and searching her conscience when taking them as a working Asian actress in the West. She also reveals that she would have liked her character to be a nymphomaniac like Myrna Loy in the Karloff film. Eaton reveals that she was not aware that a scene shot during The Girl from Rio would be included in another film.  "Sanguine-Stained Celluloid" (27:34) is a new interview with Stephen Thrower, author of Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco who discusses the period of Franco/Towers productions and their tangled, complicated co-production financing. He reveals that Towers first noticed Franco when seeing his internationally successful West German film Succubus and brought him on to finish Jeremy Summers' Eve and how Towers involvement afford Franco higher budgets and a higher tier of name actors. Thrower also discusses the impact of stripping the source of its racial elements and not replacing it with anything else, transforming Fu Manchu into a regular super villain and Nayland Smith a flat hero that proved less interesting to Franco than antihero Lopez and the antics of the villains. Extras also include the international trailer (2:59), the "Sax Rohmer's Kiss and Kill" U.S. theatrical trailer (1:41) as well as an extensive poster & still gallery of more than one-hundred and eighty images and the RiffTrax edition (76:37) of the film riffed by Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy that is more MST3K-esque obnoxiousness. 
Packaging
The discs are housed in a keep case with a reversible cover and the first pressing includes an embossed slipcover.
Overall
Often regarded as the nadir of the Fu Manchu series and the worst of Jess Franco's and Harry Alan Towers' partnership, The Blood of Fu Manchu recovers some of its luster in 4K.
|
|||||
|