BA_Harrison Christopher Lee returns as the titular evil Asian, who is up to his wicked ways again, this time holding the world to ransom by threatening to freeze the planet's oceans. Mwahhahhahhaaa!Of Jess Franco's 204 directorial credits, this is the 23rd that I have seen, with only a handful of those being worth the time and effort. Castle of Fu Manchu, Franco's follow up to his abysmal Blood of Fu Manchu, is - surprise, surprise - another complete stinker.From the get go this is film-making at its most inept: the movie opens with Fu Manchu demonstrating his power by sinking a cruise ship, the director blatantly lifting footage from British Titanic movie A NIght To Remember (1958). A later scene showing a dam bursting borrows footage from Dirk Bogarde film Campbell's Kingdom (1957). These two scenes only serve to illustrate just how lame everything else is. Franco botches numerous fight scenes (rubber bayonets bending as the men do battle), stages the most boring heart transplant imaginable, and commands dreadful performances from all involved, while the use of strong coloured lighting throughout makes the whole thing look incredibly tacky. Worse still, there's none of Franco's trademark sleaze to keep things interesting; what's the point of casting giallo hottie Rosalba Neri and keeping her fully clothed throughout? It's like he couldn't be bothered...

moonspinner55 Christopher Lee is almost always worth a look, but this "Fu Manchu" entry (his fifth and final round in the titular role) isn't worthy of Lee...nor any self-respecting actor. International mishmash via Italy, Spain, West Germany and the UK sounds as bad as it looks, with perilous fiend Fu Manchu and his evil daughter terrorizing the planet with an Opium-fueled device that is able to freeze the world's oceans. Never mind political correctness, this chaotic, poorly-dubbed movie is a real shambles, loaded down with stock footage. Unintentionally funny when it isn't deadly dull. * from ****

JohnHowardReid Associate producer: Jaime Jesus Balcazar. Producer: Harry Alan Towers. A Terra Filmkunst (Berlin)/Balcazar Productions (Barcelona)/Italian International (Rome) in association with Towers of London (London) co-production, filmed on locations in Spain and Istanbul. An Anglo- EMI presentation, released through M-G-M. The film was made in 1968. No release dates recorded, but U. S. release would have been in 1970, U.K. around January 1972. No theatrical release in Australia. 8,280 feet. 92 minutes.SYNOPSIS: By courtesy of stock footage from "A Night To Remember", the bad old doctor sinks a cruise ship. Unfortunately, he runs out of stock footage, and is forced to kidnap a scientist. Very unfortunately, the scientist has a bad ticker. So Fu is also forced to kidnap his doctors. Even more unfortunately, the bungling kidnappers carry out their work under the very nose of Nayland- Smith. This draws Fu's castle hide- out close to discovery. (Available on passable Optimum and excellent Blue Underground DVDs).NOTES: Although the evil genius vows to return and fight yet another round with Nayland-Smith as the end titles roll, he failed to keep this appointment. "Castle of Fu Manchu" turned out to be the last of the five Lee/Manchu pictures. See my review of "Face of Manchu" for a complete overview of the series.COMMENT: While admittedly a long way from the peaks of Face, Castle isn't all that bad a picture. Mind you, it starts off very poorly, utilizing scads of obvious stock footage from "Night To Remember". But with the credit titles and their change of scene, the visual aspect of the movie improves dramatically. Indeed the real locations in Spain and exotic Istanbul, are the film's best feature. Away from the garish studio sets, Manuel Merlino's cinematography shines.The story rates as okay — a few slow passages here and there — and the dubbing (as usual) is none too hot, but the girls are attractive, the locations fresh, and director Franco manages to muster up just enough pictorial pizazz to offset both occasionally inept scripting and all-over dubbing deficiencies — plus a brace of somewhat forced (Marion Crawford particularly) and/or stale (Richard Greene) performances.

verbusen In every television show there are high points....... And there are low points......... And everyone has their own opinions and what someone may consider bad, others may decide is good.So with that out of the way, this is one bad mamma jamma movie and I mean bad in the "it is terrible" way not bad in a 1970's way that it's cool. Why this movie is so bad...... (how bad is it?) This movie is so bad that Mystery Science Theater 3000 can't even salvage it! They are making fun of this movie and one of the robots is crying that he can't take this movie anymore!I was hoping at the beginning part that it would be a laugh fest and they would be riffing all over the movie like Get Smart riffed "The Craw", that's "The Claw" and his "Razor Brazer", that's "Laser Blazer" Now that was hilarious. So with that reference in mind, I was hoping this would be a good episode of MST3K.But because the writers for that show are all big time liberals and politically correct, there is a sad lack of Chinese gutter humor, instead it's referenced mainly to the British (that's liberal writers for you). Either that or really there is so little dialog from the Chinese characters including Dr Manchu that they just could make any jokes out of that material.Either way, along with Ring Of Terror, this is on the LOW side of MST3K for funniness. Movies that were so boring that the comedians couldn't even riff them enough to be entertaining.Now if I had to watch this movie without MST3K? Ah, no way, it would have turned off after 30 minutes TOPS.If you want to see a good Fu Manchu movie see "The Mask Of Fu Manchu" with Karloff, it's awesome, this deserves to be in the bottom 150 movie list of all time. If you want to see a bad Fu Manchu type movie thats still fun, see "Battle Beneath The Earth" MST3K would have done a lot better to riff that movie, although MGM probably wouldn't let them so they picked this public domain turkey instead.You have been warned, now go in peace, and move along. Zero stars out of 10 if I could vote that way. 4 stars with the MST3K, this is even one of their worst episodes.