By
Hank Reineke
I’m
going to begin this review by cribbing a couple of sentences from my review of
Blue Underground’s double-feature Blu-ray of The Blood of Fu Manchu and The
Castle of Fu Manchu: Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels were wildly popular
pulps but unapologetically racist in construction, reflective of many western
attitudes of the day. His Fu Manchu series, the first novel having been
published in 1912, were written as blowback in the decade following the long
simmering anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-Christian, and decidedly
anti-British Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901. OK, just needed to get that out
of the way before moving on… but we’ll return to examine this subject a bit
later.
I
suppose it’s fitting the fireworks of the Boxer Rebellion serve as the starting
point of Paramount’s The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929). The film
flashes with scenes of Chinese fighters in Peking battling colonizing Brits
(and other western allies) in dramatic style. To make the uprising more
authentic in its stage dressing, the trades reported (March 16, 1929) the
filmmakers were planning to comb LA’s Chinatown in search of as many as “500
oriental actors and extras.” They apparently fell short of this ambitious goal.
Reporting four days later, the Los Angeles Evening Express derided, “Los
Angeles’s Chinatown has fallen down on the job,” causing the studio to widen
their search to “surrounding cities for reinforcements.”
It
was only a few weeks earlier (March 3, 1929) that Paramount announced Rowland
V. Lee was chosen to direct The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (the true title
of Rohmer’s first novel featuring the fiendish villain). The film’s title was
soon amended to the easier-to-market The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, with
“rehearsals” set to commence immediately on the first week of March. Lee, who
would go on to more famously direct such Universal features as Son of
Frankenstein and Tower of London (both 1939), was short-listed
having recently helmed two pictures for Paramount in 1929: Wolf of Wall
Street and The Women Who Needed Killing. Even as the Boxer Rebellion
battle scenes were being staged, it appears full casting for the film was still
not finalized: several of film’s players were not brought on until mid-April
1929. The film was given a tight shooting schedule, one wag noting “all night
sessions will be the order of things.”
There
were other hurdles to surmount. Hollywood was still making its earliest steps
in their exploration of sound-filmmaking. In April of 1929, the Los Angeles
dailies made note of the challenges of writing for the screen in this new
“sound era.” Filmmakers now needed to pointedly write and cast to address the
vagaries of “foreign” speech patterns and regional dialects. This challenge fell
particularly heavy on the screenwriters. “The dialogue voiced by Fu Manchu and
the other Chinese characters had to be “couched in this peculiar, flowery
oriental style,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “To once digress
from it would have been to possibly ruin the effect of the entire production.”
There
were other issues. There’s more than a bit of stilted over-acting present in The
Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu: lots of theatrical over-emoting throughout,
several actor’s - understandably - not yet conversant with the new realities of
sound-recording. This is most obvious in the performance of actress Jean Arthur
cast as the beleaguered Lia Eltham, the mink-lined imprisoned daughter of the
man Fu Manchu holds responsible for the death of his wife and child. Arthur is
a great actress – she enjoyed a long career lasting from the early 1920s
through the mid-1960s – but her exaggerated silent-era gesturing and doleful
sways present in this first Fu film are a noticeable throwback to days passed.
I suppose Warner Oland’s Fu Manchu fares better than most as his character is
of course, written as inscrutable: reserved, reticent, cunning and
seemingly less susceptible to theatrical outbursts.
As
the title character, Orland of course stands dead center of the ensuing mayhem.
The actor, soon to command greater fame as the Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan in
the Monogram series, was – famously (or perhaps infamously) - not of Asian
descent. He was Swedish. Of course neither the previous of succeeding Fu
Manchus were of Chinese heritage. Oland’s predecessor Harry Agar Lyons (in a
series of silent-era shorts (1923-1924) was British as were two of Oland’s
successors, Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. It’s fair to say Orland was the
most convincing non-Asian actor to play the role. Having worked in silent films
from 1912 through 1926, Oland’s “exotic” (by early Hollywood standards)
appearance allowed him to play an assortment of characters of physical
non-western heritage.
Oland
wasn’t bothered with such typecasting. The amount of work offered was
profitable and playing outside his own culture allowed him the chance to test
his abilities. “I like to play the Chinese roles because most of them give me
the opportunity to do some real acting,” he told the Scripps New Service. “In fact,
I like all the roles that give me a chance for difficult characterizations. I
believe character actors are the real backbone of most pictures. They are the
ones who give the production its atmosphere. And, incidentally, the character
actors are the ones who live the longest in the business.”
Obviously,
one can’t look at these Fu Manchu movies in this 21st Century
without groaning at the stereotypes, the insensitive dialogue, and – of course
- the casting of a non-Asian in the title role. To be fair, Caucasians are
damned and thrown under the bus as well. “The white men are kind and generous,”
Fu Manchu soothes his frightened daughter as he finds his home in the crossfire
between British snipers and Boxer rebels. But his opinion soon changes when his
wife and daughter find themselves collateral damage of Britain’s superior
firepower. Now, with the “white men” having failed in their promise to protect
his family and home, Fu has an awakening. “I’ve been blind,” Fu Manchu rages.
“These whites are barbarians, devils, fiends!” Which sets him off to
exact revenge on the offspring of the westerners he holds responsible.
That’s
essentially the plot device of both films in this new set from Kino Lorber. The
two film’s play out much as movie serials of the 1940s do. Lots of villainy,
lots of episodic action, a distressed gal, and a heroic paramour (in this case,
the handsome Neil Hamilton, “Commissioner Gordon” of TV’s Batman (1966).
It’s not great art, but it was – in its time, no doubt – a suspenseful and fun
thrill-ride. Paramount offered previews of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu
in late spring/early summer of ’29 at the Westlake Theatre. Initial critical
reaction was muted: the earliest previews of the original cut ran the gamut
from “overlong” to “somewhat sketchy.” Regardless, upon national release, the
film did well enough that by late January of 1930, the trades announced both
director Lee and Oland (and indeed the entire primary cast of the original)
were to return for a rousing sequel The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu.
In
his promotion of this second coming, Lee – again, tapped to direct - pointed
out the sinister Fu Manchu was intriguing as he was no ordinary gangster. He
was a super-villain, a worthy adversary to Inspector Nayland Smith (O.P.
Heggie). Their rivalry and brinksmanship was much in the tradition of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes vs. Moriarty. “Dangerous criminals make fascinating
prey,” Lee contended. “Such a man is the fictitious Dr. Fu Manchu. His
mentality, although diverted into wrong channels, is as keen as that of those
who pursue him. He knows what to expect.”
Oland’s
Fu is far more loquacious than inscrutable in this second film. There’s a lot
of bantering dialogue and threats tossed. Perhaps too many. As one critic noted
in his review of The Return of Fu Manchu, “Where is this oriental
laconicism they talk about? Dr. Fu is one of the most garrulous individuals on
record.” Though decrying the film’s excessive verbiage, the reviewer conceded
the film did possess “the virtues of movement… events tumbling over each other
in endless succession from start to finish.” Which sounds, more than a little,
of what critics thought of the crazy but entertaining James Bond opus Moonraker
a half-century later. Not great art, again. But great fun… for some.
I
suspect the audience for this particular Fu Manchu set will be split somewhat
evenly between aficionados of early sound-films and Cinema Study students
examining Race and Ethnicity Depictions of Early Hollywood. There’s a lot to
uncomfortableness to mine through here, no shortage of political and cultural
tripwire hazards in this “woke” era. Are the Fu Manchu pulps and films racist?
Well, of course they are. The question is whether or not the films are still
viable. In his intriguing book Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the
Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Professor
Yunte Huang accepts that many will always view Oland’s Chan as a “Yellow Uncle
Tom,” his impersonations akin to that of a blackface minstrel. But he also
notes that upon Oland’s visit to Shanghai in 1933, local audiences celebrated
the actor for “bringing to life the first positive [Chinese] character in
American film.”
So
it’s all complicated. As an amateur historian, I personally think artifacts of
days ancient and not-so-ancient should be preserved for study and education.
Such storytelling shines light on our past and the best (and worst) aspects of
our world and ourselves. In terms of simple film-collecting, perhaps the
appearance of these two rare-ish Fu Manchu films might pique the interest of
fans of Oland’s far better known Charlie Chan series. In 2009 20th
Century Fox issued an essential five box DVD collection of the actor’s Chan
oeuvre, so there’s evidently interest in Oland’s filmography even some ninety-years
on.
It
might be somewhat disappointing to those more knowledgeable collectors that
Kino chose not to (or perhaps were unable?) to include the third and final film
of the Oland Fu Manchu series on this set. In 1931 Paramount released The
Daughter of Fu Manchu, the last (and, arguably, least) of the series, but
one featuring Anna May Wong as the featured character. To my knowledge The
Daughter of Fu Manchu has never been given a proper official release on
home video, though copies of the film have long been found on the grey-market.
(In 1984 the Video Marquee label issued a clamshell VHS edition of the film as
part of their “Joe Franklin’s Collectibles” series – but I’m not certain this
release had any official sanction). In any case, a two-disc Blu-ray set of this
triumvirate would have surely satiated the desires of the sad Completists
amongst us. I’m not complaining, mind you. While some might wish such dated
fare be removed from circulation as not to offend anyone’s sensibilities, I’m
grateful Kino Lorber continues to shine light on such obscure and mostly
forgotten films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
This
Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of The Mysterious Dr. Fu
Manchu/The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu is presented here in 1920x1080p, dts
sound and with an attractive slipcase cover. The film looks very good
considering its age, though neither print is pristine: there are occasional
flashes of white and black emulsion scratches present throughout, and some
shots appear a bit soft. The set rounds off with several theatrical trailers of
period films as well as welcome commentaries courtesy of novelist and critic
Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog fame.
Click here to order from Amazon