Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) is hidden with his evil daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) in a lost city he has found in the jungles of South America. He discovers a poison deadly for men through kiss and he abducts ten women to infect them with the poison to destroy his enemies. Then he sends one woman to London to kiss his greatest enemy, the Scotland Yard agent Nayland Smith (Richard Greene). Nayland is blinded by the poison and his friend Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion Crawford) travels with him to the jungles in South America to seek out Fu Manchu expecting to find an antidote. They team up with agent Carl Jansen (Götz George) and soon they learn the scheme of Fu Manchu for world domination.

"The Blood of Fu Manchu" is a silly and lame adventure of the infamous Fu Manchu by Jess Franco. The acting is dreadful and the plot is confused and boring with no emotion. The speeches of Howard Marion Crawford and Götz George are very difficult to be understood and most of the women are beautiful actresses. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not Available on DVD and Blu-Ray

The fourth entry in the Fu Manchu series with Sir Christopher Lee is a very mild diversion at best. Lee, playing the dastardly arch villain, appears to be just going through the motions. This time, his fiendish plan is to abduct a dozen sexy young women, and use them as assassins. Their blood is filled with poison and they are dispatched to various major world cities to murder Fu Manchus' enemies. On the side of good are Fu Manchus' chief nemesis, Nayland Smith (Richard Greene),Carl Jansen, a so-called "archaeologist" (Gotz George),Dr. Petrie (Howard Marion-Crawford),and Ursula Wagner (Maria Rohm),a nurse.

Another collaboration between screenwriter / producer Harry Alan Towers and the extremely prolific director Jess Franco, this is going to be awfully disappointing for those people that love Francos' ultra-sleazy 1970s output. Titillation is minimal. As a jungle adventure / pulp nonsense bit of entertainment, it's okay, but it falls short of any potential. Overall, it lacks style and energy, and some viewers may even find it boring. Even the action scenes aren't very exciting. The location shooting in Spain and Brazil is adequate, and there are some very fine looking ladies (also including Shirley Eaton of "Goldfinger" fame as The Black Widow) to add to the scenic value.

Lee is just okay, unfortunately, although there is pleasure in watching Tsai Chin ("You Only Live Twice") as Fu Manchus' sadist daughter Lin Tang, and the lively Marion-Crawford. Ricardo Palacios is amusing as a bandit leader, but the film simply spends too much time with his uninteresting gang. Greene, credited as a "guest star", doesn't get all that much to do.

If you're a fan of Lee and / or Franco, you could definitely do better than this.

Five out of 10.

Regardless of the reputation of the film, Christopher Lee is/was such a good actor, who was seldom less than watchable (mostly a redeeming quality in the bad stuff),that he alone is a reason for seeing it. He was the main reason for seeing any of the five late-60s Fu Manchu films where he played the titular character. If it weren't for him there would have been no knowledge of the films or any incentive in watching them.

This was a series of films that started off decent but very quickly and drastically declined with each film. Only 'The Face of Fu Manchu', which started the series off, rised above average, the others ranged between slightly watchable to dreck. The latter of which 'The Blood of Fu Manchu' is very, very close to being, it is often considered one of the series' worst and have to completely agree with that (second worst for me) with the ever so marginally worse 'The Castle of Fu Manchu' ending the series on a major low.

A still underused Tsai Chin gives the best performance in 'The Blood of Fu Manchu'. She has a menacing iciness and seemed to be the only cast member who was trying without overdoing it. There is an occasional exotic-ness that was nice to see.

One however does sort of expect to see Lee as a redeeming quality, not so here. He does give one of his worst performances here, here looking stiff and he goes through the motions, neither of which characteristic of Lee. All the cast have very little to nothing to do, with Nayland Smith even managing to be out of place here, and all but one (Tsai Chin) are wooden or lifeless. Jess Franco gives "talentless hack"-like direction that indicated that he had absolutely no idea what to do with the film, and there is a heavy hand and no heart. 'The Blood of Fu Manchu' looks cheap, especially the editing which looked rushed and incomplete while the sets mostly lack authenticity and vibrancy. The music is completely unmemorable and neither fits or appeals on the ear.

Was not surprised that the script was worse than weak, at its very cheesy and stilted worst it was diabolical, and anybody who manages to not unintentionally laugh out loud deserves a medal. The story was all over the place and actually wasn't much of one at all the very rare times you could understand it, and furthermore not being distracted by the beautiful but acting-deprived ladies added gratuitously. My comprehension is usually fine (like to think so anyway),but found myself completely lost at sea frequently. There is absolutely no tension, no suspense and because one is exhausted by the bizarreness getting quickly increasingly over the top there is no fun. Also found it a very tedious film with too much time spent with the bandit gang that felt like padding. By Franco standards, and with most of his trademarks 'The Blood of Fu Manchu' is pretty tame.

Summarising, a bad film with not much redeeming about it. To see Lee give a bad performance and wasted is unforgivable. 3/10