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.

I really feel very out of step with regards to this one because scanning through the other IMDb reviews it became quite obvious that everybody else hated it! I don't really understand the universal dislike though, as this one really didn't seem to warrant this level of abuse. Don't get me wrong, it has problems. The script being a pretty obvious one. The story was very difficult to comprehend. It involved the master criminal Fu Manchu devising a method of turning the oceans into ice by using opium or something. And by way of this he would take over the world. Okay, whatever you say! Yeah, so admittedly, the narrative is a bit senseless.

But the thing is, I've seen a lot of Jess Franco movies and I thought this was quite coherent by his standards! In fact, it was from a period in Franco's career where he had more production value at his disposal, so again when people say this is ultra-cheap, I'm thinking it's quite big budget for Jess. I mean, he has even managed to hire Christopher Lee for the title role – I thought he was pretty imposing and well suited to the character to be fair. We also have Rosalba Neri as a gangster chick and she is always worth watching, so again, this is a good thing. Even the blatant lifts from other movies were entertaining enough, such as the whole opening scene that utilises scenes taken wholesale from A Night to Remember. Maybe the pacing could have been better perhaps but this is a constant Franco fault and in here it's no worse than usual. But overall, the film, while being often senseless, did have enough action and Euro cult value to keep me watching. Ultimately, I am probably the idiot for liking this but I guess I'll just have to live with that.

This film is a total hack job--cheap throughout, dull and slapped together with no regard for the pain inflicted on the poor audience. Despite being a truly terribly movie, it's also apparent that there is a group of people out there (probably Christopher Lee fans) who have slammed all the understandably negative reviews with gobs of "not helpfuls". Take a look--see what I mean. Many films that scored it 2 or 3 (which it clearly deserved) are slapped with many such appellations. Yet, considering how almost all the reviews are this negative (or worse) and the overall score just above 2 (that's pathetic),idiots think they are showing loyalty to their odd little cult by slamming the reviews! Get a grip, folks.

The film is a terrible mess and it's obvious in the first five minutes. When you see footage taken from A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (a black and white film) and it's spliced into new color footage, it just looks sloppy. Plus, the lab scene with Bert Kwouk seems to be lacking all context as well as common sense. Just after Fu Manchu explains the system's failsafe mechanism to prevent explosion, he then goes on to completely ignore it--with very predictable results. He also later threatens the world with extortion even though he hasn't worked out all the details of his plan--including obtaining the important formula that only one very, very sickly man knows--and he'd rather die than help Manchu!! In fact, Fu is a total idiot throughout the film--killing off allies, needlessly wasting minions and soldiers, ignoring all advice and being the complete embodiment of all the dumb clichés about super-villains. Every stupid mistake made by the Blofelds, Scaramangas, Dr. Evils, etc. of the world are all made by this moron in one film!! Yet, despite having the IQ of a tomato, the audience is expected to believe he's a threat to mankind!? Maybe Fu should have consulted the Evil Ovelord web site (at www.eviloverlord.com) to avoid making all these mistakes.

As for the rest of the film, apart from lifting footage from A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, footage at the end of the film is very sloppily added from other films as well. The action is also dull and the film slogs along to a very pathetic and anticlimactic conclusion. Considering that the film had Christopher Lee (at about 6'6"--an interesting choice to play a Chinese criminal) and that the previous films in the series had been reasonably engaging, it's no wonder this final pathetic film marked the end to this series. Avoid like the plague--a truly sloppy and unengaging film.