Skip to main content

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) - Charles Brabin



The Internet Movie Database lists this as a horror movie. I don't find it to be that exactly. Boris Karloff churns out a pretty chilling performance as the evil and sadistic Dr. Fu Manchu. A doctor with a touch for the dramatic and a love for torture. He gets a lot of pleasure out of torture. It may not be a true-to-the-color horror picture but it is a decent delve into the terror realm.


A group of scientists, on an expedition are searching out the sword of Genghis Khan for study. However, Fu Manchu want's to get his grubby hands on the sword so that he can raise Khan from the dead and he would come destroy the entire Western World, especially the white dudes. Manchu really doesn't like white people in this movie. He actually says in a speech to his followers "Kill the white man and take his women!"

The effects were really good, they did a cool Tesla Coil thing in Fu Manchu's laboratory. They made the movie look really neat and clean. The copy I watched wasn't that bad either. Of course Karloff did a decent job of carrying the movie. The other actors really come up short in a number of scenes. The acting isn't the high point though. Check it out. The effects are enough for you to really sit through it.

Kill the White Man and take his Women!

  • The Chinese government criticized this movie when it came out. 
  • This is a pre-code movie and walks the line when it comes to decency. 
  • Filmed in Culver City, CA. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t

Spookies (1986) - Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran, and Brendan Faulkner

It's impossible to get a decent movie when you take two films and just squash them together. That is essentially the story of how this movie came together. The film started as Twisted Souls. However, according to the financial backer they didn't have enough horror. So they ended up hiring another guy to come in and add a monster in virtually every scene.  This movie started out being directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran. It basically is the tale of two sets of teenagers that arrive to a strange building surrounded by a strange cemetery. It was your usual tale of teenagers in a big hows with a few monsters. Then they brought in Genie Joseph and added even more. Like a haunted birthday party, a murderous cat-man, zombies, and an old wizard. It really became a smorgasbord of horror with a very thin plot-line leading it around. This movie is hard to summarize in a conventional way. It just packs so much.  The most interesting part of this movie are defini

Le Diable au Convent (1899) - George Melies

Le Diable au Convent is longer than the two previous Georges Méliès ventures into short form horror. This particular French short shows the Devil himself running a convent and terrorizing the poor old nuns that live there. However he is finally vanquished by the good of Faith. This is yet another Méliès classic, showcasing the art work that really goes into his short film-making. This is one of the earliest examples of a horror movie that could rely on its elaborate set design and artistic design. Everything in this film, although horribly aged, has been packaged extremely well. If you are a fan of production and set design then I would highly recommend just about anything that Melies has his name on. Though nothing that is considered too extreme actually happens, Satan does have his way with a convent. The satanic imagery itself must have kept this film on the traveling carnival circuit. It certainly wouldn’t fit into the good moral bag that society shoved itself into back in