MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Aaron1375 I can understand why this is the last of the films, but I have to wonder how five of these things got made. I am guessing that the other films were a bit better as even the Dracula films that Lee starred in started to go down in quality as the series progressed, but even so, none of them were as badly done as this film was. I have never seen any of the other Fu Manchu films so I really cannot say for sure if the quality in them is any better. The whole premise of the films just does not seem very good as they are all focused on the villain rather than the hero. It is like if in the James Bond films had the exact same enemy every time and Bond was more behind the scenes and did not really do much. The action is nearly nonexistent and the same can be said for the plot too. There are also periods when the color of the film will change and then there are a couple of scenes that looks as if they are from other movies included here as well. Just a huge mess of a film, then again, it is the fifth film of the series. Back in the day, sequels generally garnered less money than their predecessors so the budget would continually get cut so that may explain some of it, but not the totality of it! The story shows Fu Manchu sinking a boat with some new process that creates ice in the water; wow, that is so new and innovative. The boat he sinks seems to be a part of a different film. It is in this scene that one of his henchmen tries to stop Manchu by refusing to pull a lever. The diabolical Fu Manchu has servants who will die for him by letting a doctor remove their heart, but a lever is too much! Soon he takes over a castle and Nayland Smith is off to Istanbul to stop the evil madman! I guess James Bond is way too busy stopping way more nefarious villains so the more bureaucratic Nayland Smith is sent instead because you do not really need anyone with the skill set of Bond to take out this villain! Doctors are kidnapped and a dam that also seems like it is in another film is collapsed before we reach the awesome conclusion where no one really does all that much to stop Fu Manchu's plans.This made for a rather good episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is how I saw the movie. When I got the set of DVDs containing this episode I thought this may have been one of those films that was borderline good that they have done over the years. Seeing Christopher Lee was the star is one of the main reasons. I generally love seeing him in anything; however, this film was really bad. I only give it a two because of Lee. The jokes are aplenty, but I do believe they exaggerated how bad this film was. It was not worse than Monster-a Go Go or quite a few others they have done. Just kind of a poorly edited film that liked to change color schemes a bit too much.So this is not really a good film, and it did mark the final film of the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films. Lee is a fine actor, but he is also one of those actors of a bygone era where they actually felt that acting was a job so they appeared in as many movies as possible. Today there are stars that will appear in a film and not do so again for multiple years. I cannot speak for the other films, but if this is as low as they got I somehow doubt the other films are Oscar worthy.

Michael_Elliott Castle of FuManchu, The (1968) * 1/2 (out of 4)The fifth and final film in Christopher Lee's FuManchu series is considered by many to be the worst but I personally found it so bad that I was able to have a little fun with it. The film has FuManchu (Lee) once again trying to take over the world and by now you might be asking when the guy is just going to give up and go home. Anyway, this time he plans on freezing all the oceans in the world so he kidnaps a doctor to perform an operation on the one man who knows how to do such a thing. THE CASTLE OF FUMANCHU isn't a good movie so you shouldn't go into the film expecting anything other that pure silliness. There's no question this is a bad movie but thankfully it's bad enough to be mildly entertaining but I'm sure most people will be smart enough to hit the eject button by the thirty-minute mark. Once again Lee appears to have only enough energy to cash a paycheck as he's obviously not too thrilled about doing this picture. As in the previous film, Lee pretty much just sleepwalks through the film and offers up very little energy. The supporting cast includes Gunther Stoll playing the doctor, Jose Manuel Martin as an opium dealer and cult favorite Rosalba Neri playing an assassin. These supporting players are certainly one of the few good things in the film. The film has a bigger budget than most Franco pictures but that's not saying too much because we still get all sorts of cheapness including some stock footage from the Titanic picture A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, which certainly doesn't mix well with any of the new footage. The film does have some decent cinematography but there's just not enough here to make it worth viewing. Fans of Lee, Franco or FuManchu are bound to be disappointed with this film, which turned out to be the last in the series.

mstomaso It is 1969. Your on your way back to your car at the drive-inn, where your fiancé is happily sleeping off her double shift at the diner and you are about half-way through a film - Folterkammer des Dr. Fu Man Chu, Die (or the Castle of Fu Manchu) - which has already put you through two bags of popcorn and 3 cokes because the popcorn is just so much more interesting, and the worst happens - you can't find your car. Nightmares flash through your mind - maybe your fiancé was so annoyed by the cruelty of your decision to force her into a late night drive-inn triple feature full of Sax Rohmer films so she drove off, or maybe the film got her so upset that she drove off the nearest bridge. Trying to get a hold of yourself, you look up to the screen to verify that you're at the right part of the drive in. No help, all you can see is a smear of dark blue and dark red shadow across the lower part of the screen. After a minute or so, the lighting crew finds the on-switch and some out of focus people show up on the screen. They appear to be three Shriners sneaking up on an Imam who has just begun his afternoon prayer. Still no help. You resign yourself to the fate natural selection has accorded you. You , after all, decided to see this film with your intended reproductive partner, and that choice has probably ruined your opportunity to allow your genetic material to be carried on in the next generation of humans. So you decide to move to California to buy that house on the side of hill overlooking the San Andreas fault where you always wanted to live, and to pursue your dream to rekindle the Fu Manchu series this film killed. More power to you. To be fair, I did not see the touted Blue underground DVD version of the film. Supposedly, this pressing is so much better than what I saw that it is incomparable.Even my television objected to this film. It kept trying to turn itself off, switch channels, etc. It even unplugged the cable converter for a few minutes. Whoever it was that decided that Sax Rohmer's various B-grade stories ought to be made into movies, should be forced to watch all of them in a row - at least once. As they say, garbage in, garbage out. These films are a decidedly acquired taste. And this one is even more difficult to acquire a taste for than Sumuru... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061976/usercomments-8Peruse the IMDb reviews - you will notice that most of the people who write positive reviews for this film do not describe the plot. There are two interrelated reasons for this - (1) there isn't one to be described and (2) they've never seen the film, and simply get a perverse pleasure believing that their opinions might be taken seriously enough to convince people to see the film (a poor assumption, at best). Christopher Lee plays Fu Manchu - an inexplicably powerful meanie who wants something from all of the world's governments (we are never privileged with the knowledge of what in particular he wants, but I couldn't care less anyway), and is threatening to freeze the world's oceans to get it. The technology he is using has been developed by a dying scientist who he has kidnapped, and soon he finds himself having to kidnap a surgeon in order to arrange a heart transplant as well. There are various fight scenes which don't appear to be related to the film and may indeed have been found on a cutting room floor somewhere in the Middle East, or even reused from a previous Rohmer feature (I really expected Sumuru, some of her army of Amazon ninjas, or even Frankie Avalon to show up at one point). There are also a few scenes with Lee standing around looking ominous and using that great voice of his. I am not sure he knew what was going on in the rest of the film, and indeed with that voice it doesn't matter, but these scenes are, nonetheless, the ONLY remotely entertaining aspect of the film. And OH YES lest I forget, there are a few inept 007s who were likely rejected from the extras audition for Casino Royal making some roughly British sounding noises and taking all of this way too seriously.I didn't think it was possible, but this film was even more difficult to get through than Manos: Hands of Fate, and quite possibly should replace it as the worst film of all time. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060666/usercomments-419To state what, in particular is wrong with TCODFM is an easy task - EVERYTHING. The acting is mediocre, the plot is idiotic, the cinematography and editing are so bad that I don't believe TRYING to make a hideous mess of a film would net you anything worse. You'll either laugh hysterically or stare at your screen until you start drooling, unless you take my advice and avoid this. Why did I watch it? I enjoy challenges.

Bucs1960 I cannot believe how bad this movie is!! I should have expected it coming from Jess Franco, the schlockmaster of Eurotrash but I wasn't even prepared for the intense pain that this film caused. What in the hell was Christopher Lee thinking? Granted, he has been in some bombs but this has got to be the very bottom of the barrel. Richard Greene had pretty much become a has-been when this film was made but,unless he was desperate for money, he should have known better. I often wonder how actors can hold their heads up after appearing in films of this caliber....it must be absolutely humiliating.The faults of "Castle" are just too numerous to mention but a few of them go something like this: they were obviously having power failures during filming since the shots are either totally dark or green; the actors can't act (even Lee is bad here) and the badly written dialogue often doesn't match the "action"; the fight scenes involving overweight, over age Greene are embarrasing to watch: the premise of the story (freezing the oceans or whatever they were attempting to do)is feeble; and then there is the "doorway to eternity" which leads to the front porch! Huh?So......if you are looking for a movie so bad that it is good, this is not the one. Watch "Plan 9 From Outer Space" for those kinds of laughs. "Castle" is harmful to small children and animanls and should be avoided at all costs.....even if you are a Chrisopher Lee fan.