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I like Chinese food and I also like Italian food and don't even mind if they are cheap, but I couldn't eat both at the same time. That's sort of what you get here in this later instalment in the Fu Manchu series, which marries in unholy wedlock the Eastern intrigue of the menace of Dr Fu Manchu and his number one daughter and a Spaghetti Western interlude involving a gang of Mexican bandits under one Sancho Lopez in this very low-budget would-be adventure feature.
In truth it's more low than high adventure with Christopher Lee almost sleepwalking through his title part and probably happy to take a rest for the middle of the film when the spotlight turns to Senor Lopez and his band of not-so-dangerous men who murder, rape and pillage a small village out in the jungle.
As for the usually pursuant Nayland Smith, he's sidelined by one of Fu Manchu's travelling harem of kissing beauties the touch of whose lips leads to blindness and then death unless an antidote can be found. Besides the tea-loving Dr Petrie and a young girl nurse who's the daughter of a scientist murdered earlier by one of Manchu's assassins, there's a swarthy pretend Indiana Jones archaeologist who joins up with Smith, Petrie and the girl to thwart Fu's nefarious plan for world domination.
Spiced up with numerous shots of scantily clad young women in chains, the director also isn't above exposing a breast or two to shall we say, expand the target audience.
In the end though, it's really a very cheap looking movie, with stilted, often expository dialogue, too many close-ups, lame fight scenes (one of Fu's goons is knocked cold by nothing more than a swift knee to the groin) and wooden acting. Poorly edited besides and with inexplicable jumps in continuity too it's like eating a dish of cold spaghetti and rice, unappetising and bizarre.
score 3/10
Lejink 25 July 2019
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5017316/ |
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14-3-2021 18:06:08