Film Review
The Mask of Fu Manchu has rightly been condemned for its overt racism,
all non-whites being characterised as uncivilised barbarians prone to every
conceivable vice, but, despite this, it remains the most fascinating and
arguably the best screen outing for Sax Rohmer's oriental criminal mastermind.
At the time it was made, fear of the Chinese was rampant across much of the
western world and Fu Manchu was the epitome of the 'Yellow Peril', symbolic
of a race intent on supplanting the white man as the dominant race on Earth
through conquest and forced inter-breeding. The film's racial stereotyping
and racist language (which, by today's standards, is unpardonably offensive)
are emblematic of an era when the West looked on the mysterious Far
East with fear and mistrust, and it is perhaps no accident that the film
was produced by William Randolph Hearst's production company Cosmopolitan
Productions, Hearst's being one of the loudest voices behind the Yellow Peril
scare-mongering.
Cosmopolitan Productions was a subsidiary of MGM, a company that was drawn
half-heartedly into the fantasy genre in the hope of cashing in on Universal's
recent run of good fortune with
Dracula
(1931) and
Frankenstein (1931).
A company more at home with prestige dramas featuring big name actors, MGM
clambered aboard the fantasy bandwagon with the enthusiasm of a princely
lord boarding a provincial bus, and only a few of its films in this genre
have stood the test of time -
Freaks
(1932) and
Mark of the Vampire
(1935) being the two that deserve particular attention.
The Mask
of Fu Manchu is another of the studio's more noteworthy forays into fantasy,
although the film's excessive racism and highly sexual content (which is
remarkable even for a film made in Hollywood's pre-Code era) have kept it
out of circulation for many years. It is no doubt thanks to its notoriety
that the film has enjoyed much greater longevity than the three Fu Manchu
sound films made prior to this (by Paramount, with Warner Oland as the inscrutable
villain) and the silent serial featuring Harry Agar Lyons made in 1923.
Charles Vidor (the future helmer of classics such as
Gilda (1946)) was originally hired
to direct the film, but he was sacked just a few weeks after filming had
commenced and replaced with Charles Brabin. Right from the off, the
production was a mess, with hefty script rewrites often preventing the cast
from receiving their lines before the day of the shoot. Despite this,
MGM lavished a small fortune on the film (over 300 thousand dollars), which
is more than apparent in Cedric Gibbons' magnificent sets, which are some
of the most fabulous to grace any film of this era. As well as a convincing
reproduction of the interior of the British Museum (complete with walking
mummies - a humorous nod to Universal's
The Mummy), there is a stunning
visualisation of Genghis Khan's lost tomb. Fantastic as these are,
both pale in comparison with the geometric cathedral-like spaces in Fu Manchu's
palace, which tastefully combine expressionistic minimalism with the ornate
grandeur of any oriental palace you care to name. Golden statues sit
comfortably alongside modern electrical equipment that generate the sparks
and death rays without which the home of no self-respecting megalomaniac
would be complete. Sumptuously lit in moody black and white, Gibbons'
sets are jaw-dropping works of art, so impressive that the third rate script
and wooden performances from most of the cast barely register.
On the cast front, only Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy come away from the
film with their reputations intact. Once again buried beneath an elaborate
make-up job, Karloff is as commanding as ever as the sadistic criminal bent
on world domination, Dr Fu Manchu ("My friends, out of courtesy, call me
Doctor"). Whilst underplaying his part as far as he is able, Karloff
effortlessly dominates every scene, his softly spoken delivery having a gentle,
oily quality that makes him appear even more sinister and powerful.
Karloff's Fu Manchu has no need to rave and rant. He is a monomaniac
psychopath who is fully aware of his powers, and as he subjects his victims
to a painful, degrading and terrifying torture (even warning them that toilet
breaks will not be allowed), he does so with the comforting bedside manner
of an attentive nurse, although his soothing words cannot conceal the sadistic
delight that he obviously feels whenever he inflicts suffering and soiled underwear
on a fellow human being. Compared with Christopher Lee's slightly less restrained
portrayal in his Fu Manchu films of the 1960s (even the creditable
The Face of Fu Manchu
(1965)), Karloff's interpretation is far more chilling.
Myrna Loy is no less disturbing as Fu's even more warped daughter Fah Lo
See. It is Loy's character who is the most controversial, an Oriental
beauty who gets to live out the wildest of sexual fantasies and clearly likes
nothing better than to turn pretty white men into her obedient sex slaves.
In the film's most shocking sequence (one that was cut from later prints
of the film, for obvious reasons), Loy is seen relishing the agonies of the
young male lead (Charles Starrett) as he is stripped to the waist and savagely
whipped before her eyes. "Faster!" she cries in a state of delirium,
leaving not a great deal to the imagination as she is carried away on a flight
of orgiastic delight. Not long after this, Loy is seen in her bedroom
with the prostrate and whip-lashed Starret, resembling a lioness about to
gorge itself on her fallen prey. Even by today's standards, such forays
into full-on sexual perversion appear shocking and distasteful.
But this is nothing compared with the scene in which pretty boy Starrett
finds himself on the receiving end of Fu's own, even more bizarre sexual
fantasy, one that takes homoerotic indulgence to a whole new level.
Totally naked, apart from a slender loin cloth strategically placed to conceal
his most intimate parts, Starret's tense body is stretched out and manacled
to an operating table as Fu Manchu
goes through the elaborate process of extracting and blending venom from
spiders, snakes and lizards, to produce a serum which he will inject into
Starret to make him his obedient servant. In the process, Fu Manchu
casually kills one of his slaves and taunts his victim with
the cloying tenderness of a lover. Grotesque as the sequence it, it
has an extraordinary erotic potency. Fu Manchu should have given up
his bid for world domination and gone into the porn business.
If Karloff and Loy never fail to grab our attention, luring us into their
sordid, opium sodden world of malevolence and perversion with amazing ease,
the same cannot be said of the rest of the cast. Admittedly, the script
is largely to blame, with dialogue so corny and so doused in racist sentiment
that it would make a white supremacist blush, but even so the performances
are spectacularly wooden. Lewis Stone's bloodless Nayland Smith and
Charles Starrett's terminally dull Terry Granville struggle to make any impact,
but both are preferable to Karen Morley's interminable histrionics, which
make you want to mute the soundtrack whenever she opens her mouth.
If it was the screenwriters' intention that we should side with this bunch
of anaemic blunderers and habitual racists, all that can be said is that
they fell wide of the mark. If you're like me, you'll end up rooting
for Fu Manchu and Fah Lo See every inch of the way. They may be depraved
and venomous to a fault, but at least they have class and know how to enjoy
themselves.
© James Travers 2016
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