Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

Wizard-8 I've never been a fan of the Fu Manchu franchise both with the original books and with the various films that have been made from the books, namely because they smack of racism (the so-called "yellow peril", to be exact.) So I had some prejudice when I sat down to watch "The Castle of Fu Manchu". After watching it, I'm pretty sure that even fans of Fu Manchu would consider this film to be the pits. It's not only notorious schlock producer Harry Alan Towers at his worse, he got the notorious Jesús Franco to direct, a director who didn't make many good (or even merely okay) movies during his prolific career. There are many things wrong with the end results. It's really cheap, from the tacky sets to blatant use of stock footage. The actors (including even Christopher Lee) seemed bored and demoralized to be there. It's frequently poorly photographed and lit. But the biggest problem with the movie is that it's unbelievably boring. There's almost no action, and the character of Fu Manchu not only doesn't show up very often, he doesn't do that much that's interesting. The movie is a pretty painful slog to sit through, and long before the end you'll be thankful that Fu Manchu was retired from the big screen for the next eleven years before he returned one more time in the 1980 comedy "The Fiendish Plot Of Dr. Fu Manchu" - which was almost as bad as this movie.

bensonmum2 Even if it's only two or three sentences, I generally like to begin one of these with a brief plot outline. In the case of The Castle of Fu Manchu, that's pretty much impossible. The movie is a mish-mash of ideas that don't necessarily fit together to form a coherent plot. The movie may start out with Fu sinking a ship, but that storyline is quickly abandoned in favor of another . . and another . . and another. In the end, I'm not sure what the movie's about or what happened.But the biggest single problem with The Castle of Fu Manchu is that it is extremely dull. You would think that any movie that included a ship sinking, a fight for a castle, explosions, kidnapping, and other 1960s secret agent type trappings would be action packed. Well, you would be wrong. The movie has no pace, no zip, and no energy. It's as if the life had been sucked out of the movie. Add to that some less than stellar acting, abominable lighting, amateurish editing, and no continuity and you've got one fine mess of a movie.On the positive side, The Castle of Fu Manchu does feature Christopher Lee and Rosalba Neri. Also, there's the…err…uhm...did I mention Christopher Lee and Rosalba Neri? I have now seen The Castle of Fu Manchu twice – once with and once without the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary. And, as hard as this might be to believe, I actually prefer this one without the MST3K treatment. This MST3K episode has to be one of the worst I've so far seen. The jokes don't work. And, I was really put off by some of the comments that showed a complete lack of understanding about how European movies of the 60s were made.

boomaga1 I own every single episode of MST3K, have seen each many times. Been an ardent fan since 1991.To this day, I find e. 323 "The Castle of Fu-Manchu" the most stomach-churningly bad one of all - not that it's the most inept, most intrinsically AWFUL Mistied movie of all time - I leave that to "Beast of Yucca Flats" and "Manos"... But for me, personally, this one punches me in the gut and kidneys. Other MisTies may disagree - but I say Bring on the Coleman Francises, your Ray Dennis Stecklers, your Bert I. Gordons... Leave me OUT of Fu-Manchu land. The levels of "bad-good" and "bad-bad" get turned upside-down when a movie is Mistied - but no amount of riffing by Joel and the bots can save this technicolor-spraypainted dog turd. So much I'm confused about - this is a Spanish film made in Turkey ? did they just completely run out of money before post-production ? Has any movie ever had worse color printing/timing ? Did they not think anyone would notice B&W stock footage spliced back-to-back with color soundstage shots ? Did they just lose 50% of the film and spliced together as best they could ? Just what on earth was it about ? What was with the ending ? What happened ?I think the reason this one MST3K movie makes me so livid mad and sickened more than any other is that, up to a certain point in the film-making process, "The Castle of Fu Manchu" had a budget and some promise - there are some nice costumes, some good casting, pretty women, and cool locations. But in the end, I feel like I've watched some guro/snuff film - physically sickened. In fact, the last time I had the flu, nauseous, retching up everything I'd ever eaten EVER until there was nothing left to reverse-peristalsyze but stomach lining, I couldn't help but have the movie's bored, listless mid-tempo title music playing in my head while I dry-heaved and my head spun and I cursed the day I was born.In conclusion, if I met this movie on the street, I would slap it in front of its own mother and spit on its shoes.Other MST3K movies suck. "The Castle of Fu Manchu" FAILS.