Fu Manchu

On the data. This page exists because the character is well known and hard to find laid out honestly. So, plainly: Fu Manchu is a racist caricature. He was created in 1913 as a Yellow Peril figure, an Asian criminal genius whose villainy is presented as a function of his race, at a time of organised anti-Chinese feeling in Britain and America. The novels and the films carry that framing throughout. Every screen version listed here has a white actor in the part: Warner Oland, Boris Karloff, Henry Brandon, Christopher Lee and Peter Sellers. This was contested at the time, not only in hindsight. The Chinese Embassy in Washington filed a formal complaint about the 1932 MGM film on release. The American State Department asked Republic to stop making these films during the Second World War, because China was an ally. Rohmer's American publisher declined to publish further books in the series for the duration. With that said, here is how the material is actually organised. Rohmer wrote thirteen novels. The first three, from 1913 to 1917, are a tight trilogy narrated by one character. He then stopped for fourteen years and restarted in 1931 with a different narrator, a changed spelling of the name and a soft reboot, so the remaining ten are effectively a second series. Five of the thirteen have different titles in Britain and America, so the same book shows up twice on many lists. On screen there is almost no continuity. The 1923 and 1924 British silent serials stand alone. The Paramount films of 1929 to 1931 form a loose trio. The 1932 MGM film is unconnected. The 1940 Republic serial is its own thing. The thirteen television episodes in 1956 are their own thing and were cut off early by a dispute with Rohmer. The only sustained run is the five Christopher Lee films between 1965 and 1969, and they decline sharply: the first two were made by one director and the last two by another, in versions that circulate under at least five different titles at wildly different lengths. Those last two are not listed here for that reason. The 1980 Peter Sellers film is a parody, was the last authorised screen appearance, and was the last film he completed before his death. One more thing likely to confuse a search: The Vengeance of Fu Manchu from 1967 and The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse from 1972 are different films, and the same director worked on both franchises.

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