Associate producer: Jaime Jesus Balcazar. Producer: Harry Alan Towers. A Terra Filmkunst (Berlin)/Balcazar Productions (Barcelona)/Italian International (Rome) in association with Towers of London (London) co-production, filmed on locations in Spain and Istanbul. An Anglo- EMI presentation, released through M-G-M. The film was made in 1968. No release dates recorded, but U. S. release would have been in 1970, U.K. around January 1972. No theatrical release in Australia. 8,280 feet. 92 minutes.SYNOPSIS: By courtesy of stock footage from "A Night To Remember", the bad old doctor sinks a cruise ship. Unfortunately, he runs out of stock footage, and is forced to kidnap a scientist. Very unfortunately, the scientist has a bad ticker. So Fu is also forced to kidnap his doctors. Even more unfortunately, the bungling kidnappers carry out their work under the very nose of Nayland- Smith. This draws Fu's castle hide- out close to discovery. (Available on passable Optimum and excellent Blue Underground DVDs).NOTES: Although the evil genius vows to return and fight yet another round with Nayland-Smith as the end titles roll, he failed to keep this appointment. "Castle of Fu Manchu" turned out to be the last of the five Lee/Manchu pictures. See my review of "Face of Manchu" for a complete overview of the series.COMMENT: While admittedly a long way from the peaks of Face, Castle isn't all that bad a picture. Mind you, it starts off very poorly, utilizing scads of obvious stock footage from "Night To Remember". But with the credit titles and their change of scene, the visual aspect of the movie improves dramatically. Indeed the real locations in Spain and exotic Istanbul, are the film's best feature. Away from the garish studio sets, Manuel Merlino's cinematography shines.The story rates as okay — a few slow passages here and there — and the dubbing (as usual) is none too hot, but the girls are attractive, the locations fresh, and director Franco manages to muster up just enough pictorial pizazz to offset both occasionally inept scripting and all-over dubbing deficiencies — plus a brace of somewhat forced (Marion Crawford particularly) and/or stale (Richard Greene) performances.

I really feel very out of step with regards to this one because scanning through the other IMDb reviews it became quite obvious that everybody else hated it! I don't really understand the universal dislike though, as this one really didn't seem to warrant this level of abuse. Don't get me wrong, it has problems. The script being a pretty obvious one. The story was very difficult to comprehend. It involved the master criminal Fu Manchu devising a method of turning the oceans into ice by using opium or something. And by way of this he would take over the world. Okay, whatever you say! Yeah, so admittedly, the narrative is a bit senseless.But the thing is, I've seen a lot of Jess Franco movies and I thought this was quite coherent by his standards! In fact, it was from a period in Franco's career where he had more production value at his disposal, so again when people say this is ultra-cheap, I'm thinking it's quite big budget for Jess. I mean, he has even managed to hire Christopher Lee for the title role – I thought he was pretty imposing and well suited to the character to be fair. We also have Rosalba Neri as a gangster chick and she is always worth watching, so again, this is a good thing. Even the blatant lifts from other movies were entertaining enough, such as the whole opening scene that utilises scenes taken wholesale from A Night to Remember. Maybe the pacing could have been better perhaps but this is a constant Franco fault and in here it's no worse than usual. But overall, the film, while being often senseless, did have enough action and Euro cult value to keep me watching. Ultimately, I am probably the idiot for liking this but I guess I'll just have to live with that.

Rightly criticized as the worst of the '60s Fu Manchu films. It's cobbled together from other films (inlcuding past Fu Manchu films) with a new story line thrown in. Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) plans on putting crystals into the world's water supply, freezing humanity and...it's never really clear why, but it doesn't matter. This is an awful film. Jesus Franco must have had his eyes closed directing this one. Lee appears bored senseless and Richard Greene is back as Nayland Smith. Tsai Chin is also on hand as Lee's equally nasty daughter. The script, if you can call it that, features far too many characters, some with seemingly interchangeable names...it's not really possible to keep track of them. Maria Perschy, who worked previously with the likes of John Huston & Howard Hawks plays "Marie" but is frequently referred to as Ingrid. Her hair color also appears to change inexplicably. Franco himself plays Inspector Ahmet.

Director Jess Franco and producer Harry Alan Towers delivered a pretty decent thriller with THE BLOOD OF FU MANCHU. Unfortunately, the same team failed miserably with this awful, incoherent disaster.The movie opens with the evil genius (again played by Christopher Lee, looking uncomfortably bored throughout) announcing to the world his plans to freeze the Earth's oceans. We then cut to a ludicrously out of place sequence stolen from an old German movie about the Titanic sinking. The shipwreck footage is in black and white, while the rest of the movie is in color. No explanation is even attempted! The rest of the movie seems to have been edited together from leftover footage from an aborted Fu Manchu project. The story goes nowhere, and the movie comes to such an abrupt conclusion, it almost seemed like the print I was watching was missing a few scenes! But, I look at Blue Underground's gorgeous new DVD proves that, no, that was the movie just as Franco and Towers made it.There's none of the bizarre trashiness of BLOOD OF FU MANCHU here, just a yawn inducing series of brainless exposition and scenes of people running down dark corridors. The only thing that really makes the Blue Underground DVD worth the purchase is the terrific documentary featuring interviews with Frano and Lee.The scariest thing about THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU is that it's a truly terrible movie, yet it's far better that 90% of Franco's other work! Skip it unless you're a die-hard completist.