Unseen Turkey Day, Hours 7-8: The Castle of Fu Manchu (#323, 1992)

By the third season of MST3K, virtually everything's in place except for a few (major) cast changes still to come: the format, look, and rhythm of the show is honed and polished, and The Comedy Channel has evolved into Comedy Central, no longer running Onion World with Rich Hall or The Sweet Life with Rachel Sweet (I still go to pieces over you, Rachel!) ; not yet running South Park or the comedy of the self-destroying Dave Chappelle. It was during season 3 that I first encountered MST3K as they ran one of their Gamera films, and in fact season three featured re-dos of many of the early season zero Japanese films brought to the US by producer Sandy Frank: the Gamera series, Time of the Apes, Mighty Jack, Fugitive Alien...all culminating in "The Sandy Frank Song":



Man, it's no wonder Sandy Frank didn't want Best Brains to ever have the rights to do his films ever again.

But as we say goodbye to 2010 and throw open our arms to give 2011 a big welcome hug, we're watching episode—or, as the episodes increasingly came to be called by the Mad Scientists, "experiments"—number 323, The Castle of Fu Manchu, a 1969 thriller starring the incomparable Christopher "Am I Saruman or Count Dooku Today?" Lee as Fu Manchu, the deadliest and not at all-Caucasian villain and evil-doer of all deeds that are...um, evil and deadly.




That casting and the year make this movie sound as if it should be pure gold—a Hammer Films take on Sax Romher's sinister and jingoistic villain. Instead, despite the British cast (Richard Greene of ITV's The Adventures of Robin Hood and Howard Marion-Crawford, formerly Dr. Watson in the 1950s Sherlock Holmes TV series), Castle was filmed in Spain and Istanbul and originally released by a German film company. Germany, Spain, Turkey, and England? Oh yeah, those are Europe's best pals. We all know how they've gotten along on projects historically. Also, Lichtenstein had something to do with it all. What, I don't' know. Possibly: catering.

The complicated and haphazard plot of the film itself (Fu Manchu's giant freeze ray, some opium smuggling, various spy and counter-spy maneuvers) is helped by some competent acting: Christopher Lee plays Fu Manchu as earnestly as if his daughter were being held hostage if he didn't turn in a Shakespeare-worthy performance. This is no aid to Joel and the bots—as the Mads' grand experiment is intended to do, this movie (at least temporarily) breaks Joel's mind, reducing him, Servo, and Crow to babbling idiots by the halfway point. How deadly is this film? Let TV's Frank and Dr. Forrester show you:




The Castle of Fu Manchu contains two or three of the most outrageous moments of season three (and that's saying a lot when you watch the whole set of 24 in a row). Joel's attempt to explain to the bots the life of Fu Manchu through his artist's renderings only results in a fit of despair (and a celebratory pie party for the Mads):




There's also quite possibly the bluest joke ever on Mystery Science Theater. Now, as an underaged, little stuffed bull, I don't quite get it myself, I'm told Joel should wash his mouth out with soap...:



And, in one of the most dramatic sing-alongs to a movie's opening credits, the rich soothing singing voice of Tom Servo trills the name of the movie's director, Harry Alan Towers:



Fu Manchu. He's no longer politically correct, but even he would wish you a very Happy New Year. Before he blows up the world. Oh, that wacky Fu!