Drums of Fu Manchu (1940)

It's hard to remember now, but there was a time when I thought Fu Manchu was a style of mustache.  Not to say it ISN'T a style of mustache, but it's more that that too.  It's also the name of one of the most inspirational criminal masterminds in detective fiction.  Dr. Fu Manchu was a 'Yellow Peril' villain created by British pulp writer Sax Rohmer in 1911, and is said to have had an influence on villains such as Ming the Merciless, Dr. No, Ra's al Ghul, and The Mandarin.

When I was first getting into serials I heard that 'Drums of Fu Manchu' was one of the very best.  My response to this bold claim was of course: "I thought a Fu Manchu was just a style of mustache."  A little research showed me otherwise.  I started watching the movies, 'Mask of Fu Manchu' staring Boris Karlof and the British series of movies staring Christopher Lee, and tracking down some of the books.  Eventually I got my hands on the classic serial.

Is 'Drums of Fu Manchu' the best serial ever made?  That's a matter of opinion.  Personally, I think it pales in comparison to my favorites like 'Jungle Girl', 'Manhunt of Mystery Island', and 'Perils of Nyoka'.  I can see why people hold it in such high regard, however.  'Drums' has a bit of everything, and is a good example of several different genres of serials.  The first half plays out like a crimefighting serial - the type where a government agent or masked vigilante is trying to take out a gang led by a shadowy mastermind.

There are some Science Fiction elements here as well.  Nothing as extreme as the Rocketships of 'Flash Gordon' or the Jetpacks and Robots of the 'Rocketman' serials.  But there are diabolical murder weapons such as a poison dart hidden in a microphone and triggered by sound vibration, and also a door protected by a force-field that disintegrates anyone or anything trying to pass through.

Halfway trough the serial it switches to more of a adventure serial with treasure hunting, deathtraps such as primitive lasers made from mirrors and sunlight, spear traps triggered by tripwire, deadly caves filled with dropping stalactites, and tombs that slowly fill with poison gas.

The story is a loose adaption of Sax Rohmer's novel 'Mask of Fu Manchu'.  In the serial Fu Manchu is trying to get his hands on the Scepter of Genghis Khan in order to prove himself the prophesied ruler over all Asia who was foretold to appear that year.  He is apposed by Sir Denis Nayland Smith and our young American hero Allan Parker.  Allan's father, an Archeologist, is held prisoner by Fu Manchu as he knows how to find the tomb of Genghis Kahn.  Dr. Parker is killed in the rescue attempt.

Allan doesn't seem too broken up about his father's death at the time, but he sees fit to remind us of the fact that he's out for revenge on Fu Manchu every once in a while just in case we'd forgotten.  In general he doesn't have much personalty and is as smart or as dumb as the plot sees fit.  For example in Chapter 2 he hitches a ride to Fu Manchu's hideout by grabbing onto the running-board of the bad guy's car.  THAT'S SMART.  Later on in the same chapter, he deliberately backs up until he's standing on the secret trapdoor in Fu Manchu's hideout.  THAT'S DUMB.  And hilarious.  Hilariously dumb.

Nayland Smith, the hero of all of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels, is more or less demoted to sidekick.  He's the leader, and does a bit of detective work early on, but it's the less British and more square-jawed Allan who drives the action.  Still, Sir Nayland has it better than Dr. Petrie - the narrator of many of the books -  who has little to no dialog in this serial.

We also have Mary Randolf, who would be the Damsel in Distress under most circumstances, but we have Allan to play that role more often than not.

And what of Fu Manchu?  How is he in this serial?  Visually speaking, he's rather imposing.  And his sinister plots, torture devices, murder weapons, and disguises are top notch.  Unfortunately he speaks in a high pitched and nasally voice that is rather difficult to take seriously.

Allan, Nayland Smith, and company race to keep Fu Manchu from all of the clues leading to the Tomb of Genghis Khan and then race him to the tomb itself.  These chapters are all exciting, but I tend to loose interest after Chapter 11 when they finally find the scepter.  The rest of the serial is spent trying to keep the scepter away from Fu Manchu, and when that fails, stop him from using it to gain power over all the Mongolian tribes.

Standout cliffhangers include the sequence where Allan is attacked by Fu Manchu's giant octopus, the 'Pit and the Pendulum' torture device, and a bomb rigged to blow Allan up as soon as the phone rings.  Mary and Nayland Smith are given instructions to call at a certain time, unknowingly dooming their comrade.

Another great chapter ending is one in which Fu Manchu discredits our heroes in front of the friendly natives, and then tries to sacrifice a hypnotized Mary in the Temple of the Sun.

Although it's not my personal favorite, 'Drums of Fu Manchu' is a serial worth watching.  It's a mash-up of Adventure and Crime Fighting serials, and features a villain who - though largely forgotten now - had a big influence on pop culture from Superhero comics to the villains in the James Bond films.

-Geekboy.

On Villains... Part 2:

A while back I talked about some of the most influential love-to-hate-em villains of my childhood:  Murdoc from TVs MacGyver and Lord Sinister from Lego: Adventurers.

Today I'm going to cover a couple more bad guys from my formative years.  Let's take a look.

When I was a kid there were basically two kinds of people: Those who were reading Harry Potter and those who were reading A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Me and my siblings fell into the Series of Unfortunate Events camp.

In the first of thirteen books, the three Baudelaire children become the three Baudelaire orphans.  After discovering they are the heirs to an enormous fortune they are thrust into the clutches of their evil relative and legal guardian Count Olaf.

Count Olaf spends this and the next 12 books trying time and time again to steal the Baudelaire fortune through any means necessary.  Impersonation, Hypnotism, framing our heroes for murder, Sending them down a rocky mountain cliffside road in an out of control carnival wagon...

The list goes on and on.

I haven't seen much of the 1914 cliffhanger serial 'Perils of Pauline' but I imagine it's melodramatic formula had some influence on 'Series of Unfortunate Events'.  Plot synopsis?  Pauline is an heiress set to inherit a fortune.  However, she decides to travel the world before she settles down.  Mr. Koerner, who is in charge of handling all of Pauline's money, decides she should have an 'accident' while she's off adventuring.  Somehow Pauline escapes or is rescued from each trap he sets.

I wasn't really into serials yet when I was into 'Series of Unfortunate Events', but looking back on it, the cliffhanger serial was an obvious inspiration for the books as well as the 2004 movie.

Book 4, "The Miserable Mill" involves tying an individual to a sawmill, which is one of the things everyone thinks of when they think off serials an melodramas, although the only serial I can think of that uses this as a plot device is 'G-men vs the Black Dragon'.  As the book progressed, the stories began to end in cliffhangers, such as the aforementioned wagon ride from 'The Carnivorous Carnival'.

This made following the books as they were being published a lot of fun.  I remember waiting so impatiently for the next installment.

The movie adds a cliffhanger with a sequence where Count Olaf locks our heroes in a car parked on the railway tracks.  I only really started thinking about the books being patterned after 'Perils of Pauline' when I re-watched the movie awhile back.

Jim Carrey plays Count Olaf in the movie, and he has a knack for stealing the show making you cheer every time he's on screen, even though he's the bad guy.  He does the same thing as Riddler in 'Batman Forever'.  Count Olaf is an over-the-top humorous in the books, but Carrey's unusual mannerisms turn it up to eleven.

Our next villain for today is Professor Ratigan from the 1986 Disney movie 'The Great Mouse Detective'.  In this parody of Sherlock Holmes, Ratigan is less like the Moriarty of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, and more like a cross between Snidely Whiplash and the classic Bond movie villain.  You know how in a James Bond movie the bad guy has pet Sharks, Piranhas, or Alligators?  Ratigan feeds people to a giant cat.

Ratigan has crafted an elaborate plot to usurp the mouse queen's rule over England.  But first he has to get his nemesis, the heroic Basil of Baker-street, out of the picture.  For this purpose he has crafted an elaborate Rue Goldberg machine that involves a phonograph record that triggers an elaborate deathtrap when as the song plays.  Oh, and did I mention that the song is 'Goodbye so Soon,' the best (in my humble opinion) villain song in Disney history?  Vincent Price does the voice Ratigan.  Everything is better with Vincent Price.


So, this is probably less of a 'Geekboy's Favorite Villains' post as it is a 'The Origin of Geekboy's obsession with Cliffhanger Serials' post.  Oh well.  Tell me about your favorite childhood villains in the comments.

On Villains...

 

We love to hate 'em.

I watch the show Grimm.  In the first season, Adalind Schade made my skin crawl.  By the end of season two, I was cheering every time she was on screen.  Sure she was evil, but she was also really cool and funny!  I realized that I loved to hate her.  And I loved loving to hate her.  She's one of my favorite characters now.

I've been doing lots of research on the great villains of classic British crime novels.  Ian Fleming's Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, and Sapper's Carl and Irma Peterson of James Bond, Fu Manchu, and Bulldog Drummond fame.

My fascination with villains makes sense when you think about it.  I read comics, and great Superheroes need to have great villains.  Captain America has The Red Skull, Daredevil has both Kingpin and Bullseye, and of course Batman has Joker.

But my fascination with the arch nemesis goes back further than my reading of comic books.  Here are two of the first villains I loved hating.


First we have Lord Sinister.


Created by the Lego company in 1998, Lord Sinister was the primary antagonist for Johnny Thunder, Pippin Reed and Dr. Killroy of 'The Adventurers' toys and online comics.  Lord Sinister was know by different names over the years, and also depending on the country the stories were published in (All of the characters went through name changes.  In some countries, Pippin Reed and Dr. Killroy were know  as Gail Storm and Dr. Lightning).  Lord Sinister's aliases include Baron von Barron, and Mr. Hates.  I came onboard rather late in the series, with 2003's 'Orient Expedition,' So He'll always be 'Lord Sinister' to me.

Johnny Thunder is a thrill seeking Adventurer and Treasure Hunter from Australia.  He, Dr. Killroy, and Miss Pippin Reed, a photographer for World Magazine, travel to exotic locals in search of treasure to 'Put in a museum, where everyone can see it!'  While searching for treasure they usually found ways to protect the downtrodden and right wrongs and all that good stuff.  But you can bet that Lord Sinister will be close behind, allowing our heroes to do all the hard work, just to steal the treasure out from under their noses and put in his private collection.  Or at least he'll try.  Usually he'll end up triggering some kind of booby-trap, allowing our heroes to nab the treasure.




So, Lord Sinister isn't the most evil villain in the world.  He's a Snidely Whiplash type who wouldn't be out of place in a silent melodrama.  But he was a lot of fun and will always have a special place in my heart.



The other is Murdoc, Played by Michael Des Barres, in the hit 80's TV show MacGyver.  I was pretty much MacGyver's biggest fan, ever since I was first introduced to the show somewhere between the ages of 9 and 12 all the way through my teen years.  Murdoc was introduced as a master-of-disguise assassin, working for the organization-of-evil H.I.T. who has a vendetta against Mac and his buddy Peter Thornton.  He 'dies' at the end of every episode he's in, but is always back for the next season.  He's been blown up, fallen off cliffs, submerged in underground lakes of boiling oil, and fallen into snake pits.  Usually his last words are "MAC-GYYYY-VAAAAAAAA---!" shouted at the top of his lungs.





Murdoc's character evolves quite a bit over the course of the show.  He goes from from maniac-with-a-flame-thrower in Season 3, to a tormented Phantom of the Opera type character in the Season 4 episode 'Cleo Rocks'.  He and MacGyver even call a truce and team up in Season 5's 'Halloween Knights'.

You don't want Murdoc to win and kill MacGyver, per say, but you really don't want MacGyver to ever CATCH Murdoc either.  You like that their never ending chess-match is a stalemate.  And really, that's the way it should be.