The third and last of Warner Oland’s turn as Fu Manchu sees him cede top billing to Anna May Wong, who plays his daughter. It refers to the previous two films – he’s still after the descendants of the family he blames for the death of his family (I think Holmes Herbert is playing the role that Neil Hamilton played in the first two films; Bramwell Fletcher is the juvenile lead, Herbert’s son). There’s an unfortunate return of the silly Ass comic relief.
The film is striking in that it has two leads played by genuine Asian actors –Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, who plays a secret agent. We see Fletcher crack on to Wong – Wong says hang on I’m not Caucasian and Fletcher says he prefers girls like her. It was probably a mistake to have Wong not realise her heritage until a fair way in. And this is the third film where the Fu Manchus are motivated by revenge – what happened to world domination? Slack!
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