Thursday, April 14, 2011

Radio review – “The Shadow of Dr Fu Manchu” (1939) **

A 15 minute radio serial that went for a number of episodes. I listened to a bunch but not the whole lot - or I may well have because many of the stories were repetitive. Most of the action concerns Dr Petrie and Neyland Smith, who are a sort of buddy act, always being captured and locked up or having Fu Manchu’s assassins try to kill them. Plenty of hidden trapdoors and implements of death, plus clipped accents, brisk pace and the racism of the time (eg comments about "oriental devil"). Fu Manchu hardly appears, but there's a big role for Karamaneh, the slave girl of Fu Manchu who was actually a goodie. Apparently Gale Gordon (from all those Lucille Ball sitcoms) played Dr Petrie!

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