Fu Manchu
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Template:Dablink Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character, a villain of Chinese origin, first featured in a series of novels by Birmingham author, Sax Rohmer.
- "Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."—The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
Fu Manchu has appeared as a villainous character in several motion pictures and cliffhanger serials over the years, and even a television series, The Adventures of Fu Manchu (1956). There were a number made around 1930 including The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929) and The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (1930). The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), featuring Boris Karloff, is considered the best of those produced in the 1930s. The name was revived in a series starring Christopher Lee in the 1960s with The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), and finally The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969). His last major film appearance was The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, a 1980 parody starring Peter Sellers as Fu.
In the Marvel Comics comic book series Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu, Fu Manchu is the father of the title character and is the head of a vast worldwide criminal syndicate and the primary villain of the series. He is the (unnamed) criminal lord of Victorian Limehouse in Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
In the novels, it was not clear what ethnicity Fu Manchu was. Most of the victims of Fu Manchu's crimes were Chinese, and based on the description of his facial features, such as the color of his eyes, Fu Manchu was clearly not of Chinese ethnicity, though he did come from the East. When adapted by Hollywood for film, however, Fu Manchu was transformed into a Chinese character. The character has remained controversial, being charged by some as an example of Western racism and stereotyping of the Chinese.
External links
- The Page of Fu Manchu (http://www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuFrames.htm)
- The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=173) by Sax Rohmer
- The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1183) by Sax Rohmer
- The Hand of Fu Manchu (http://www.blackmask.com/page.php?do=jump&link_id=2760) by Sax Rohmeres:Fu Manchú