THE RETURN OF DR. FU MANCHU (1930)
Article #1236 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-2-2004
Posting Date: 12-30-2004
Directed by Rowland V. Lee
Featuring Warner Oland, O.P. Heggie, Jean Arthur

Dr. Fu Manchu fakes his own death in order to have another chance on avenging himself against Dr. Petrie.

The three movies in Warner Oland’s Fu Manchu series are quite entertaining, but reportedly they have precious little to do with Fu Manchu as presented in the Sax Rohmer novels. I haven’t read any of these, so I can’t make a comparison, but I do know that in comparison with some of the other Fus I’ve seen (notably, Boris Karloff’s in THE MASK OF FU MANCHU), Warner Oland’s is positively cuddly and benign, while still proving to be a resourceful villain. This is the second in the series, and is a direct sequel to THE MYSTERIOUS DR. FU MANCHU, with all the surviving main characters back with the original actors in their respective roles. Unfortunately, that also means that the character of Sylvester is back, which means we have more scenes of his annoyingly prissy cowardice (and he doesn’t even have the marmalade line to redeem him this time). Still, this one may well be the most enjoyable of this series.