The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu
      
Director: Rowland Lee
Year: 1930
Rating: 5.0
Everyone is back for this sequel to The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. This might be a bit surprising to some who saw Fu Manchu die in that previous film from a poison meant for Petrie. But this begins the tradition of Fu Manchu apparently dying at the end of one film and then returning in the next one. A lovely tradition, I think. It was apparently a drug that made him seem dead. Luckily, they didn't ask for an autopsy. As the film begins, he gets to attend his own Chinese funeral in the casket. When the chanting ends and everyone leaves, he slips out and again swears vengeance on the remaining name on his list of death. Jack Petrie (Neil Hamilton). Petrie is now engaged to the adopted daughter of Fu Manchu, Lia, played again by Jean Arthur. Nayland Smith (O.P. Heggie) is on hand as well telling a reporter what a great man Fu Manchu was before the British accidently killed his wife and son. Even the clearly meant to be gay butler (William Austin) returns as silly and scattered as ever.




Just as they are about to do the I Do's, the Amah from the previous film who saved their lives comes running down the aisle to scream that Fu Manchu is alive. He lives! That night he kidnaps Lia and sends a note to Petrie basically stating that "Meet me at midnight. Of course, it is a trap. An Oriental man would never care enough about a woman to come but I know a white man has no choice". We white men have to work on that weak sentimentality. In this one Fu Manchu has a lair more deserving of him and shows a slight sense of humor. When one of his men brings the wrong man, he says "The servant problem is a difficult one". And when Smith tells him that he attended his funeral, Fu Manchu tells him that he hopes to soon return the compliment. A jovial Fu Manchu. But still crazy after all these years. "I use that drug to imitate death on my enemies. Then after three days they wake up. In a buried coffin and they really die. Screaming" He must be great at parties.




There is the usual back and forth of captures and get aways, of cigars that are guns, of a drug that wipes out your brain which only Fu Manchu can restore - but the best part is when Smith and Fu Manchu sit around a table and trade compliments and trade secrets. Two old friends in which they both want to kill the other. But who is Fu Manchu without Nayland Smith and who is Nayland Smith without Fu Manchu. Daughter of the Dragon, the third film in this trilogy from Paramount also stars Oland as the fiendish doctor and again he is trying to kill Petrie (played by a different actor) but this time he uses another daughter we knew nothing about - a Chinese one - played by Anna May Wong.