Monday, March 23, 2020

THE MASK OF FU MANCHU (1932)



PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*




MGM’s loose adaptation of Sax Rohmer’s same-title novel, published in the same year, presents a mixed bag to the acolytes of Fu Manchu.

On one hand, the film is much more entertaining than the so-so novel. The three credited writers clearly display familiarity with the overall mythos of the devil-doctor as it had developed up to that point, and they sought to build upon Fu’s reputation for ingenious tortures, less evident in MASK than in the earlier books. The script dispenses with the book’s dull device of a fictional Muslim revolutionary, and instead imagines that the Chinese evildoer seeks to inspire an uprising of diverse Easterh factions by finding the relics of the formidable conqueror Genghis Khan. Arguably, this trope—that of unifying the East to rebel against Europe’s colonial authority—is a major source of Fu Manchu’s appeal, and this stand-alone film certainly captures all the implicit horros of such a rebellion, far more than the two films starring Warner Oland (reviewed here and here).

On the other hand, even though the tortures are inventive, the torturers, Fu and his daughter Fah Lo Suee, are much more one-dimensional than they are even in the least of Rohmer’s novels. To the writers, both villains are merely unregenerate sadists, and though both Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy chew the scenery with vim and vigor, no one would think of this Fu and Fah as, respectively, a “superman” and a “superwoman.” Karloff’s Fu boasts of his numerous collegiate degrees, but the script doesn’t really play up his intelligence or his ferocious dignity. Perhaps it’s a measure of the script’s antipathy for the character that it’s the only English-language Fu-film in which the venerable villain is killed at the end, with no ambiguity about his return.

The rather fusty plot of the novel is accelerated here. Fu’s continual enemy Nayland Snith is first seen informing archaeologist Lionel Barton (played here as a standard English gentleman, not the egotist of the novels) that the latter’s quest to unearth Genghis’s tomb is of the utmost importance. Smith is somehow aware of Fu’s plan to acquire the Khan’s relics—a scimitar and a golden mask—in order to unite all of Asia against the West. Despite giving Barton this warning, Smith does nothing to protect the scholar, so that he’s abducted by Fu’s men quite easily. This incident gives the writers ample opportunity to subject Barton to a memorable torture. However, sicne Barton’s absence doesn’t prevent his expediton from proceeding to Mongolia to unearth the tomb, it seems peculiar that the oily mastermind even bothers trying to pressure the archaeologist for inside info. Karloff’s Fu never says anything to justify the torture, and since the audience never sees Barton break, it seems like a massive waste of the villain’s time and effort. I found myself wondering, “Given how highly visible the expedition is, why doesn’t the evil mastermind just shadow the Europeans until they reach their goal?”

Indeed, apparently the writers realized this was their best course too. Despite Smith’s lectures about the monumental consequences of unearthing the tomb of Genghis, he doesn’t take along any armed guards. Aside from Mongolian coolies, the expedition consists of Smith, a handful of archaeologists (one of them, Van Berg, named for a character in the fourth novel), and the standard romantic couple. In the novels the romance originates from Lionel Barton’s niece Rima and her English suitor Shan Greville. The movie-script changes these to Barton’s daughter Sheila and her suitor Terry Greville, both of whom are thoroughly American despite Barton’s Brit-heritage.
After the expedition unearths the tomb and collects the relics (despite a supposed curse compared to that of King Tut), Fu’s assasins attack the party, albeit unsuccessfully.

Providentially, Fu happens to have transported Barton all the way to China, and he attempts to extort Greville into surrendering the relics in exchange for the freedom of Sheila’s father. Greville takes the relics to Fu’s hideout, but unbeknownst to him, he’s carrying counterfeits of the originals, which Smith had made for reasons that are never at all clear. Fu’s wrath against Greville leads to a scene which may be the film’s most perverse use of torture: the villain orders the stalwart hero whipped, and Fah, who has obviously formed an attraction to Greville, watches the whipping and excitedly commands the slaves “Faster! Faster!” A subsequent scene implies that she intends to enjoy Greville without his consent, but Fu has another plan, using one of his many mind-control drugs to make Greville his pawn. Whereas in the novel Fah Lo Suee entrances Greville to simulate ardor out of a melancholy desire for romantic connection, here it’s obvious that sex with the Chinese villain’s daughter signifies nothing but degradation.

Greville obeys Fu’s will and brings the villain not only the Genghis relics, but also his fiancée. Considering that the film is famous for a line in which Fu exhorts his followers to “kill the white man and take his women,” the Asiatic mastermind shows no interest in degrading Sheila. He only wishes to use her in a pagan sacrifice to his gods, to further inflame the Asian tribes when Fu shows them the relics that prove his fitness to be the new Khan.

Fu also captures both Smith and Van Berg and subjects them to torturous traps, but following a tradition rightly parodied in the AUSTIN POWERS films, the villain assigns no guards to watch the captives. Smith escapes and frees both Van Berg and Greville, leading to a violent conclusion in which the white guys not only slay Fu but also massacre all of the rebellious tribesmen with Fu’s own weapon, an electrical arc capable of being used as a death-ray. The slaughter is then followed by a light-hearted coda in which the white men feel relief when they behold a dim-witted Chinese fellow working in a position subservient to their authority.

It’s hard to know how seriously the director and writers took this farrago of racial myths. Certainly they weren’t concerned about offending Asians of either the Near East or the Far East, nor is there any suggestion that any Asians might have a legitimate beef against colonialism. Even the first Warner Oland film is a little more liberal on that score. Still, the film’s racial myths seem too outlandish to inspire the conviction of even the full-fledged racists in the audience. The alteration of Fah Lo Suee from a melancholy superwoman into a man-eater is one example of the outlandishness, as is a follow-up scene in which a tearful Sheila “de-programs” Greville with the power of her love, and so triumphs over her iniquitous rival. In her autobiography Myrna Loy regarded the film as trash and claimed that she and Karloff were the only ones who tried to have fun with it, but it’s possible to see the writers amusing themselves with the overheated melodrama, rather than trying to make the material convincing, as Sax Rohmer did. Thus MASK is fun on the kinetic level, but its greatest signifance may be that its basic plot was recycled, with far greater poetic resonance, in the superior serial DRUMS OF FU MANCHU.

To touch briefly on the film’s phenomenality, most of Fu’s devices register as uncanny, even his mind-drugs, which as mentioned aren’t as infallible as the ones in the book-series. However, the electrical arc-cum-death-ray is enough to transport the movie into the realm of the marvelous.


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