The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929)

By CinemaSerf

The eponymous Chinese gentlemen is sure that his house will be safe during the famous Boxer revolution that attempted to drive the foreign devils from their country at the start of the 20th century. Reduced to just the British legation, though, the Europeans fight back and his home is accidentally struck resulting in a devastating tragedy. This kindly gent now swears vengeance on those who instigated those killings and over a period of years, he narrows down his dwindling list of targets to just the London-based "Petrie" family. Luckily, Scotland Yard's finest - "Insp. Nayland Smith" (O.P. Heggie) is on the case to try and stop the body count from mounting - but is he a match for the fiendishly clever "Fu Manchu" (Warner Oland)? It's probably about twenty minutes too long this - and most of that could be cut from the rather meandering denouement; but Oland makes for quite an entertainingly vengeful villain and Heggie turns in a decent effort too as the shrewd detective. Otherwise, the lighting needed extra wattage and the dialogue maybe a little less verbiage as the story takes us down loads of secret passages and introduces us to the unforgiving ancestors. I actually had some sympathy with the baddies all along here and quite enjoyed this mystically charged thriller.