Serial Poisoning: Actualizations of the “Yellow Peril” in 1960s Fu Manchu Films

Abstract

This chapter argues that poison does not only appear to be the signature weapon of Fu Manchu, but that the characteristics of poison apply to the master villain himself. The ‘logic of spread’ (Mayer 2013) inherent to the serial figure is linked to the danger of racialized contamination through expansion, evoked by the term “yellow peril.” Focusing on the 1960s Fu Manchu film series, primarily produced for the West-German market, the essay traces the emergence of the trope to German Imperialism and analyses the series’ historical displacements. It shows that in the films, the poison motif rather reflexively points to the serial poisoning by Fu Manchu’s cinematic returns, which can be understood as an attempt to immunize against his imagined ‘toxic’ nature. This becomes especially apparent when, in the last entry The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969, D. Jess Franco), the poisoning leaves the narrative and spreads onto the screen.