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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8446324" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992part 4/5Into The Dark: Oh god. An entire column devoted to Fu Manchu movies? What a theme to pick. He's certainly appeared in plenty of media over the years, but a lot of it has dated … very poorly indeed. This definitely seems like it has the potential for large amounts of cringe. Going into this one with high levels of trepidation.The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu is the first, and as usual for a franchise, one of the better instalments. It still looks pretty clunky by modern standards though, as it was made right on the cusp of talking becoming a thing in movies, and they hadn't really got the hang of recording & delivering dialog yet. At least fully silent films have a style all their own, so they ironically seem less dated when viewed now.The Mask of Fu Manchu sees Boris Karloff do his best with the material he's given as usual, but since that writing leans full tilt into the most racist parts of the source material, that might not be a good thing. The tonal shifts where they replaced directors midway through and did reshoots to lighten things up are also fairly obvious. Definitely having Josstice League flashbacks reading about this.The Face of Fu Manchu is the first film from the 60's revival series starring Christopher Lee. It's less racist than the 30's ones, but looking at the whiteness of the cast that's still not saying much. It does at least make Fu competent as an antagonist right up to the climax, where it all falls apart and feels like they ran out of money. Still doesn't manage to make it seem like something I'd actually enjoy watching. The Blood of Fu Manchu is the 4th Christopher Lee one, and diminishing returns & continuity errors not only with the previous films, but within this one are really creeping in. The director is an exploitation B-movie one, so the amount of gratuitous gore and nudity is way up as well. If you really want to watch it, you can go in knowing it's not for the story.The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu is an utterly dire parody starring Peter Sellers and produced by Hugh Hefner, of all people. A surprisingly classy cast is convinced to appear in it, and then wasted on poorly written crude humour. It managed to kill his cinematic career all the way up to 2007, when Nick Cage stepped into the moustache in the similarly tongue-in-cheek but somewhat better Grindhouse. Did anyone really miss him?The Living City: The Raven's Bluff material once again concentrates on high magic stuff that might be handy for adventurers. A beauty shop run by a powerful illusionist might repel macho idiots, but smarter PC's will see the value in magically disguising themselves for all kinds of larcenous purposes, and she's no slouch with mundane makeup techniques either. If you've got the GP, you can easily change your hair, facial features, even apparent race, (but not sex, because that's ridiculously hard (and even harder to turn back) in AD&D for depressing transphobic reasons) making it much easier to adopt new identities, infiltrate places and get away with it afterwards. As usual, she's got a teenage daughter who's learned the basics of the trade, but chafes at the everyday routine of the job and will take very little persuading to join up with your adventuring party and earn some XP. If your campaign is less about the dungeon delving and more about the social engineering shenanigans, you could definitely get a fair amount of use out of this one. So as is often the case, the attitudes are a little dated, but it's still got plenty of useful detail to draw upon and maybe tweak for your own campaign. I can deal with that.</blockquote>

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