EDITOR’S NOTE: The Vengeance of Fu Manchu was on the CBS Late Movie on November 30, 1972 and August 6, 1974.

Directed by Jeremy Summers (The House of 1,000 Dolls) and written by Peter Welbeck — hey, that’s Harry Alan Towers — this is the third of five movies that would feature Christopher Lee as Sax Rohmer’s supervillain Fu Manchu.

Playing double features with The Million Eyes of Sumuru, this time Fu Manchu replaces his arch enemy Nayland Smith (Douglas Wilmer) with a clone. If you’re wondering, “Will this be whitewashing and somewhat offensive?”, perhaps the scene where an Asian man gets facial and eye surgery to look like a Western man will answer you.

This does start off strong with Fu Manchu executing nearly every one of his crime lords for failing him. There’s also Ingrid (Maria Rohm, Venus In Furs), an Interpol agent who becomes a nightclub singer in her disguise, which one assumes will help her as Fu Manchu replaces world leaders with his plastic surgery made army.

Also: Maria Rohm was Tower’s wife. In all the wildness of his career, I’d consider that one of his biggest accomplishments.

While the last movie for Douglas Wilmer as Nayland Smith, three of the actors in this would appear in every one of the films: Lee, Tsai Chin as Fu Manchu’s daughter Lin Tang and Howard Marion-Crawford as Dr. Petrie. Jess Franco would direct the next two films in this series, The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu.