Click on a picture to enlarge it

Alligators and Crocodiles in Movies   The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   You have to get past the bad acting and even worse racism of this pre-code adventure movie to enjoy it, but there is some nice set design and its highlights are Boris Karloff's evil madman of the Orient, Fu Manchu, and his "ugly and insignificant daughter" Fah Lo See (the always beautiful Myrna Loy, who is hardly ugly or insignificant) who gets her kicks out of torturing men. The movie is a good example of a lot of what could be shown in a movie before the Hayes code censorship kicked in a few years later - torture, kidnapping, forced drugging, opium dens, sadomasochistic sex kicks, homoeroticism, human sacrifice, interracial love, and incitement to kill and rape. It's the sort of stuff you can see on daytime TV today, but it must have been shocking in 1932. The movie also shows White Imperialists plundering the treasures of another culture, but that never bothered the Hollywood cencors either, nor did racism, which is so blatant here that it's almost unbelievable. Karloff and Loy are both in yellowface makeup, and they use large shirtless black men as slaves. The Brits claim they will never understand "these Eastern races" and worry that Fu Manchu wants to take their "beautiful white girl." He does, and when he's about to sacrifice her he asks the crowd, whose costumes seem to represent men from all over Asia, if they want a maiden like her for their wife and they all cheer their approval. Then he tells them to "Kill the white man and take his women!" The plot is simple - a British scientist goes to the Gobi Desert to find the lost treasure of Atilla the Hun, including a mask and sword which, if they fall into the hands of diabolical madman Fu Machu, will allow him to empower all of Asia rise up and conquer the world. Fu Manchu kidnaps him before he goes to China and tortures him (under a large bell) but he refuses to talk. Meanwhile, his daughter Sheila, her boyfriend Terrence and others go and dig up the treasures, but then most of them get captured by Fu Manchu. One of the British agents sneaks around searching for Fu Manchu's lair and finds it when he falls through a trap door into an underground dirt chamber where gopher snakes are suspended from wires and other snakes crawl on the floor. Then we get to the alligator scene. The British agent is captured and tied to a torture device where sand falling out of an hourgass on one end causes it to slowly lower the other end into a pit full of alligators ready to eat him. This turns out to be a stupid idea when he unties himself easily and simply jumps on one of the gators and climbs the wall to get out. They must not have been very hungry alligators after all.