Trivia / The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu

• Acting for Two: Peter Sellers plays both Fu Manchu, Nayland Smith, a Mexican bandito and an antique dealer.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, unknown. Box office, $10,697,276.
• Directed by Cast Member: It is not officially acknowledged, but Peter Sellers directed about 95% of the film, after firing the credited director, Piers Haggard days into shooting. The UK director's guild doesn't have an equivalent to the "Eastwood Rule" that prevents actors or other crewmembers displacing the credited director, so Sellers was able to get away with it, and even installed his wife Lynne Frederick as a producer.
• Fake Nationality: Peter Sellers as both Fu Manchu and a Mexican bandito.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Fu Manchu's worsening physical state and Nayland's mental instability both seem like inclusions by Haggard and the other credited writers as a way to explain, and possibly excuse, Sellers' own ill health and listlessness coming through in his performance.
• Troubled Production: The production of the film was troublesome before filming started, with two directors—Richard Quine and John Avildsen—both fired before the script had been completed. Peter Sellers also expressed dissatisfaction with his own portrayal of Manchu. His ill-health often caused delays. Arguments between Sellers and director Piers Haggard led to Haggard's firing at Sellers's instigation and Sellers taking over, with his long-time friend David Lodge directing some sequences. Piers Haggard later recalled:
  It was a very disagreeable experience on that film. I was brought in on an off-chance. He [Sellers]’d agreed to do a fairly stock Hollywood comedy thriller, similar to The Pink Panther really, playing a detective and a villain. And he’d fallen out of love with that project and didn’t want to do that script. They said, "Okay, what do you want to do?" and he said, "Let me go off and do a bit of rewriting". So he went off with a Hollywood hack and turned it into a series of Goon Show sketches. The executives were absolutely appalled. They thought, ‘Oh my God, we thought he had a picture and now we’ve got a development situation.’ I knew one of them, so they said, "Maybe this guy Haggard could do something with this". So I got three weeks’ work to supervise a rewrite, which we did. We made Peter’s script much more coherent, turned it into something with a bit more of a beginning, middle and end. And they were very pleased with that so I got the gig. But then unfortunately within about two weeks my love affair with Peter Sellers was over but I had to soldier on. I did soldier on but it was no fun, absolutely no fun. Then just towards the end of the shooting he decided, which had been obvious, that either he would go or I would go so they got rid of me. I didn’t have much choice. So I was retired and he directed for the last week or so. It was pretty much a disaster from beginning to end.
• Uncredited Role: Peter Sellers also contributed to the film's script but forewent any credit for writing.
• Wag the Director: Peter Sellers had a lot of clout on the film. He went through three directors before directing most of it himself and re-wrote the script. Simon Williams, some years after this film's release, recalled that Sellers had insisted that all the actors have vitamin injections as he felt their acting "lacked energy".
• What Could Have Been: Michael Caine was in talks for Inspector Nayland Smith.
• You Look Familiar: The henchman who uses up the Elixir Vitae after setting himself on fire is played by Burt Kwouk who is best known as Cato from the Pink Panther films that also starred Peter Sellers. Fu Manchu lampshades this by stating the trope almost word-for-word.

  Dr. Fu Manchu: Your face is familiar.

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