FU MANCHU

Welcomes guys and ghouls to the tatty old Tomb of the Trumps! And this time we have a special déjà vu edition! Allow me to explain...

Alright then, firstly here we have a famous villain who needs no introduction - Sax Rohmer's master criminal Fu Manchu! And this likeness is very obviously based on a publicity still from 1932's Mask of Fu Manchu, where the evil mastermind was played by the great Boris Karloff. Yes, for once the title and the card art match!

This was the only time Karloff the Uncanny played Rohmer's fiend in human form, and is widely considered the best of the Fu Manchu movies produced in the 1930s. However this is not the first time we have encountered the Devil Doctor in these packs of cards... For in the preceding deck, we had a card entitled Dr Syn, which as we discovered was actually the man who inherited Boris' mantle as the big screen Fu Manchu - Sir Christopher Lee, in one of the 1960s outings for the Lord of the Strange Deaths, Brides of Fu Manchu!

And oddly enough, the next card in our deck features a return appearance too...