This is a typical latter-day film from Peter Sellers in that it's fun without actually being very funny (apart from the appearance of a clockwork tarantula) - painless enough and probably closer to pure Goonery than Sellers had been for some time. If they could have added Spike Milligan as Nayland Smith's aged servant (actually played here by John le Mesurier), Harry Secombe as the keeper of the Crown Jewels, forced to take a cure for obesity (actually John Sharp) and Michael Bentine as the lunatic Harley Street specialist in elephants (actually Clement Harari) you could have had a sentimental Goon reunion. Sellers acquits himself quite well as Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu, while Simon Williams is funny in support as a man from the ministry who is wet - usually in more ways than one. Helen Mirren adopts a stage Cockney accent as the policewoman engaged to track Fu Manchu down, in this pleasant lightweight lunacy.

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