The Mysterious Fu Manchu Mysteries (1923) were a series of silent shorts based on the Sax Rohmer-penned novels featuring the mystery man of the show’s title, starring Harry Agar Lyons as Fu Manchu, Joan Clarkson as Karamenah, Fred Paul as Nayland Smith, Humberston Wright as Dr. Petrie, and Julie Sudo as Zarmi.
In this episode, Karamenah is convinced to go on a boat trip…
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Notes:
1. Made on October 4th, 2023
2. To watch all of these, please see this playlist on youtube.
We took the boat out on the river.
It wasn’t our boat. It wasn’t even our river. We had no idea idea what we were doing. It was amazing we’d ever got it started, let alone kept it going.
“Imagine owning your own boat,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
“Where would you even put it?” Sam said. “You know, when you’d got where you were going.”
“Maybe they have boat parks,” I suggested. “Pay and display multi-boaties.”
“Maybe no one owns boats,” Sam suggested. “Maybe they’re all stolen!”
She spilled half a bottle of red wine down her life jacket and giggled. She didn’t care. It was stolen too. The wine and the jacket and everything else. Especially the jaunty little captain’s hat.
“Maybe they aren’t even boats!” I said deliriously. “Maybe they all just for show. ‘Oooooh look, I’ve got a boat! Aren’t I rich! Aren’t I clever!'”
“Pretend boats,” Sam said slowly, as if she was quoting something. “Are ships.”
It didn’t make any sense, but we laughed anyway. I spun the wheel or whatever it was called and made us drive around in circles, great arcs of spray splattering around us like rainbows. I fired a flare up into the sky. Part of me didn’t really believe flares existed, but here we were. They were just like in a film, but without the whooshing sound, and not as bright, because it was the middle of the day. No one fires flares off in the day in films. What’d be the point?
“We should steal a plane tomorrow,” Sam suggested, as she vomited into a bright yellow rubber boot that happened, purely by luck, to be between her feet. “Or a tank!”
But by then we were lost, a long way out to sea, sinking, unable to swim. No one ever saw us again. No one ever even knew it was us who stole the boat.
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Notes:
1. Written in the summer of 2020 sometime.
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Notes:
1. Made on March 23rd, 2021
2. And here it is on youtube
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Notes:
1. Made between 27th February and 4th March, 2021
2. An animationless version of Worse Things Happen Out At Sea
3. For no real reason at all
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Notes:
1. I made this between 27th February and March 4th, 2021
2. Which was quite a long time for me
3. But worth it hopefully
4. For these precious 20 seconds
5. Also available as a never ending loop, if that’s the sort of thing you’d want:
6. It is the sort of thing I’d want
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