As the tale opens, drums sound and we see soldiers lining a courtyard. A man reads charges from a scroll and a prisoner is led out. A basket is laid beside a block and the executioner readies his blade. The prisoner lays down, face to the sky, as the blade swings down. Decapitated, the basket is removed and the witnesses file away. The prisoner was the notorious criminal Fu Manchu, executed in his homeland of China. So begins the 1965 film The Face of Fu Manchu.