Written by Irene Kuhn, Edgar Allan Woolf and John Willard, it was based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Sax Rohmer.

Karloff, who was fresh off his role in Frankenstein (1931) for Universal, found the film did not have a completed script and was given his lines during and after his daily preparation in the makeup chair.

Fu Manchu intends to use Khan's sword and mask to proclaim himself the reincarnation of the legendary conqueror and inflame the peoples of Asia and the Middle East into a war to wipe out the "white race".

Barton is kidnapped soon afterward and taken to Fu Manchu, who tries bribing his captive for the tomb's location, even offering his own daughter, Fah Lo See.

Captured by Fu Manchu, the party is sentenced to death or enslavement, but not before Sheila manages to bring Terry back to his senses.

Sheila is to become a human sacrifice, Smith is to be lowered into a crocodile pit, and Von Berg placed between two sets of metal spikes inching toward each other.

Using one of Fu Manchu's own weapons—a death ray that shoots an electric current—the men incapacitate the archvillain as he raises the sword to execute Sheila.

While Terry frees Sheila and carries her away, Smith and Von Berg incinerate Fu Manchu's followers using the same weapon.

After witnessing a man he believed to be the head of a dope-smuggling gang in London's Chinatown area, author Sax Rohmer used his memory of the event for his first novel, The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1913).

[4] Rohmer's work in 1932 included a serial entitled The Mask of Fu Manchu that was published in Colliers magazine from May 7 to July 23, 1932.

[6] On August 1, 1932, film producer Hunt — began dictating the storyline and plot elements such as torture scenes that Irene Kuhn, Edgar Allan Woolf, and John Willard would collaborate on over the next two and a half months.

[7] Woolf was a contract writer who would contribute to MGM films like Freaks (1932) and Willard was the author of the play The Cat and the Canary.

Karloff recalled that the makeup was "extremely bad" and that while in the chair he received four sheets of paper that would become the opening shot of the film.

"[10] Myrna Loy, who played Fah Lo See, Fu Manchu's daughter, described herself as being "tossed" into the film by the studio and that she told one of the producers "I can't do this...

[11] The same year, MGM received a letter from the Japanese American Citizens League to remove the film from their catalogue, stating that "Fu Manchu is an ugly, evil homosexual with five-inch fingernails while his daughter is a sadistic sex fiend.

[22] Variety proclaimed that "this time they should have let the doctor rest in peace", finding Morley miscast, Karloff was still performing as Frankenstein's monster, while Myrna Loy was "playing stock".

"[24] Kim Newman writing for Empire found Karloff "camply compelling" and that the film's plot "gets lost amid a procession of bizarre, perverse incident.