Producer Harry Alan Towers said he decided that "the time was ripe for Fu Manchu. It has all the ingredients of Sherlock Holmes plus a touch of the Kaiser's Yellow Peril. I bet more people have heard of Fu Manchu than Mao Tse-Tung. And anyway these days you couldn't have a better nationality for a villain." He said his intention from the beginning was to make "four of (sic) five of these" but denied the films were made to cash in on the James Bond craze: