Black Dragons (1942)

Excellent but underrated film

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Monogram contribution to the war effort. Bela Lugosi plays a Nazi doctor involved in a plot to surgically alter Japanese saboteurs to look like American leaders so they can take their places. A maskless (and Tonto-less) Lone Ranger saves the day. One of the more dreadful of all the cheapies Lugosi made for poverty row. The plot actually sounds like it could be interesting or even somewhat offensive, which itself can be interesting. Unfortunately, it's just a dull way to spend an hour. Lugosi is relatively subdued, which means his critics can't make fun of him as much but it also means his performance isn't very memorable. I like my Bela performances with lots of ham, thank you.

This modest, low-budget, Monogram propaganda release produced by Sam Katzman's Banner Productions pits the man who played Count Dracula against the man who went on to play the definitive "Lone Ranger." "My Four Years in Germany" director William Nigh and "The Corpse Vanishes" scenarist Harvey Gates derived their incredibly far-fetched murder-mystery about a Nazi surgeon who wrecks vengeance on treacherous Japanese who have infiltrated the upper echelons of American industry from Robert Kehoe's story. Basically, the Third Reich dispatch Dr. Melcher (Bela Lugosi of "Dracula" with a goatee) to wield his superb skill as a plastic surgeon to turn several Nippons into dead ringer doubles of influential American industrialists. Dr. Melcher does such an admirable job that the Japanese have no choice but to imprison him for fear that he could expose them. The trouble is they incarcerate him with another fellow who looks just like him! Of course, Dr. Melcher manages to escape, but since Katzman produced this epic on a shoe-string budget who don't know how he got from Asian to America. Several cavernous holes appear in the plot. Nevertheless, the idea is clever. Nigh doesn't waste time telling his tale as Melcher shows up late one evening in the comfortable house of Dr. Bill Saunders (George Pembroke) in Washington, D.C., and repays the Japanese from their evil treachery. Dozens of wartime espionage movies came out during the early days of World War II because these thriller was easier for Hollywood studios to produce. Most of the action transpires in America so the movie makers didn't have to dress armies in enemy uniforms. Indeed, this movies dealt with undercover investigations and it was simple Hollywood to tweak a crime thriller and turn it into a contemporary spy chiller. Mind you, "Black Dragons" was Lugosi's only excursion into the espionage genre. Nonetheless, he plays a villainous Nazi who exacts his revenge on untrustworthy Japanese. Moreover, since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack, the undercover mission that these industrialists were carrying out to sabotage American industry from within was properly fitting for the time. Once Dr. Melcher shows up at Dr. Saunders' house, virtually everybody at the dinner party starts to drop dead, with Kearney as the first. Wallace snoops around Saunder's house and Melchor kills him. Meantime, FBI Chief Colton (Kenneth Harlan) has assigned a handsome field agent, Richard 'Dick' Martin (Clayton Moore of future "Lone Ranger" fame) to conduct the investigation. Not long after Kearney shows up dead at the entrance of the closed Japanese Embassy. Saunder's daughter, Alice Saunders (Joan Barclay of "The Corpse Vanishes"), shows up, but she finds her father a sick recluse behind the locked door of his bedroom. Dr. Melcher claims to be his physician. One by one, Melcher kills the Japanese impersonating wealthy American industrialists. Eventually, with less than ten minutes remaining, one of the Japanese explains with the help of a flashback how Melcher came to do what he did. The performances are good and the Axis enemy is depicted as vile. They turn on each other without a qualm. Along with the revelation about the plastic surgery, "Black Dragons" boasts another surprise. The action takes place primarily in rooms and there are no gunfights or car chases.

This is Lugosi's 3rd of 9 movies for Monogram, and the rating is in comparison to the other 8. ALL of the nine have wild, insane plots and leaps of logic you just have to LIVE with. But that's part of the fun..This one is docked a notch or so for the wooden dialogue between Bela and leading lady Joan Barclay. It sounds like pieces of the I Ching randomly stuck together. This time Bela is killing off a bunch of Japanese spies he fixed up to look JUST LIKE US with plastic surgery. The fun comes when Bela blows their cool and they figure out he's on to them just before he kills each of them. As an added bonus, you actually get to see HORROR makeup used at the end..Yes, it's racist to the hilt. Lugosi gets to call them 'apes', and the word 'Jap' is tossed around WAY too much. Ed Wood fans note: that's Standford Jolly (the judge in THE VIOLENT YEARS) as the head spy in the flash back. Also on hand is Clayton Moore, and he isn't BAD as a fed. A bit more work and he could have been a detective in movies very readily. As it was, he found his once in a lifetime role as the Lone Ranger and stuck with it..but you have to wonder what might have been. But what always fascinates me is Bela's mood and attitude in this one. There is a fatalistic gloom here, a sullen resentment I haven't seen from him anywhere else. At the time he was still bouncing back and forth between Universal and Monogram (BLACK DRAGONS was released between two of their classics..) did the inevitable comparison between the two studios make him think his 9 picture deal was a mistake? His Monogram movie before this one was with the East Side Kids. Lugosi was a classically trained actor who had LITTLE patience for ad libs or fooling around. Did Hall and the gang get to him? In the two movies he did with them he seems to be grinding his teeth, WAITING for someone to end the scene. I dislike reading too much like this into movies, but it's a question I can't get away from. There is SOMETHING about the way he sits in that living room..smoking on his cigar...waiting for the end of it all..

First - nick-623, Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, not 1942. They didn't have to predict the bombing.Second - did nobody notice these six industrialist/lawyers/whatever were missing for a rather long amount of time? They were killed *before* the surgery took place! Third - how the heck did Lugosi get out of cabs without being seen? Fourth - why did the Japanese not just kill him, instead of putting him in jail with a convenient look-alike companion and his surgical kit? Fifth - oh, what's the use? This movie has a few interesting moments in it, but by the time they explain what's going on, you'll probably have stopped watching. If not, you won't care.