Black Dragons (1942)

Director:

William Nigh

Writers:

Harvey Gates (adaptation)
Harvey Gates (screenplay)

Release Date:

6 March 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller | War

Tagline:

His WEIRDEST Role!

Plot:

A cabal of American industrialists, all fifth-columnists intent on sabotaging the war effort, are methodically...

Plot Keywords:

Sabotage | Fifth Columnist | Embassy | Nazi | Plastic Surgeon

Cast

Bela Lugosi	...	Dr. Melcher / Monsieur Colomb
Joan Barclay	...	Alice Saunders
George Pembroke	...	Dr. William Saunders
Clayton Moore	...	FBI Agent Richard 'Dick' Martin
Robert Frazer	...	Amos Hanlin
Edward Peil Sr.	...	Ryder (as Edward Piel Sr.)
Robert Fiske	...	Phillip Wallace
Irving Mitchell	...	John Van Dyke
Kenneth Harlan	...	FBI Chief Colton
Max Hoffman Jr.	...	Kearney
Frank Melton	...	FBI agent
Joseph Eggenton	...	Stevens, the butler
I. Stanford Jolley	...	The Dragon (as Stanford Jolley)

Also Known As:

Yellow Menace (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

64 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #3105)

Company:

Banner Productions

Trivia:

This is Bela Lugosi's only spy movie. At the time, he was addicted to morphine and suffering from very bad arthritis, and had to work to keep the money rolling in.

Quotes:

Alice Saunders: Will we see you again?
Monsieur Colomb: Who knows, in this crazy world!

Movie Connections:

Featured in Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997)

More Monogram tripe with some hilariously daft plot twists

This piece of tacky WW2 propaganda has Bela Lugosi kill off various fith columnists and leave their corpses outside the Japanese embassy in Washington (with a prominently placed "Closed" sign on its door). Most of the film has Bela darting in and out of various "hidden" rooms in his main foe's rather small house and sneaking up on people from behind them. For example, everyone enters the cellar by going round the side of the house and through some front doors above the cellar; Bela, however, appears to get in via some inside door (so he doesn't have to leave the house). In a scene near the end he drags one of his victims through a previously unseen curtain in the living room and into some huge, medieval-type room with a long table that had previously not featured in the house at all and had somehow been missed by the large contingent of FBI men. Another scene has him sneak into a small room below the stairs, as hero and heroine ascent the stairs, so he can somehow get into the upstairs room of his Doctor victim before the others. These momentary pleasures, though, are outweighed by the ludicrous climatic flashback plot revelation in which it is revealed that Lugosi is a Nazi plastic surgeon who has transformed Japanese agents into these American-looking fifth columnists. The daftest moment, in a thoroughly daft film, comes when Lugosi is double-crossed by the fiendish Orientals and thrown into a cell into which, conveniently, is another prisoner who looks exactly like him (but sans beard) and is about to be released. The Great Man gives a chuckle and takes out his beard-trimming kit (that the Japanese have helpfully left him with). Welcome to Monogram; a Universe all of its own. See also The Ape Man and The Corpse Vanished for more of the same.