Black Dragons (1942)

Black Dragons (1942)** (out of 4) Low-budget propaganda piece from Monogram has Japanese men getting plastic surgery so that they look like Americans and can spy on us. Dr. Melcher (Bela Lugosi) shows up in the United States and starts to unleash his plot to help the Nazi party.BLACK DRAGONS was produced right after Pearl Harbor was attacked and it was released in March so it was one of the first films to deal with WWII in a different way. There were many films that talked about or hinted about the ongoing war but this one here gave audiences something different in the fact that America was now in the war and this here was obviously meant to try and scare people.With that being said, the plot itself is quite silly but I'm sure a much better director and a much bigger budget could have done something better with it. A lot of films deal with plastic surgery but to have it used to change the appearance of someone so that they could spy on America was hard to believe and especially in a film like this. Clocking in at just over a hour, the film is poorly edited, poorly acted by some and the direction is pretty lackluster as well.Obviously films like this just needed to come in on budget and that was good enough for the studio. Lugosi turns in a decent performance in his role but he isn't given much support. The film moves well enough and ends quickly but there's no doubt that it's pretty shallow from start to finish.

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 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..

Admittedly, it's tough to follow the plot unless you cheat. So...read the liner notes! Something no one seems to have noticed though is that herein is incontrovertible proof that Homer Simpson's family goes Waaay back... and his speech patterns do have a source. And this movie proves it. Well, maybe.Note the (elapsed) time while watching and pay especial attention at around 19:30 into the film. A Mr Wallace makes a call on Dr Saunders, unsuccessfully rummaging through drawers in search of *what*, we don't know.. (a better script?) Stevens, the butler, comes back downstairs and informs him that he cannot see the doc. Wallace's classic reply, recognizable by most of the civilized world today, is"D'oh!"What more can one say? Anyone know of other instances? Thanks,TB