Five Golden Dragons (1967)

Silly, sometimes juvenile, but generally amusing adaptation of the Edgar Wallace story by producer Harry Alan Towers, using his screen writing pseudonym of "Peter Welbeck". Fading sitcom star Robert Cummings plays Bob Mitchell, a naive American playboy on vacation in Hong Kong. He soon gets dragged into various matters of international intrigue, while a dedicated police commissioner (Rupert Davies) and his associate (Roy Chiao) work the case. The "five golden dragons" of the title are criminal masterminds who are due to meet each other in person for the first time.This is a moderately fun, rather lightweight mystery. It's not a great one by any stretch of the imagination, but it sometimes delivers some entertainment. It lessens its impact by going on too long, and losing some momentum, and it really does get too positively goofy for its own good. (The falling death of a henchman is played for laughs, for one thing.) What helps matters a fair bit is the exotic setting. The movie is shot in Techniscope and Technicolor and looks absolutely gorgeous. And now that the word "gorgeous" has been brought up, it must be said that the female cast looks ravishing: Margaret Lee as the devilish singer Magda, and Maria Rohm & Maria Perschy as a pair of sisters. The songs & score are catchy.The international cast of superstars gives it curiosity value. Cummings supplies both heroics and comedy relief, and he's likable enough. Davies and Chiao (the two of them utter quotes from Shakespeare appropriate to various situations) are excellent. Klaus Kinski is a hoot as always as the nefarious Gert, but fans might bemoan not seeing him get to do more. Giving the film a shot in the arm late in the game are the special guest star appearances by Dan Duryea, George Raft, Brian Donlevy, and Sir Christopher Lee, who play four of the five golden dragons. Still, one may rightly think that to see them so briefly is a waste of talent. Japanese pop star Yukari Ito makes a musical appearance.Enjoyable, to a degree, but also largely forgettable. One highlight, or low point, depending on your point of view, is seeing a supposedly dead body blink several times.Six out of 10.

I've gone back and forth on how to rate Five Golden Dragons. On one hand, I really want to like this movie. It's got an infectious 60s vibe that really worked with me. On the other hand, it's got a lot of problems and is, in all honesty, a mess of a movie. So, I'm stuck with giving it a wishy-washy 5/10.I'm not going to do the normal plot summary. There's no point because there's not much of a coherent plot. None of it makes any sense at all. I'll just say that there is a lot of super-secret spy type stuff going on in Hong Kong and it all surrounds a group of five guys who call themselves the Five Golden Dragons (hence the title). What they do or who they are is as unknown to me now as it was before I watched the movie. All I know is that they want to sell-out to the mafia (I think) for $50 million. And there are some other people who would quite naturally like to get their hands on the money. Be warned that all or part of this could be completely wrong – I just don't know.One of the big draws of Five Golden Dragons is the cast. George Raft, Dan Duryea, Brian Donlevy, and Christopher Lee are prominently listed in the credits. However, their combined screen time is about 10-15 minutes and all they do is sit around a table, put on and take off some goofy looking gold dragon masks, and spout some of the most inane dialogue I've ever heard. The whole thing looks like it might have been filmed in an hour. Their acting is also pretty funny. They all seem to go through a range of emotions ranging from bewilderment to confusion to amusement to impatience. It's obvious they realize how bad this thing really is.Most of the rest of the cast is, however, very enjoyable. I really enjoyed seeing Klaus Kinski, Maria Perschy (wow), Maria Rohm, Rupert Davies, and Sieghardt Rupp. All are capable and do the best with what they have. But the highlight for me was Margaret Lee. Any movie with Margaret Lee is automatically better than it would have been without her. A lot of the movie is more than competently filmed with some very nice shots of Hong Kong. The chase scene through the harbor was especially nice. The movie's pacing is all over the place. In spots the action is great and the movie has a nice flow to it. But, in others, the film really drags. Finally, after going through some of the good and bad I found in Five Golden Dragons, I'm left with writing about the one thing that almost ruined the movie for me and keeps me from rating it at least a point higher. And that is Robert Cummings. He's so bad! I don't know when I've seen an actor irritate me like this. Part of the problem is that much of the time he seems to be acting like he's in another movie. The comedy he brings to the film is most often completely out of place. His reactions to most everything going on are usually the exact opposite of what you would expect. Also, he's 100% wrong for the role. Here's the IMDb summary for the movie, "A naive young American playboy in Hong Kong finds himself caught up in the middle of an international crime." Young! Are you kidding me? At 57, Cummings isn't young by a long shot. And his bad dye job doesn't help. Some of his scenes with Maria Perschy and Margaret Lee are embarrassing. Also, at 57, he's way too old play "naïve". His stammering, stuttering schoolboy is laughable. Completely and utterly ridiculous! I'm willing to forgive a lot of the faults in Five Golden Dragons, but Cummings isn't one of them.

Unlike the other reviewers, I think the main reason to watch this film, is Robert Cummings, who for some strange reason preferred to bill himself as 'Bob' in the later years of his career! Always a smooth operator on screen, and in my all time top 5 or 6 'comedy' actors, I feel he must have realized early on that he was involved in somewhat of a 'turkey', and decided, wisely I think, to play the whole thing tongue in cheek! No matter what else is, or isn't going on around him, Mr. Cummings himself is always fascinating to watch! And the girls are all gorgeous, and the scenery is nice! It's a pity Cummings couldn't have had a better vehicle for his big screen swansong, but I think the secret of enjoying this film is simply not to take anything seriously!

The cast is probably the biggest draw of "Five Golden Dragons", but be warned: many of those actors (Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, etc.) appear only for a few minutes and barely do anything. The main star is Bob Cummings, agreeable enough but slightly too old for the part of the cheerful, happy-go-lucky playboy. As usual in 1960's spy/crime/exotic adventure films (this one was shot on location in Hong Kong), the women (Margaret Lee, Maria Perschy, Maria Rohm) are tremendously sexy, with wonderfully curvy bodies that their various bikinis/dresses do a great job of showcasing. Unfortunately, the film has very little action, and several sequences are extremely dragged-out in length (for example, there are 3 musical numbers back-to-back in the middle), which makes me think that this is one case where the shortened (by 30 minutes!) American version might actually have been superior (it's easy to see the parts that need trimming). One twist near the end works well, but overall this film has to count as a major disappointment. *1/2 out of 4.