Horror Classic 5 of 50: BLACK DRAGONS

Black Dragons is a 1942 film starring Bela Lugosi. "Black Dragons?" Bela Lugosi? Wow! This movie must be about a bunch of ancient warlocks who transform themselves into giant, flame-spewing, man-eating dragons and terrorize people for no discernible reason! And they all have European accents! Then it's up to a strapping hero to take them all down... any way he can.This is gonna be a good one, right? Let's see if I've assumed correctly.

Synopsis
The United States is teetering precariously on the brink of entering World War II; a newspaper headlines whose sides are cut off by the television frame screams "ACE TR," which is always a sure sign of impending strife. In the Washington, D.C. home of Dr. Saunders, a bunch of military-industrial types are palling around and discussing the war. An uninvited guest arrives: It's Mr. Colomb (Lugosi!), who claims to be a patient of Dr. Saunders' with an urgent need to see him. After they speak privately for just a moment, Dr. Saunders rudely and hypnotizededly dismisses his friends and announces to his servant that Colomb will be staying over for a while.

One of the men, Kearny, is surprised to find Colomb in his cab on the ride home, and even more surprised when he (Kearny) ends up dead on the steps of the Japanese embassy the next morning, an antique Japanese dagger in his hand. Dang, that's even worse than a hangover.

Dr. Saunders' niece Alice comes to visit, only to find that her uncle has locked himself in his room, refuses to see anyone, and speaks in a weary monotone, as if he hasn't had his morning coffee. What she DOESN'T know (but we, the audience, DO know!) is that every time she talks to her uncle through the door, Colomb is in the room with his hand on Saunders' neck. It's exactly like a ventriloquist act... I never even saw Colomb's lips move!

It's not long before Mr. Wallace, another of the dinner guests, is found also dead and also holding a dagger. WHO could have done this?! WHO could the murderer possibly be? Could it possibly be the scary guy, whom nobody knows anything about, and who's been sneaking in and out of people's rooms all the time? Yeah. Yeah, it could.

So then two more of Dr. Saunders friends (Ryder and Van Dyke, if you're interested -- but not Dick Van Dyke, unfortunately) decide to investigate, snooping around Saunders' house. Guess what happens to them? If you guessed "They get to lick the spoon from a batch of chocolate cookies," you're a bit off the mark. Rather, Colomb finds them, and the next thing you know, whoops! Alice is tripping over their lifeless corpses in the basement. Oh, and then Colomb drives them to the Japanese embassy and puts the daggers in their hands, et cetera.

There aren't going to be any dragons in this movie, are there?

By the way, I'm about to reveal the ending of the movie. So if you're one of those people who's infuriated when people give up spoilers about forgotten, 65-year-old public domain films, you might want to stop reading now.

Mr. Hanlon is now the only guest from Saunders' dinner party who's still alive, so heroic police guy Dick Martin opts to use him as bait. Sure enough, they catch Colomb, who turns out to be a Nazi surgeon. So was he killing all those guys because they were Americans? No, it goes much deeper than that. Years ago, the Nazis were working with Japan's secret society the Order of the Black Dragons, and his job was to operate on a bunch of Japanese dudes to turn them into exact duplicates of the influential Americans so they could infiltrate the US. But instead of thanking him and taking him out for chicken fingers afterward, the Black Dragons locked him in a prison cell. Killing off the Black Doppel-dragon-gangers was his way of getting revenge.

After this expository sequence, there was a really strange, abrupt shot of Colomb lunging at Fake-Hanlon, followed by a headline reading "JAP SPY RING SMASHED" and a proudly waving American flag. The End.

Is It Scary?
Not at all. I mean, Bela Lugosi can't help but be creepy (Do you think he ever resented that? Did he ever just want to play a kindly old grandfather or a gruff but lovable baseball coach?), but the rest of the film offers little in the way of scareage. In fact, I wouldn't even classify this as a horror movie.

Lessons I Learned:

• Revenge is a dish best served cold. And by killing a bunch of people.

• High-tech surgery can be used not only to change a man's appearance, but also his height.

• Sometimes the butler didn't do it.

Comments:
So far, this is the weakest of the "classic" horror movies I've watched. I really expected more from a 64-minute movie, considering the fact that all the other 64-minute feature films I've ever seen were like sweet golden cups of luminescent Play-Doh, surpassing all expectations for not-crappiness. We knew who the killer was the whole time! I suppose the idea was that suspense would come from wondering why Cologne is killing all those men, but it only made for a pretty boring story.

Black Dragons is obviously a product of its time, what with the Nazi villain and anti-Japanese sentiment bordering on propaganda. It may have been rushed into production in an attempt to remain timely.

According to Wikipedia, the Black Dragons society was real. There's no word, however, on whether they were ever in the habit of transforming into dragons and eating folks. On the other hand, it doesn't say they didn't, so I'll just assume they did.

There was an odd little scene in which it appeared, for just a moment, that cute young Alice was hitting on spooky old Colomb. I think I'm glad they didn't go any further with that notion, although it might have been funny if he had tried to impress her by telling her he's Dracula.

Government agent Dick was played by none other than future Lone Ranger Clayton Moore. He looked lost without a horse.

I'm 99% sure that in the expository flashback, the leader of the Black Dragons was played by a white guy. What I'm not sure of is why he felt like he had to... speak... so... slowly.

Letter grade for Black Dragons: D (It would have been a D- if not for Lugosi's special brand of smooth creepiness)

Next film in the DVD set: The Invisible Ghost. How do you know it's a ghost if it's invisible? Ha! I hope you liked that joke, because it'll be back next week!