Mask of the Dragon (1951)

Undescribable Perfection

Sadly Over-hyped

Admirable film.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

At only 53 minutes, this exasperating Z-grade thriller feels like a weak episode of an early TV anthology series, pathetically written with dialog so atrocious and characterizations so offensive that I was embarrassed to find myself trying to get through the whole movie without throwing something at my T.V. screen. To top that off, there's a tedious musical score, played entirely by an organ as if it was some early soap opera, and not nearly as engaging. While the film does contain some shocking violence (including an obvious torture sequence), that doesn't make it at all gripping. I felt embarrassed for its stars Richard Travis and Sheila Ryan who not only had to recite the lines from the hideous script but listen to the stereotypically bad dialog for the Asian characters who all seemed to pronounce their "R's" and "W's" as "L's".

Director Sam Newfield and his producer brother ground out movie cheapies like sausages, all made with the smelly meat scraps you don't want to know about. The point was to squeeze production costs until the squealing almost stops and keep the factory busy with low-cost actors, writers and production crews. If costs could be kept low enough, then almost any ticket sold, no matter how few, would yield a penny or two of profit. The movies were booked strictly as cheap filler. They are classic examples of how it is always possible to produce things of lower quality than you'd think possible. The Mask of the Dragon has to do with a jade dragon from Korea, an investigation into a murder, the discovery of a smuggling ring and the deadly secret behind the dragon. The bizarre, abysmal quality of the movie is vividly evident by the occasional background music...generic thrills played on, wait for it, an organ. Newfield adds a couple of cowboy songs for good measure.

This is indeed a deservedly forgotten Poverty Row effort from the Neufeld stable. Although "Spartan" is certainly a most accurate label, actually Mask of the Dragon is no way a noir in either story or atmosphere. The plot is plain silly and gets even less credible as it progresses, although it does just manage to hold the attention for 53 minutes for indulgent viewers, and especially for fans of super-attractive Dee Tatum (here making her final of only four movie appearances). I also thoroughly enjoyed the slings and arrows directed at the even less production value-oriented, totally scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel television presentations, here enthusiastically satirized by announcer Johnny Grant himself would you believe, and a reasonably melodious cowboy singing group, the Trailsmen.As always, Sam Newfield directs competently enough. I noticed only one mistake, which the editor tried vainly to cover up with an unrelated shot from earlier in the movie. At least this stratagem reveals how Sam was able to shoot the movie in just five days. He simply shot no extra footage at all. Just the bare minimum indicated by the screenplay, leaving no spare takes to work with in case of accidents or errors. Sheila Ryan (who was so beguiling in Dressed To Kill) makes an okay heroine, but the two Richards, Travis and Emory, hail strictly from dullsville. Sid Melton attempts to contribute an odd mixture of vicious heavy cum comic relief with only partial success. Michael Whalen of Poor Little Rich Girl has the air of a star obviously fallen on hard times.

MASK OF THE DRAGON was bundled with a George Raft film (MAN FROM CAIRO) on a DVD entitled "Forgotten Noir". Well, this really isn't an example of Noir, though it is a film best forgotten!!This review is for the non-heavily edited version, though at 53 minutes this is still a very short B-film. Later, this film was cut way down so it would fit in a half hour time slot on television. Believe it or not, editing the film that severely wasn't that difficult, as there was a lot of padding to this rather thin story. Several songs by a cowboy trio and a comedy routine by Sid Melton were definitely oddly included in this film.By the way, including Sid Melton is odd since he's such a little guy and seems ill-placed as a member of a vicious gang. Plus, he alternates between being a heavy and comic relief. You may remember his as "Alf Monroe" from GREEN ACRES--a long way from a crime drama! As for the plot, a service man is returning home from the Korean War. A Korean merchant asks him to take a package with him and the dumbbell agrees--even though you would assume this is part of a smuggling operation. Not surprisingly, the guy is killed and the package disappears. So it's up to our dull hero to come to the rescue and figure out who was responsible and why.This film has B-movie written all over it--with a super-low budget and a lineup of B-actors (such as Lyle Talbot--the unofficial King of the Bs). Melton basically plays his role like he's a vaudevillian doing stand-up. Compared to other Bs, this one is sub-par--because of clumsy writing, broadness of the acting and horrid music (it was all done on an organ--talk about "Über-cheesy").