Finishing up a tour of duty in Korea, Lt. Dan Oliver
(Richard Emory) pays a visit to the humble curio shop of Chen Koo (Eddie Lee),
where he’s asked to take a jade dragon back with him to the States and deliver
it to antiques collector Professor Kim Ho (Jack Reitzen).
(Asked why he just doesn’t mail the darn
thing, Chen Koo gripes that the mail service is unreliable, what with a “police
action” going on and all.)
Oliver
reasons he could always use a little extra chicken feed in his pocket, and so
he agrees to the deal—making certain that the package containing the artifact
is sent in care of Ginny O’Donnell (Sheila Ryan) in L.A.
Back in the U.S.A., Dan calls Ginny’s boyfriend—Phil Ramsey
(Richard Travis), who also happens to be Oliver’s partner in a detective agency
(as well as an old war buddy).
(If that
isn’t enough, Ginny coincidentally works as a lab technician for the L.A.
police force, because movies are magic,
ma
chere.)
While on the phone with
Philsie, Dan gets a knife in the back from a pair of hoods (Karl “Killer”
Davis, Sid Melton) most anxious to acquire the precious dragon of jade.
Since Dan has been murdered—
and someone’s responsible!—Phil takes it upon himself to solve the killing,
because “When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it.
It doesn't make any difference what you
thought of him.
He was your partner and
you’re supposed to do something about it.”
(I learned that from Dashiell Hammett.)
The Newfield/Neufeld brothers, the masterminds behind
Fingerprints
Don’t Lie (1951), reunite a few members from the cast of that stellar
film (it says here) in
Mask of the
Dragon (1951), a “Spartan Production” from the independent B-picture studio
of Robert L. Lippert.
(As my ClassicFlix
colleague and proprietor of
In the Balcony Cliff Weimer
remarks: “Probably filmed in the same afternoon.”)
Richard Travis, Sheila Ryan, Sid Melton, Lyle
Talbot, Richard Emory, Dee Tatum, Margia Dean—the whole
Hee Haw gang is here,
though playing completely different characters, of course.
Friend Cliff’s
assessment
is that
Dragon is the better film “because
it’s so silly.”
It certainly is silly,
but that does not make it better.
(Its
running time is shorter, if that helps any.)
You’ll speculate that both were shot at the same time
because the same “police laboratory” set is used for both films and
Dragon also avails itself of the Mighty
Wurlitzer stylings of Bert Shefter (on loan from Mutual Radio).
But actor Travis gives it away when he tells
Tatum in one scene: “Fingerprints don’t lie…”
What’s amazing to me about this movie is that even though it runs just
53 minutes (it’s very short) they
still
had to pad it; there are a couple of musical numbers (western standards
Red River Valley and
Cindy) performed by Curt Barrett and the
Trailsmen.
I was all prepared to make a
snarky joke about how this western music group remained justifiably obscure but
a glance at the (always reliable) IMDb reveals that they appeared in a trio of
Johnny Mack Brown Monogram oaters between 1946 and 1947 (
Drifting Along,
The Gentleman from Texas, and
Raiders of the South).
I can state without hesitation that
Dragon was their cinematic swan song…though
we may be hearing from them again on
B-Western
Wednesdays.
They’re
introduced, by the way, by legendary emcee and announcer Johnny Grant, the
unofficial “Mayor of Hollywood,” and until his death in 2008 the man who
officiated the ceremonies on The Hollywood Walk of Fame.
(Grant does a commercial in
Dragon for Chanticleer Alarm Clocks: “It
crows on you.”)
There’s a lot of comic relief in
Mask of the Dragon, which admittedly makes it a little less painful
to watch than
Fingerprints (did I
mention it’s also shorter?).
We have
Brother Sid Melton, Lippert’s resident “good luck charm,” to thank for this;
Sid really lets loose with some funny ad-libs, most of which are delivered in “yellow
face” as the barker outside The Jade Lotus, the antique shop run by master
villain Kim Ho.
“Come see Chiang
Kai-shek and his brother, Cancelled Shek!” Melton beckons.
(I also like the joke about “Mah Jongg and Pa
Jongg and all the little Jonggs.”)
Dragon also features an actor—well,
professional wrestler is more accurate—who goes by “Mr. Moto.”
(I swear I am not making this up.) If you’re not a particularly discerning movie viewer, you
might enjoy
Dragon—though I will
warn you up front (although you’ve probably caught on by now) there’s nothing “noir”
about it in the slightest.
From the moment Oliver sashayed into Chen Koo’s
establishment, I thought: “He’s going to haul something back to the U.S., and
it’s going to contain a buttload of narcotics.”
Well, it turns out I was wrong—a newspaper headline just before
Mask of the Dragon calls it a day gives
authorities a back-pat for breaking up a ring smuggling contraband
uranium.
But I was wrong only in the
sense that this is how the Breen Office
insisted
the picture to end; originally both the dragon and the eight “Immortals”
figurines contained opium…naturally, they feared that sort of plot development
would warp impressionable young minds.
(You could argue that only a warped mind would see where that was headed
in the first place…and I wouldn’t put up much of a defense.)
 |
| "Confucius say 'No refunds, suckers!'" |
As the fifty-three minutes that was
Mask of the Dragon thankfully comes to a close, Travis’ character
breaks “the fourth wall” and says to the audience: “Confucius say: when hero
catch crook...time for picture to end.”
Ivan say: “Bad movie like dead fish—cannot stand the test of time.”
(Okay, I’m paraphrasing Charlie Chan here…but
I think it’s appropriate.)
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