Black Dragons [PG]

It’s just prior to WW2 and six of America’s most high ranking businessmen gather together for a dinner party before carrying out some secret plan for the coming war effort. But the plan is thrown into turmoil when a mysterious stranger appears and the six guests of the party are murdered one by one, each one found with a Japanese dagger in their hand. The F.B.I are baffled, but determined to uncover the culprit and the case escalates to new heights when they discover that the real host of the dinner party disappeared months before any of this began to happen. 

I just couldn’t get into this movie. I mean it was intriguing as an espionage-secret-agent, war movie/murder mystery and all that, but I just really couldn’t see where any of it was going and I found it really hard to keep my attention focused on it. The story is fine, but everything else in it is pretty mediocre and it’s probably for this reason that I found it a struggle to get through the flick. 

It’s just prior to WW2 and six of America’s most high ranking businessmen gather together for a dinner party before carrying out some secret plan for the coming war effort. But the plan is thrown into turmoil when a mysterious stranger appears and the six guests of the party are murdered one by one, each one found with a Japanese dagger in their hand. The F.B.I are baffled, but determined to uncover the culprit and the case escalates to new heights when they discover that the real host of the dinner party disappeared months before any of this began to happen. 

Yeah, I’m really at a loss as to what to talk about in the review for this movie because there wasn’t anything really wrong with it, it’s just a movie that felt a little half-hearted and I couldn’t get a handle as to what was going on or even keep my eyes focused on the screen. 

The story itself is actually pretty cool, with a big twist at the end that answered all my questions, but was still spilt in too much of a haphazard way, as though the writers just really wanted to get the whole thing over and done with. There’s enough intrigue to pad out the entire running time (which is only just over an hour), but we don’t get any clues or leads until right at the very end, which sort of puts a damper on the whole thing really. 

The performances are all fine, but nothing overly special to report. Bela Lugosi as the mysterious stranger successfully brings mystery, sinisterness, and even a little comedy into the mix, but even he’s nothing to rave about in this thing. 

Starring Joan Barclay, George Pembroke, Clayton Moore, Robert Frazer, Edward Peil Sr., Robert Fiske, Irving Mitchell, Kenneth Harlan, Max Hoffman Jr., Frank Melton, Joseph Eggenton, and I. Stanford Jolley, Black Dragons is an interesting story, but a film where it seemed that no one really wanted to be there making it. Everything about it feels very haphazard and unenthusiastic, which is a shame because I think the plot had definite potential.