By Hank Reineke
Though saddened by the passing of Sir Christopher Lee in
early summer of 2015, few admirers could argue that the tall, aquiline and
sepulcher-voiced actor had not lived out his ninety-three years to the
fullest. His occasionally checkered
feature -film legacy stands at well over two hundred motion pictures. I’ve no
doubt statistics of his television appearance resume are only slightly less
impressive. While I’m certain there are
a few wonks out there that have had the time and pleasure of screening every
frame of celluloid of the actor’s oeuvre that circulates… Well, for the rest of
us there are still plenty of rare films out there to discover and enjoy on the
backend.
Two of Lee’s less celebrated mid-60’s films for the
sometimes notorious producer Harry Alan Towers, Circus of Fear (1966) and Five
Golden Dragons (1967), have recently been brought together by Blue
Underground on Blu-ray for this splendid double-feature disc. This release has been my pleasing introduction
to Five Golden Dragons, a suspense-thriller
I somehow missed all these years and would, happily and surprisingly, enjoy a
lot more than first expected.
Five Golden Dragons
is capably handled by Jeremy Summers whose earlier work would include directing
stints for such British thriller melodramas as The Saint, Secret Agent,
and International Detective. Five
Golden Dragons was merely one of three low-budgeted Hong Kong based assignments
the director would tackle for producer Harry Alan Towers in 1966/1967. He had earlier helmed The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, the third of Tower’s five film cycle of
hit-and-miss thrillers starring an unlikely Christopher Lee as Sax Rohmer’s
sadistic Asian villain. Summers would
later satisfy his contract with Towers by introducing another horror-veteran, Vincent
Price, as a white-slave trader in The
House of 1,000 Dolls. The screenplays for both Circus of Fear and Five
Golden Dragons are credited to “Peter Welbeck,†a regular pseudonym of
Tower’s.
There are a lot of familiar faces on-screen, though Lee
fans, in particular, should take caution. The actor doesn’t appear for sometime well into the film, and then is
seen very sparingly. The uncontested
star of the enterprise is Robert “Bob†Cummings, the celebrated leading man of
such Alfred Hitchcock thrillers as Saboteur
(1942) and Dial M for Murder (1954). Cummings would, much later on, serve as a recognizable
1950s and 1960s TV-personality with a gift for muggery and light-comedy. In Five
Golden Dragons, Cummings plays the amiable Dr. Bob Mitchell, a Kansas-bred,
Stanford University-educated playboy who is, ostensibly, in Hong Kong to shore
up tar-gum deal for a confectionary conglomerate. In
true Hitchcockian fashion, this playful, wise-cracking innocent is accidentally
swept into a dangerous game of intrigue when a lawyer he met in passing while
in Manila scrawls the curious designation “Five Golden Dragons†on a sheet of
paper. The lawyer, who is soon thrown to
his demise from a twelfth-floor balcony by a black-hooded assassin, had inexplicably
earlier asked his cabbie to deliver the note to Mitchell at his temporary
residence at the plush Bangkok Suite at the Hong Kong Hilton.
Not too surprisingly, Mitchell becomes a person of interest
when the cabbie passes the dead man’s note to two Hong Kong police inspectors,
played by the crusty and beloved Rupert Davies and Hong Kong’s own Roy
Chiao. Davies, supposedly Chiao’s
superior, is something of a Shakespeare buff, casually dropping fractured,
dimly-remembered lines from the Bard’s pen to underscore the dramatic events
unfolding before him. When the more pragmatic
and sensible Inspector Chiao comes to call on Mitchell, incriminating note in
hand, the playboy is relaxing poolside with two comely German sisters, Ingrid
(Maria Rohm) and Margret (Maria Perschy). It’s through Margret that Mitchell eventually learns that the Golden
Dragons are “five of the most evil men the world has ever known.†This five-man syndicate, ruthless business
partners but strangers to one another, control Asia’s underground gold market
through front-offices in Paris, Rome, Majorca, Bombay and Hong Kong.
With the Hong Kong police on alert and peering through
binoculars, we learn that four of the feared Five Golden Dragons are to convene
– for the very first time – to discuss the liquidation of their secret order
and to divvy up their ill-gotten assets that total some 50 million dollars. That money has been sitting well hidden in a
Swiss bank account, and will be dispensed when the syndicate turns over their
smuggling operation to the Mafia – a deal that was to be brokered by the
ill-fated lawyer at the film’s beginning. The identity of the fifth and most mysterious Golden Dragon is played
out melodramatically in the film’s climax.
Though not a classic, the film is fun and colorful and has
that delicious Playboy-era 60s-vibe. Summers certainly makes good use of Hong
Kong’s exotic locations; it’s all sunshine, ports, poolside encounters, east
meets west opulent hotels, colorful crowded streets, and visually stunning
topography. The clothes and hairstyles
are all straight from a trendy and glossy 60’s magazine - as are the requisite wood-paneled
walls, go-go dancing, transistor radios, Yashica cameras, and boxes of Dutch
Masters cigars. Malcolm Lockyer’s exotic
score expertly mixes occidental eastern melodies with sweeping western
orchestral arrangements ala John Barry; though some of his overly dramatic
music cues underscoring several only mildly
suspenseful moments might cause one to smile. The musical sequences at the shady, syndicate controlled Blue World
nightclub featuring the vocal talents of the plotting Magda (Margaret Lee) and
the Japanese pop-singer Yukari Ito are mostly superfluous to the plot but their
songs are tuneful and catchy and will surely be welcomed by devotees of 1960s
lounge music.
Summers provides no fewer than three elongated chase scenes
that offers great glimpses of Hong Kong travelogue but, sadly, only an
occasional thrill. These sequences tend
to be remarkably slow-moving and stilted. This is unfortunate as tighter editing of these chase scenes would have plainly
been more effective. There’s a wild
pursuit of unsure footing on the city’s canals amidst the bobbing Saipan and
Junks, a more comical rickshaw chase through the city’s market street and,
lastly, a perhaps too-cartoonish battle on the balconies of the famed Tiger
Pagoda. There’s the requisite ‘60s James
Bond reference as well, when Cumming scolds his enemies for the delay in
meeting the villain he describes as “Goldfinger no. 5.†This is the
wise-cracking Bob Cummings show throughout, and it’s not too difficult to find
him a likable if unusually unorthodox hero.
German actor Klaus Kinski is on hand as well, a sadistic
minion of the Five Golden Dragons. Kinski’s “Gert†is a dour, serpentine figure,
with sunken eyes and an expressionless face. He’ so primped and powdered in this film that he looks as if he might
have once served as master of ceremonies at Cabaret’s Kit Kat Club of
Berlin. The film’s heralded four “guest
stars†(Christopher Lee, George Raft, Dan Duryea, and Brian Donlevy) mostly sit
uneasily in the chairs of the Golden Dragons and, sadly, share little screen
time or dialogue. Lee would later recall
that the gathered actors “spent most of our time sitting around a table in
bizarre clothes.†In Five Golden Dragons Lee’s appearance
totals a few minutes at most, but he is at least allowed to deliver a few lines
of stentorian dialogue. The same cannot
be said for poor George Raft whose talents are almost entirely wasted here.
Christopher Lee figures more prominently as the mysterious
lion tamer Gregor in Circus of Fear (issued
in the U.S. under the more exploitative title Psycho-Circus). Sadly, Lee
is somewhat hamstrung here as well as his menacing visage is mostly hidden
beneath a black hood throughout. As far as John Moxey’s Circus of Fear is concerned… Well, I don’t wish to go into too much
detail here. Last year I attended a
“theatrical†screening of this film at a drive-in hosting a triple-bill of
Christopher Lee films. That night
moviegoers were treated to the gritty, black and white A.I.P. cut of the film
intended for U.S. audiences (with a running time slashed by a near unforgivable
twenty-two minutes), but my nonetheless favorable impression of the film itself
can be found by clicking here.
Having said that, I’m happy to report that this new Blu-ray
issue presents the film uncut in its complete international version form and in
the brightest hues of Eastman Color – there’s nary a scratch or visual blemish
to be found. This addition of a color
palette is a true revelation, and effectively changes the entire tone of the
gritty, monochrome noir I viewed in truncated form at the Drive-in into
something quite different. Previously
issued on DVD in 2003 as part of Blue Underground’s The Christopher Lee Collection, the Blu-ray of Circus of Fear contains all the bells and whistles of its earlier
counterpart. Not to be missed is
director John Moxey’s excellent supplemental commentary. Moxey (City
of the Dead, The Night Stalker) reminisces about his long career in Britain
and Hollywood, the making of Circus of
Fear in particular, and the actors and technicians who brought this low
budget but riveting mystery to the big screen.
Blue Underground’s Blu-ray of Circus of Fear features a 2K High Definition (1080 HD) transfer
from the original British color negative. It’s presented in a widescreen 1:66:1 ratio in HD mono audio. Along with the wonderful Moxey commentary,
the disc also features a scene selection menu and both the International and
U.S. trailers in both Color and Black and White versions. There’s also a colorful poster and still
gallery included. Five Golden Dragons makes its first appearance on any U.S. home
video format, with the film newly re-mastered in High-Def from the original
uncut negative, with a Widescreen 2:35:1 format and monaural HD sound. The set also includes the obligatory poster
and still gallery and international theatrical trailer.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON