Five Golden Dragons * (1967, Robert Cummings, Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Margaret Lee, Klaus Kinski, Brian Donlevy, Dan Duryea, George Raft) – Classic Movie Review 13,265

Bob Cummings stars as a rich American playboy who gets mixed up with a vicious gang of hoods run by the Golden Dragons syndicate in Hong Kong, in the light-hearted 1967 British action film Five Golden Dragons.

Director Jeremy Summers’s light-hearted 1967 British action film Five Golden Dragons stars Robert Cummings, Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Margaret Lee, Klaus Kinski, Brian Donlevy, Dan Duryea, George Raft, Maria Perschy, Maria Rohm and Sieghardt Rupp.

Cummings stars as a rich American pleasure-seeker playboy called Bob Mitchell, who gets mixed up with a vicious gang of hoods run by the Golden Dragons syndicate in Hong Kong, in a dullish, predictable action thriller, with some fairly slack comedy.

Muddled plotting in a none too nifty script by the film’s producer Harry Alan Towers makes a good old cast seem clumsy, but at least it is busy and eventful throughout.

It was shot by lighting cameraman John Von Kotze in Techniscope on location in September 1966 at the Tiger Balm Pagoda and Shaw Brothers studios.

It is written under pen name of Peter Welbeck by Harry Alan Towers and co-stars his wife Maria Rohm, who also stars in Towers’s The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, with the same character name of Ingrid.

Rupert Davies plays Edgar Wallace’s character Commissioner Sanders as an officer in the Royal Hong Kong Police in a bid to attract funds from international investors. Wallace was especially popular in West Germany, and this is a West German co-production.

Cummings met his fourth wife Regina Fong while she was working as a script girl on the film. It is his final theatrical feature film.

Margaret Lee sings two songs in the film.

Towers’s Our Man in Marrakesh also features Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee and Maria Rohm.

The cast are Bob Cummings as Bob Mitchell, Margaret Lee as Magda, Rupert Davies as Commissioner Sanders, Klaus Kinski as Gert, Maria Rohm as Ingrid, Sieghardt Rupp as Peterson, Roy Chiao as Inspector Chiao, Brian Donlevy as Third Dragon, Dan Duryea as First Dragon, Christopher Lee as Fourth Dragon, George Raft as Second Dragon, Maria Perschy as Margret, and Yukari Ito as guest singer.

Release date: 4 August 1967.

It is one of three Harry Alan Towers made at the Hong Kong studios of Run Run Shaw, including The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (also directed by Jeremy Summers, with Christopher Lee) and The Million Eyes of Sumuru.

Towers cast Margaret Lee in several of his all-star cast productions, starting with Circus of Fear (1966), then Our Man in Marrakesh (1966), Five Golden Dragons (1967), Venus in Furs (1969), The Bloody Judge (1970), and finally Dorian Gray (1970).

The pairing of Margaret Lee and Klaus Kinski was popular, especially in Italy, and they worked together until the early 1970s, in 12 films together.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,265

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