Cheap, dull and poorly scripted, this wartime Monogram potboiler can be a real chore to sit through. Barely over an hour's running time feels more like two. Even the always watchable Bela Lugosi can't save it — though his presence is the only reason to bother.
Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor six members of Japan's nationalistic Black Dragon society are transformed by plastic surgery into exact doubles of prominent American industrialists. Switched for their counterparts, once the war is underway these 'deep cover' agents use their high positions to sabotage the U.S. war effort and gather vital information about new weapons projects, troop deployments and the like. The Black Dragon spy ring operates with apparent impunity until one by one its members start turning up murdered on the steps of the now-closed Japanese embassy in Washington D.C., a ceremonial dagger clutched in each victim's hand. U.S. intelligence agents are completely baffled by the case; they're still in the dark about the true identities of the murdered men. (Apparently any autopsies performed on the bodies failed to uncover signs of plastic surgery.) All they know is that each of the victims attended a dinner party held at the mansion of a wealthy D.C. physician, Dr. Saunders (George Pembroke), who has suddenly fallen ill and remains secluded in his room. The only people with access to Saunders are his faithful butler and a mysterious houseguest, one Monsieur Colomb (Lugosi), an "old friend" of the doctor's who showed up the night of the fateful party.
"Colomb" is in reality Dr. Melcher, a diehard Nazi scientist and the Third Reich's foremost plastic surgeon. His services were loaned to Japan by Hitler but he was double-crossed by the Japanese once he'd completed the transformation of the six Black Dragon agents. Imprisoned because he alone knows the identities of the spies (and the men they've replaced), Melcher somehow escaped from Japan and made his way to America under the alias 'Colomb'. Now he's exacting an insidious revenge by bumping them off one by one. I suppose the idea of simply leaking his knowledge of the spy ring to U.S. authorities never occurred to him...
Black Dragons is the kind of creaky potboiler that makes flicks like The Devil Bat look good in comparison. Despite the plot don't expect any 'spy smasher' serial-type action. It owes more to the 'Old Dark House' formula than anything else, with Lugosi creeping around Saunder's mansion, eavesdropping on conversations, slipping in and out undetected, hiding bodies, etc. He's kept on his toes when Saunders' pretty niece Alice (Joan Barclay) shows up for a visit and government agent Dick Martin (future Lone Ranger Clayton Moore) comes snooping around. But for the most part nothing really happens.
The ending is incredibly contrived, and the explanation of who Colomb really is and what motivates his revenge is tacked on via flashback in the last five minutes of the movie. About the only pleasure to be derived from Black Dragons — even for serious Lugosi fans — comes from a few passages of truly abominable dialog, the goofiest of which is recreated below:
Alice: I heard a strange noise, like a body falling.
Colomb: Why, I was stumbling. I was awkward.
Alice: Yes, but... there were gurgling sounds.
Colomb: Oh! I was humming. Is my voice as bad as that?
And that's about as good — or rather unintentionally humorous — as the film gets. Only rabid acolytes of Lugosi will want to waste their time.
