Roar of the Dragon

Travelers in China are trapped in a Manchurian riverside village by marauding bandits. Richard Dix is the hard-drinking riverboat captain who takes charge of the situation, and he has a STAGECOACH-like assortment of tourists under his wing who must unite in the face of danger. This is an ARGOSY magazine pulp novelette version of China, admittedly, a la the work of Loring Brent, but it is quite nicely done with some good atmosphere and plenty of action. And this may be the only movie in which you see Edward Everett Horton blasting away with a machine gun. Solid 7 on the IMDB scale.

A collection of natives and Westerners barricade themselves in an old Chinese inn against the onslaught of fierce Tartar bandits.

ROAR OF THE DRAGON is a very fine adventure film, with suspense & humor, plenty of excitement, first rate production values and good acting. It is indeed difficult to find anything to dislike about the movie and it stands up nicely to comparison with other similarly themed pictures of the period - SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932), THE MASK OF FU MANCHU (1932) & THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (1933).

Richard Dix creates another sturdy performance as the alcoholic riverboat captain who takes charge in defending the folks sheltering in the inn. Dix gives us a character who's sensible, brave and absolutely no nonsense in dealing with deadly danger. But the film has another champion as well, and this one refreshingly unlikely. Wonderful character actor Edward Everett Horton eschews his normal Nervous Nellie nuances and rewards us with a civil servant who vigorously fights back against the terrorists, heroically aiding Dix despite terrible odds. He even gets to enjoy some tender romance before the film ends, leaving us with a most memorable characterization.

Two lovely ladies grace the film - Gwili Andre as the mysterious gun-toting doll sought by the bandit chief and Arline Judge as the girl from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who finds love in the most unexpected place. Comedienne ZaSu Pitts plays the timid Lady from Omaha, thoroughly regretting her decision to travel around the world. Dudley Digges is the cowardly owner of the stranded riverboat, degraded enough to steal goat's milk from orphans. C. Henry Gordon is delightfully repulsive as the Russian leader of the bandits, whom we first encounter cauterizing the remains of his left ear, bitten off by Dix in a previous encounter.

Movie mavens will spot an uncredited Willie Fung at the end of the picture playing a Chinese sailor.

This brisk action movie, set in deepest Manchuria, stars Richard Dix as a dipsomaniac riverboat captain thrust into a precarious situation: rescuing a mixed bag of travelers, children, and ne'e'r-do-wells from a bandit, played with wicked intent by C. Henry Gordon. Amongst the motley crew are Zasu Pitts as a nervous society lady, Arline Judge as a flapper with a heart of gold, and Danish-born Gwili Andre as a Garbo-like woman of mystery. The film is brilliantly shot by Edward Cronjager, with some top-notch action sequences, but Howard Estabrook's screenplay doesn't do enough to establish its characters, perhaps not surprising considering the film's 68 minute running time. Nonetheless, this gets a strong recommendation, especially for fans of pre-code cinema, who will appreciate scenes such as Gordon having a hot iron applied to the hole in his head where an ear used to be.

Almost everything else I planned to say has been said by someone else here-- this is unusually zippy for a movie by the normally mediocre Wesley Ruggles, that big lummox Richard Dix is unusually animated and even amusing at times, the production design and cinematography are very handsome (and female leads Andre and Judge ain't bad to look at either), it's probably the only movie in which Edward Everett Horton handles a machine gun (although he does prove pretty handy with a pistol in 1938's Wild Money), and while the movie seems a bit underwritten (or more likely written in 3 days), it's pretty everything you could want from a 68-minute pre-Code B movie.

The other interesting thing I would note is that it could have inspired bits in two much more famous movies-- the whole opening, in which news of a bandit's rampage is conveyed by telegraph until the moment that the bandit's men chop down the telegraph pole, plays like a dry run for the much more famous and accomplished opening of Stagecoach-- and it's hard to think that's an accident when you know that co-writer, and RKO producer during this time, Merian C. Cooper (of King Kong fame) would soon work with John Ford on The Lost Patrol (as well as on most of his immediate postwar work). The connection with Howard Hawks is less obvious, but when you consider the situation (tough guy Dix surrounded in compound with a bunch of people whose ability to defend themselves is doubtful), and then hear him refer to Arline Judge by a nickname-- the town she was from ("Bridgeport")-- and hear her answer in a deep, insolent Betty Bacall-Angie Dickinson drawl, there's a definite whiff of the much later Rio Bravo, in which John Wayne is holed up with a bunch of questionable help and a girl called Feathers.

Very serious dramatic roles for Edward Horton and Zasu Pitts, who had both made so many comedies over their careers. A riverboat is stuck in an area in Manchuria, which is about to be raided by the bandit Voronsky, Captain Carson (Richard Dix) must lead the group out of danger. unfortunately for them, he seems to be pretty drunk a lot of the time! sound and picture are quite good, for such an early talkie. co-stars the Danish Dwili Andre (her first US role... but with silly, drawn-in, thin eyebrows. i'm sure some director thought that was the right thing to do.) and Arline Judge. kind of funny that Judge keeps talking about "Bridgeport"... she really was from Bridgeport, Connecticut. it's a fun, wild adventure, mostly because of the "exotic foreign locale"... Manchuria, which was probably stage 33 somewhere in hollywood. supposedly the suspense is keeping the bandits outside the hotel, but with their axes and guns, it looks like they could have entered at will... and when someone gets knocked off through the window, the rest of the group gathers around the dead body, without thought that the killer might still be right outside the window. it's pretty good, if you can overlook some loop holes. Directed by Wesley Ruggles. nominated for Cimarron the year before. Should probably mention that Ruggles was married to Arline Judge, and they made FOUR films together. Wes Ruggles and his brother Charlie had started in the early days of silent films, and carried on into the talkies. This is pretty good. quite the adventure story.