Spia bionda

Richard Dix was excellent in this movie. I don't know if it was the direction or the fact that his character was drunk most of the time, but the improvement over the Secret Service a yr. earlier was very pronounced. He had subtlety, complexity and nuance here. In the earlier, he was very stagy. Never heard of Gwili Andre before (or since) but she was extraordinarily beautiful and she could act. She must have been a model. The whole cast was very good.

In Manchuria, bandits besiege a group of westerners. While Richard Dix tries to figure out how to get them out of there, bandit leader C. Henry Gordon wants Gwili Andre.

Ever wanted to see a movie in which Edward Everett Horton mows down a bunch of marauders with a machine gun, and dies heroically? Here's your chance. For a performer best remembered for his many comedies, the only man to ever master the triple take, Horton acquits himself quite well. But then, I've always maintained that anyoneone can suffer on the screen; it takes something extra to do comedy.

The other performer worth commenting on is Miss Andre in her screen premiere. Director Wesley Ruggles keeps her speaking to a minimum, and has her posing a lot in profile, and it's quite a profile. It's no wonder she was a model. But her career as an actress is not impressive: fourteen films through 1941. She died in 1959 at the age of 52.

Other performers in this movie include Arline Judge, Zasu Pitts, and Dudley Digges.

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.

I liked it. I thought that it was a pretty decent B-movie for its time. I have one question that maybe someone can answer, though. I thought that I heard "I'll Never Smile Again" playing throughout the soundtrack but, while looking it up, saw that that song wasn't written until 1940. Am I mistaken?

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.