Watch Roar of the Dragon For Free

People are voting emotionally.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The characters are not only stereotypes, but familiar stereotypes at that. Despite its faults, however, this mini epic holds the attention throughout. The action, somewhat gruesome and blood- curdling, tells how a determined (if constantly inebriated) ship's captain saves the lives of some of his passengers when the Chinese town at which they are docked for repairs is besieged by hordes of stirred-up bandits. Richard Dix plays the hero with his usual flair, whilst the exotic Gwili Andre most successfully enacts the tantalizing "heroine". The passengers emerge as much the usual bunch of Jacks and Jills, though no doubt their characterizations seemed fresher back in 1932. Dudley Digges tends to over-state the blustering holder-of-the-purse-strings, while ZaSu Pitts rapidly becomes a real pain as the "complaining woman", but the other players, particularly Edward Everett Horton as the resourceful Busby and Arline Judge as the helpful Bridgeport, impress as real but interesting flesh-and-blood human beings. C. Henry Gordon skilfully paints a nightmarish figure as the ruthless chief of the insurgents. At this stage of his career, director Wesley Ruggles was a master of his craft. Despite the efforts of Digges and Pitts to slow proceedings down, Ruggles never lets up the pressure and the pace. Not only does he keeps suspense at a high level from first to last, but creates just the right atmosphere, aided by Cronjager's picturesque photography, Clark's extensive but brooding sets and Steiner's cleverly contrasted music score. This movie is available on an excellent Warner Archive DVD coupled with "Men of America".

The most interesting thing about this movie is the collection of could have, should have moments that under the right direction and with the right script would have resulted in a much better adventure. A bit reminiscent of "The Sand Pebbles", the story has much potential which the dialog fails to deliver. Character development is all but nonexistent for a group of interesting individuals. And don't get me started on the pitiful editing. But what makes it worth a look is the collection of actors chosen for this turkey. Gwili Andre, the tragic Dane who chose fame by immolation, Arlene Judge, famous for her eight marriages, Edward Everett Horton in his most woefully miscast role. His wild-eyed intensity just doesn't translate well into heroic action. He just looks ridiculous. As for Andre, she had the looks but not the talent. The veterans, Richard Dix, Zazu Pitts, and C. Henry Gordon acquit themselves well as the true professionals they were despite the poor material they were given to work with. So there you have it. A pretty bad movie that's nonetheless worth a look.

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.

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.