Black Dragons (1942)

"Japs Bomb Honolulu During Peace Talks" is the headline that opens this World War II era mystery thriller, featuring Bela Lugosi as a Nazi plastic surgeon who turns six Japanese members of the Black Dragon Society into replicas of American fifth column industrialists. When Dr. Melcher is rewarded for his efforts by imprisonment to contain the deadly secret, he uses his surgical kit (which somehow escaped detection) to magically remove his beard and transform himself into a fellow prisoner who looks exactly like Bela Lugosi. So how were two identical looking prisoners explained away by their Japanese captors? This plot point obviously didn't bother the film makers, so I won't let it bother me beyond mentioning it.

Otherwise, "Black Dragons" is a fairly entertaining diversion replete with murder and mayhem, as Melcher, now Dr. Colomb arrives in the U.S. to systematically remove each of his creations. They wind up as corpses on the steps of the Japanese Embassy in Washinton, D.C., each with dagger in hand, as if in ritual suicide, but obviously as murder victims.

Along for the fun are Joan Barclay as Alice Saunders, niece of host industrialist William Saunders (George Pembroke), and future Lone Ranger star Clayton Moore as a government agent. You'll recognize his voice before his face, and you might not at that if you don't realize he's in this film.

For his part, Bela Lugosi uses the Dracula stare several times in the film to send a departure message to his victims. Gone is the over enunciation of his early film days when he was just beginning to learn English, though the rhythmic quality of his voice is still there.

Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into the the film's final scene, but when Dr. Saunders finally comes out of the room where he was kept immobile by Dr. Colomb, he emerges completely wrapped in a dark blanket or cloak. Unveiling himself as a disfigured old man, I couldn't help thinking - "Darth Vader'!