Five Golden Dragons Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Five Golden Dragons Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov July 9, 2016

Jeremy Summers' "Five Golden Dragons" (1967) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent U.S. distributors Blue Underground. The supplemental features on the disc include an original trailer for the film and a large collection of archival promotional materials for the film. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

The Dragons

The plot copies the formula that the many Eurospy films used. The only notable difference here is that the main character isn’t a James Bond copycat. He is a clueless American playboy whose life suddenly spins out of control and he is forced to improvise in order to stay alive.

Bob Cummings (Robert Cummings, Dial M for Murder) meets a couple of beautiful girls at a pool somewhere in Hong Kong. After he buys them drinks, hoping that later on he can also buy them dinner and have an even better time with them, he is a given a strange note from a man he befriended while visiting Manila who has been eliminated by a powerful underground organization. Soon after, killers dressed in black begin chasing him all over Hong Kong, and even though he does not understand why, he is smart enough to figure out that the note has something to do with it. He ends up in a popular night club somewhere in the heart of the city and quickly gets seduced by a very sexy singer (Margaret Lee, The Bastard) who is already in a relationship with a shady businessman with some even shadier partners. In the club, Bob also accidentally discovers that soon there will be an important meeting between the word’s five biggest gold traffickers, who call themselves the Golden Dragons, because they are planning to begin working with the mafia. Then he also learns that the singer isn’t as innocent as she appears and all hell breaks loose.

The many twists do not make a whole lot of sense, but the chaos is what largely makes this film attractive. Indeed, it is literally a mish-mash of ideas that send the story in multiple directions at the same time and then leave it to Cummings and the supporting cast to figure out a way to make the whole thing work. The end result is unlikely to appeal to viewers expecting a solid structure and logic behind the wild conspiracies, but the film has a way of defying expectations that does make it enjoyable to watch.

The Edgar Wallace element in the story should not be taken seriously. It was basically a pretext for the great producer Harry Alan Towers to gather an impressive cast that would legitimize the film he wanted made. Unsurprisingly, Klaus Kinski, Christopher Lee, Brian Donlevy, Dan Duryea, and George Raft have only a few short and largely irrelevant appearances that are basically used to get their names in the credits.

Margaret Lee and Maria Rohm look stunning and have more time in front of the camera, but they are also not given enough material to convince that they can actually act. Admittedly, this only further adds to the film’s B-grade charm as a lot of the sexy footage looks quite surreal.

The film was almost certainly shot with a fixed budget, but the panoramic footage from Hong Kong and the stylish performances from the night club actually create the impression that it was a much bigger and more expensive production. It was lnsed by cinematographer John von Kotze (Don Sharp’s Bang! Bang! You're Dead!, The Brides of Fu Manchu).

Five Golden Dragons Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Jeremy Summers' Five Golden Dragons arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Blue Underground.

The film has been recently remastered from the original camera negative and looks really good in high-definition. Large parts of it boast various panoramic vistas from Hong Kong that actually create the impression that it is a much bigger and more expensive production. However, seasoned viewers will likely notice some very minor shifts in terms of density which are fairly common for films that were produced by Harry Alan Towers. (See some of Jess Franco's films). I mention this so that it is clear that they are part of the original cinematography and are not introduced by poor digital work. Depth and especially clarity are typically very good. Colors are stable and healthy, though saturation could be even more convincing. There are no traces of problematic degraining or sharpening adjustments, but some encoding optimizations could have been made to have even better grain retention. Image stability is excellent. Lastly, there are no distracting debris, large cuts, damage marks, or warped frames to report in our review. My score is 4.25/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-Free Blu-ray release. Therefore, you will be able to play it on your player regardless of your geographical location).

Five Golden Dragons Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (with a few small exchanges in Cantonese). Optional yellow English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

The lossless track must have been remastered as well because depth, clarity, and balance are excellent. The film's original sound design, however, is not overly impressive, so even though there is plenty of action dynamic intensity is modest. On the other hand, all of the music performances from the night club sound terrific. The dialog is stable and easy to follow. There are no audio dropouts, pops. background hiss, or digital distortions to report in our review.

Five Golden Dragons Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - original trailer for Five Golden Dragons. In English, not subtitled. (3 min, 1080p).

• Poster & Still Gallery - a massive collection of original posters, magazine articles, press adds, studio stills, production stills, and DVD covers. The collection was compiled by Gregory Chick. (1080p).

Five Golden Dragons Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I have a soft spot for these types of films. I think that the more outrageous and chaotic they are, the more charming they become. Jeremy Summers' Five Golden Dragons is a prime example of a disorganized film that aspires to be too many things at the same time. It makes little sense, but I think that it is very entertaining. Like most of the films Harry Alan Towers produced during the '60s and '70s, it is also quite beautiful. Fans of Eurospy and period exotic adventure films should consider picking it up. It has been recently remastered in 2K and looks lovely in high-definition. (Five Golden Dragons is included in this double-feature release from Blue Underground, together with John Moxey's Circus of Fear). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.