B grade British film set (and made) in Hong Kong, although the leads are American. The Five Dragons are a confederate involved in illegal activity in Hong Kong, when they decide to dissolve the confederate. A professor meets some young women at the pool and becomes involved. The story is simple comic book stuff, and not particularly carefully made, but the film is livened up by many period scenes in Hong Kong and the comely Magda. There is a song by a contemporary Japanese star called Yukari Ito. In one scene a (new) Toyota Corona turns into an (old) Morris Oxford before blowing up.

As others have mentioned, this can only be described as a comedy as any dramatic moments must have wound up on the cutting room floor. I mean, really! A woman's sister has been murdered only 2 days before and she consoles herself by water skiing in the bay? Another few days and she's jetting off with the hero? Did this woman even leave a forwarding address for the ashes? The low-speed chase scenes, one on oar-driven water taxis and another on rickshaws were light relief to the mind-numbing dialogues. As is always true to form with this genre, it includes a ridiculously elaborate hijack attempt, this time trying to grab the bereft woman on water skis rather than just kidnapping her on her return to dock.If you've got time to kill and nothing better to hand, this would be better than watching a blank screen but only marginally. There is plenty of colour and some pleasant songs at least in the version I saw.

I'm sure that Bob Cummings and the guest stars who played the Golden Dragons must have looked forward to a nice trip to Hong Kong as the main reason for signing on for this film. In the case of George Raft his troubles with the IRS are well documented. It's as good a reason as any to appear in this dragging film.Five Men who are the Golden Dragons are operators apparently on both sides of the law and unknown to each other they meet in Hong Kong to dissolve a successful partnership and split their accumulated loot. They wear these silly dragon masks and have a key that opens a lock for admission. If they're not a dragon, they got shot with a turn of said lock.Four of them make it, Dan Duryea, George Raft, Christopher Lee, and Brian Donlevy. The fifth doesn't show up, he's been eliminated. They can't start without him.In the meantime kind of like Cary Grant was sucked into some espionage plot in an infinitely better film, North By Northwest, Bob Cummings gets involved in this whole business. He's an aging playboy in Hong Kong for some fun and frolic. Of course he's not what he seems.Cummings tried to make light of the whole business. Everyone else mouthed the dialog with all the satisfaction of players whose salary checks have cleared.All of you I'm sure have better memories of all the name players in the cast. Keep them.

The cast is probably the biggest draw of "Five Golden Dragons", but be warned: many of those actors (Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, etc.) appear only for a few minutes and barely do anything. The main star is Bob Cummings, agreeable enough but slightly too old for the part of the cheerful, happy-go-lucky playboy. As usual in 1960's spy/crime/exotic adventure films (this one was shot on location in Hong Kong), the women (Margaret Lee, Maria Perschy, Maria Rohm) are tremendously sexy, with wonderfully curvy bodies that their various bikinis/dresses do a great job of showcasing. Unfortunately, the film has very little action, and several sequences are extremely dragged-out in length (for example, there are 3 musical numbers back-to-back in the middle), which makes me think that this is one case where the shortened (by 30 minutes!) American version might actually have been superior (it's easy to see the parts that need trimming). One twist near the end works well, but overall this film has to count as a major disappointment. *1/2 out of 4.