Mask Of The Dragon has young Richard Emory killed almost immediately after coming home to America after Korean war service. Before that he had agreed to help a Korean dealer in Oriental artifacts get a Chinese jade statue into the USA. Watching this it occurred to me that ever since 9/11 we are all warned and asked at airports not to accept packages from strangers. You would think someone in the army and a private detective would know better.So like in The Maltese Falcon your partner is supposed to do something about it when you're killed and this film does have some similarities to The Maltese Falcon updated for the Cold War. Of course the plot and the characters aren't halfway as interesting.I think you've figured out there is smuggling afoot here, but when you see the film I think you'll agree that the smuggling might have made more sense going out of the USA instead of coming in.Richard Travis as the Sam Spade of the piece and Sheila Ryan as a CSI investigator and Lyle Talbot of the LAPD try to solve the homicide of Emory and later of Dee Tatum a singer stabbed through a curtain on the Johnny Grant Show. Sid Melton plays one of the bad guys and he was Lippert Pictures house comedian. In this film his comedy is very forced.Dashiell Hammett if he saw this film would have been mortified at what was done to his masterpiece.

This second feature from ''Quickie King'' Robert Lippert is fairly amusing, in it's (very)unambitious way. When ''Hero''Richard Travis' Army Sergeant pal is murdered shortly after he returns from the Orient, He and his lab technician girlfriend (Sheila Ryan) find themselves in the middle of the investigation. This leads them to a group of smugglers, working out of a Chinatown curio shop in downtown Los Angeles. Not to mention an almost completely beside the point interlude at a local TV station. Here, what there is of the story grinds to a halt while a Singing Cowboy act is shoehorned in to perform two unnecessary (and unwelcome) musical numbers, and character actor Sid Melton tries out what looks like a weak comedy act on an adjoining stage. He's accompanied by one of the worst no-name ''Actresses'' ever seen on film. (And, naturally, this one was never seen again.)Luckily, the story (eventually) resumes. Director Sam Neufeld obviously had no idea how to handle the TV station segment, so it plays like an ''Amatuer Hour'' contest. The rest is strictly point the camera and shoot. And the stock footage used sticks out like a sore thumb. Although the supporting cast boasts a few vaguely familiar faces, the most prominent is prolific character actor Melton, who made 18 films for Lippert. He's playing a small-time crook in league with the smugglers, who, for no discernible reason, dresses up (unconvincingly) as an Oriental from time to time, and stands in front of the curio shop shop spouting Pidgin English. Most of the Oriental characters are played by occidental actors (par for the course in those days) with accents so thick it's hard to understand them-all except for Melton, who speaks with an unmistakable Brooklyn inflection.One of the few authentic Orientals is a burly wrestler billed as ''The Great Mr. Moto'' (whoever that is) whose main function is to playfully push partner in crime Melton around. ''Mask Of The Dragon'' like Lippert's other epics, was made simply to draw a fast buck and fill the bottom half of a double bill. Even at that, this one is about rock-bottom in terms of production values.(It wasn't called a ''Spartan Production'' for nothing.) The commentator on the very good-looking DVD (from VCI ENTERTAINMENT) does go on (and on) about the quality of the ''sets'', though they look like actual shops, offices, apartments, etc.It's hardly likely they were built for this film alone. The rest is mostly scene after scene of talk, with occasional bouts of comic violence.If that doesn't grab you, almost all of the background score is played on an Organ (!).This unique addition, for better or worse, reminds one of the old soap opera's from the Golden Days Of Radio, where each (hopefully) shocking incident was punctuated with a blast of the old Wurlitzer. Here, it makes an already pretty silly movie that much funnier. Though it clocks in at under an hour, it still feels padded, thanks to the singing cowboys and listless jokes that hit the ground like rocks. This was obviously an attempt to stretch the running time to the length of a feature, but it failed miserably. In fact, a few years later, the film was cut to 25 minutes and shown that way on TV. And, probably, all the useless bits filmed on the fictional TV show were eliminated, along with the songs. Still, Travis and Ryan are a fairly engaging pair of Heroes (Spunky Ms. Ryan would have made a lovely Lois Lane) and Melton, believe it or not, is occasionally amusing in an idiotic sort of way. He went on to greater fame as ''Alf Monroe'' on the comedy series ''Green Acres''.Strangely enough, he's not the only one here with a ''Green Acres'' connection. Leading Lady Ryan eventually married Pat Buttram,who played''Mr. Haney'' on the same show. Once again, the gaudy, colorful posters created for this film , promise much more than it ever delivers. Still, though ''Mask Of The Dragon'' is no classic, Lippert and Neufeld have done worse.See ''Fingerprints Don't Lie'' (filmed-back to back with this one featuring most of the same cast) for proof of that.

Director Sam Newfield and his producer brother ground out movie cheapies like sausages, all made with the smelly meat scraps you don't want to know about. The point was to squeeze production costs until the squealing almost stops and keep the factory busy with low-cost actors, writers and production crews. If costs could be kept low enough, then almost any ticket sold, no matter how few, would yield a penny or two of profit. The movies were booked strictly as cheap filler. They are classic examples of how it is always possible to produce things of lower quality than you'd think possible. The Mask of the Dragon has to do with a jade dragon from Korea, an investigation into a murder, the discovery of a smuggling ring and the deadly secret behind the dragon. The bizarre, abysmal quality of the movie is vividly evident by the occasional background music...generic thrills played on, wait for it, an organ. Newfield adds a couple of cowboy songs for good measure.

This is indeed a deservedly forgotten Poverty Row effort from the Neufeld stable. Although "Spartan" is certainly a most accurate label, actually Mask of the Dragon is no way a noir in either story or atmosphere. The plot is plain silly and gets even less credible as it progresses, although it does just manage to hold the attention for 53 minutes for indulgent viewers, and especially for fans of super-attractive Dee Tatum (here making her final of only four movie appearances). I also thoroughly enjoyed the slings and arrows directed at the even less production value-oriented, totally scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel television presentations, here enthusiastically satirized by announcer Johnny Grant himself would you believe, and a reasonably melodious cowboy singing group, the Trailsmen.As always, Sam Newfield directs competently enough. I noticed only one mistake, which the editor tried vainly to cover up with an unrelated shot from earlier in the movie. At least this stratagem reveals how Sam was able to shoot the movie in just five days. He simply shot no extra footage at all. Just the bare minimum indicated by the screenplay, leaving no spare takes to work with in case of accidents or errors. Sheila Ryan (who was so beguiling in Dressed To Kill) makes an okay heroine, but the two Richards, Travis and Emory, hail strictly from dullsville. Sid Melton attempts to contribute an odd mixture of vicious heavy cum comic relief with only partial success. Michael Whalen of Poor Little Rich Girl has the air of a star obviously fallen on hard times.