Best movie of this year hands down!

A Masterpiece!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

There are four golden reasons to watch this lightweight comedy- thriller from B-movie programmer king Harry Alan Towers alias Peter Welbeck. 1) the on-location photography of 1960s Hong Kong 2) Margaret Lee who also sings "Five Golden Dragons," a good little tune 3) Maria Rohm 4) Maria Perschy. If not for the latter three, I'd have turned off this movie after 20 minutes. I can't see any reason to actually buy the DVD if you've seen it on TV or Amazon Prime. Affable Bob Cummings basically plays his TV character from "Love That Bob." Evasive, easy-going, constantly chattering small talk, nervous, clumsy and too-cool-for-school, Bob overdoes wiping his face with a handkerchief in the second half. I don't know what that was all about. An endless stream of beefy Chinese thugs in matching Polo shirts chase him around Hong Kong but can't kill him but they do kill off one of the cast sleeping in his hotel bedroom, while he's on the couch snoozing. The rest of the cast in small roles is a Who's Who of movie legends, well-known faces and international actors. Bob was lucky not to have any scenes directly opposite mad man Klaus Kinski, unusually subdued here. It has the same kind of fun-B movie time-killing, ambiance as another Towers production, Bang! Bang! You're Dead! (Our Man in Marrakesh) with Tony Randall who supposedly turned down the Cummings role. Towers had a yen for these Sax Rohmer/Edgar Wallace-style films in the 1960s, ultimately producing and writing over 100 films during his lifetime, adding production value with exotic locations like Beirut and Hong Kong. The editing of the night club performances by Lee and Yukari Ito is poor, interrupting their singing for some meaningless cut-away and then back again to the singers.

Silly, sometimes juvenile, but generally amusing adaptation of the Edgar Wallace story by producer Harry Alan Towers, using his screen writing pseudonym of "Peter Welbeck". Fading sitcom star Robert Cummings plays Bob Mitchell, a naive American playboy on vacation in Hong Kong. He soon gets dragged into various matters of international intrigue, while a dedicated police commissioner (Rupert Davies) and his associate (Roy Chiao) work the case. The "five golden dragons" of the title are criminal masterminds who are due to meet each other in person for the first time.This is a moderately fun, rather lightweight mystery. It's not a great one by any stretch of the imagination, but it sometimes delivers some entertainment. It lessens its impact by going on too long, and losing some momentum, and it really does get too positively goofy for its own good. (The falling death of a henchman is played for laughs, for one thing.) What helps matters a fair bit is the exotic setting. The movie is shot in Techniscope and Technicolor and looks absolutely gorgeous. And now that the word "gorgeous" has been brought up, it must be said that the female cast looks ravishing: Margaret Lee as the devilish singer Magda, and Maria Rohm & Maria Perschy as a pair of sisters. The songs & score are catchy.The international cast of superstars gives it curiosity value. Cummings supplies both heroics and comedy relief, and he's likable enough. Davies and Chiao (the two of them utter quotes from Shakespeare appropriate to various situations) are excellent. Klaus Kinski is a hoot as always as the nefarious Gert, but fans might bemoan not seeing him get to do more. Giving the film a shot in the arm late in the game are the special guest star appearances by Dan Duryea, George Raft, Brian Donlevy, and Sir Christopher Lee, who play four of the five golden dragons. Still, one may rightly think that to see them so briefly is a waste of talent. Japanese pop star Yukari Ito makes a musical appearance.Enjoyable, to a degree, but also largely forgettable. One highlight, or low point, depending on your point of view, is seeing a supposedly dead body blink several times.Six out of 10.

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.

Singapore looks great. The rest of this film is so incredibly bad that its a wonder that Mystery Science Theater 3000 never found it. Equally amazing is that this film isn't high on the list of inept movies made by people who should know better. Forget the plot, it makes no real sense (it has something to do with a fat man being thrown off the balcony of a 12th story apartment thats empty, a note he leaves behind for a guy he met in Manila, and a group of people known as the Five Golden Dragons). Mostly its an excuse to have Bob Cummings (a fading sitcom star who's career faded even more after this) wander through various dangerous situations and say stupid things that are suppose to be funny. This is a comedy right? Actually most things I've seen about this film list it as a drama, which it never could be except in a drug addled mind. The dialog is awful. the performances are even worse. Its as if no one cared.(Maybe Klaus Kinski did since he's the only one not sending in a note that their performance couldn't come in because it was sick) Cummings is beyond bad.I mean beyond beyond (way past the land of hope and fear bad). The big name stars, George Raft, Brian Brian Donlevy, Christopher Lee and others, seem somnambulant in their very very brief appearances. Shall we talk about the continuity? Actually we could if there was some but there is not. Watch how things jump from shot to shot to shot . Nothing, and I do mean that, nothing matches. Who was the editor of this? Watch as people and objects move around a set with the greatest of ease.There is a drinking game waiting to be created here. I've read a couple of things since I watched this last night that described it as jaw dropping...and it is I could feel my jaw opening as I watched this and an incredulous expression go across my face. I also kept wondering what the heck I was watching. This is awful. I mean its bad. And if you can get drunk with some friends I think this is probably a laugh riot. In the words of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now "The Horror the horror." (If you must see this try to get the full version which can be had from Sinister Cinema since its got an extra half hour of truly awfulness from the version thats floating around on tape. I mean if you're going to abuse yourself, do it right)