Mask of the Dragon (1951)

This film has only one thing to recommend it. The frankly hilarious portrayal of devious Korean "Prof. Kim Ho" by an outrageously badly cast Jack Reitzen. The rest of this procedural adventure centres around an American soldier "Oliver" (Richard Emory) who promises to repatriate a jade dragon with the aforementioned Professor at his Los Angeles shop. Thing is, though, he doesn't last long enough when he gets home and it now falls to his pal "Ramsey" (Richard Travis) and his gal "Ginny" (Sheila Ryan) - who now possess this valuable curio - to get to the bottom of the murder before they, too, find themselves goners. The title evokes "Fu Manchu" or "Charlie Chan" style adventures, but sadly Sam Newfield and his cast of no-hopers delivers us more in the line of a badly scripted and poorly directed C-feature that is peppered with a couple of seriously rotten set-piece musical numbers and some contrived comedy banter (from Sid Melton) that might kill an hour at a drive-in. I really wouldn't bother!