Roar of the Dragon (1932) is a loud, sweaty, and oddly fun siege movie

If you have about an hour and ten minutes to kill and you want to see a bunch of 1930s actors looking incredibly stressed in a dusty room, Roar of the Dragon is probably for you. It is a movie that feels like it was filmed in a sauna. Everyone is constantly wiping their foreheads. It is definitely worth a watch if you like those early talkies where the microphone seems like it's hidden inside a potted plant. People who want a fast-paced modern action movie will hate this. It moves at the speed of a very tired turtle.

The whole thing takes place in an inn in Manchuria. Bandits are everywhere. The leader of the bandits is Voronsky, played by C. Henry Gordon with a lot of snarling. He wants a woman named Natascha, and Captain Carson (Richard Dix) decided he wants her too. It is a very basic setup. It feels like a stage play that someone decided to add horses to at the last minute.

Richard Dix is... an interesting actor. He has this way of standing where his chest is puffed out so far I thought he might tip over. He speaks every line like he is announcing the end of the world. It is very earnest. Too earnest, maybe. He makes every choice feel like a life-or-death struggle, even when he’s just talking about dinner. It reminds me a bit of the energy in The Measure of a Man, but with more shouting.

The real reason to watch this isn't the hero, though. It is the side characters. Edward Everett Horton and Zasu Pitts are in this. If you know who they are, you know exactly what they are doing. Horton is doing his nervous, fluttery thing. Pitts is doing her worried, hand-wringing thing. They are great. They feel like they wandered in from a completely different, much better movie. Every time they are on screen, the movie actually feels alive.

There is a scene where they are trying to figure out how to defend the inn. It goes on for a long time. They talk about guns and positioning. You can almost feel the director, Wesley Ruggles, telling them to speak louder so the early sound equipment can hear them. The bandits outside keep making noise, but you rarely see them. It makes the inn feel very small. Very claustrophobic.

I noticed this one extra in the background during a crowd scene who just looks bored. He is supposed to be terrified of the bandits, but he looks like he’s thinking about what he wants for lunch. It is those little things that make these old movies charming. It’s not perfect. It’s actually pretty messy. The pacing is weird. One minute nothing is happening, and the next minute everyone is screaming and shooting.

The romance between Dix and Gwili Andre is... well, it’s there. Andre is very pretty in a statuesque sort of way. She doesn't have much to do besides look worried. Their chemistry is about as hot as a cold cup of tea. I didn't really care if they ended up together. I mostly just wanted to see if the bandits were ever going to actually get inside the building.

The bandits themselves are a bit of a caricature. It is 1932, so you have to expect some pretty dated portrayals of people. James Wang and Toshia Mori are in the cast, and they do what they can with the material. It feels a bit like the simplified adventure style you see in Adventures of Tarzan, where the villains are just 'the bad guys' without much else going on.

There is this strange moment with a child and a toy that is supposed to be heart-wrenching. It lasts about thirty seconds too long. The music swells up and you know the movie is begging you to feel something. But because the characters haven't really been developed, it just feels like a weird pause in the action. I found myself looking at the wallpaper in the background instead of the kid.

Speaking of the sets, they are actually pretty good. The inn feels solid. You can almost smell the dust and the old wood. RKO usually had decent production values back then. It doesn't look cheap, just... theatrical. It’s like a slightly more expensive version of something like The Eagle's Claw.

One thing that bothered me was the sound of the gunfire. It sounds like someone popping paper bags. It’s not intimidating at all. When the 'Roar' of the dragon finally happens—which is basically just the big climax—it’s more of a polite cough. But for 1932, I guess it was pretty exciting stuff. The scale of the bandit attack at the end is actually surprisingly big. There are a lot of people running around and things blowing up.

I wondered while watching if the writers—including Merian C. Cooper, who did King Kong—knew how silly some of the dialogue was. Probably not. They take it all very seriously. There's a lot of talk about honor and duty. It gets a bit exhausting. I preferred the moments where the characters were just being human and scared.

Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not. Is it a fun relic? Yeah, I think so. It’s the kind of movie you put on a Sunday afternoon when you don't want to think too hard. It’s better than Idle Chatter but definitely not as polished as the big epics that would come later in the decade.

• The Good: Zasu Pitts being Zasu Pitts. The set design. The sheer 1930s-ness of it all.
• The Bad: Richard Dix's stiff acting. The slow middle section. The dated stereotypes.
• The Weird: The way the bandit leader laughs. It sounds like he’s choking on a grape.

By the time the credits rolled, I felt like I’d been through a bit of an ordeal myself. Not because the movie was bad, but because it’s so loud and chaotic. It’s a noisy film. If you like seeing how Hollywood used to handle 'international' adventure before they really figured out how to use sound properly, give it a look. Just don't expect it to change your life. 🐉

I kept thinking about Wild and Woolly while watching this, mainly because of the energy levels. Roar of the Dragon has that same 'let's just throw everything at the wall' approach. It’s messy, it’s a bit confused about what it wants to be, but it’s never boring for long. It’s a solid piece of B-movie history that deserves a bit of credit for trying so hard.