User reviews

Although it is executed with a certain degree of professionalism, and has some interesting touches here and there (like a bulletproof vest that reflects the bullet and sends it back to the sender!), "New York Calling Superdragon" is defeated by its sheer dullness. Not much happens throughout the film: there are no major set-pieces and little excitement. Nearly all of the action is limited to fistfights, unless you count the explosion of an obvious miniature building at the end. Ray Danton is an agreeable cut-rate Bond (and although others here have found him unlikable, I thought he was more respectful to the ladies than the real Bond); Margaret Lee and Marisa Mell are both sexy, but largely used for decorative purposes only; the villains are as forgettable as the rest of the film. (*1/2)

While certainly a bad film, it could have been much worse. The entire movie is mostly just nothing but spy clichés and it's pretty easy to tell that this was made around the same time as the original Sean Connery James Bond movies. The plot's not that good, with the title spy investigating a woman's death and finding out it was a poison made by a supervillain. There really is very little to distinguish this from a Bond movie. It's mostly a ripoff. There are in fact a few good lines here and there. I really did like it when he said, "Call me an idiot" (or something like that) and he just says, "You're an idiot".

I guess it's kind of hard to judge this because according to this website, it has a longer running time than the actual MST3K episode it was featured. I'm not going to waste my time tracking the original version down. I got all I wanted from this movie. The colors were bad, although some of the sets seemed off at time. There's a little good action, but for the most part it's quite boring. I guess it's around this time we tried to put intentional jokes in non comedies.

Super Dragon? What kinda spy name is that?

This is one of the better spy movie send-ups, especially because it takes itself completely seriously. The Dragon is remarkably smooth and smug, and his lumpy, cheerful sidekick Babyface is along to help solve the mysteries of dead colleagues, toxic gum and villains who can't stop decorating. Our Hero is worldly ("Fremont, Michigan? That's a little college town, isn't it?") but accident-prone -- he'll stay away from Ludenkelder after this assignment. This movie is colorless as spy movies go, except for the wild colorings in the ladies' hair. ("Betcha that color comes out of a bottle," one character grumps.) Worth getting the MST3K-ized version of this film, especially for musical interlude provided by Joel and the 'bots.

Unlike such efforts as Code Name: Diamond Head, this movie actually has some decent locations, including a panorama of foggy windmills that looks like a "starving artists" painting.

Be sure to check out Mario Cuomo (well, it sure looks like him) as the art collector with a collection of pen-phones and unlisted numbers. Take my word for it!

Firstly, after seeing Secret Agent Super Dragon, I now pronounce Danger Death Ray! king of all B spy movies. This one hurts so much that I can remember one character in this film named the Joker and I don't even know who that was!! Although our secret agent spy is suave with the ladies, that's most of the action you will see. I can only recall that there are less than 10 gunshots fired – TOTAL! Man, that's what I call a really lame spy thriller. Instead, our spy and his Q wannabe trade witty banter and drop lots of corny one liners. Oh, and the super drug that cannot be traced or detected? The DEA's worse nightmare. And the drug's results in people laughing hysterically, acting crazy and chaotic and violence? Yes, we as a society have all heard of alcohol. Add a secret villain society and a weird ‘W' membership ritual and "super" is the LAST word you'd use to describe this. As exciting as counting needles in a field of haystacks.

All straight criminals beware when Bryan Cooper, alias Super Dragon, comes out of his early retirement to battle evil once again. Our bland villain has killed off one of Bryan's mates and now plans to spread a chemical in people's drinks that will turn them into senseless maniacs (as if ordinary booze isn't good enough at that)!

Ray Danton's pathetic job at playing our smug, unlikeable hero is amazing, right up there with Peter Mark Richman in Agent for H.A.R.M. How should I describe Mr. Danton? Think George Clooney, then remove what little personality he has and erase From Dusk till Dawn from his merits list. That's how bad Ray Danton is.

This movie is a typically bland, dragging Bond rip off which is so unbelievably dull, not even some hot 60's girls help much. I counted two action scenes in the entire movie and the soundtrack was so bad it made the jazz Muzak from 'Manos' seem like Mozart. You will want to miss this one - the only entertaining part of SASD is its hilarious title.(r#9)

Well it is not. Anything but, as this is another in a long line of Bond knock offs where they get a smug spy and think that is enough. Saw this one on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as they did a number of these James Bond Wannabe films during their run on the air. The agent in his one at least goes to Holland whereas the agent in Agent From H.A.R.M virtually stayed at the same beach house for most of his flick, but he did more in the way of action than Secret Agent Super Dragon did! A few clunky fight scenes and a tepid shoot out or two is all we get. Both pale in comparison to that film where they got Sean Connery's brother to play the agent as that film went to multiple locations and had better action which is sad, because in that film he was not even a true agent, but a plastic surgeon! Then there was the agent from Danger, Death Ray and that too had more action, but used ridiculous miniatures which looked pretty much like a kid's toys! This one did manage a couple of humorous scenes and the setting of Holland was different, they just needed their super agent to do a bit more than rummage through hotel rooms and such.

The story has people in a small town in America going berserk and no one knows why. So in comes, Secret Agent Super Dragon...though he is not really all that motivated to take the case. Seems he is retired, but the death of a fellow agent sends him on the trail. He partners up with a guy who is apparently some sort of mob boss and they soon make their way to Holland after discovering that the means of distributing a drug that causes bizarre behavior is hidden in chewing gum. Soon Dragon makes his way to a posh party after a few run ins with some thugs and learns the terrible secret the villain of the piece has in store for the world!

This made for a funny episode of MST3K, as did all the spy films they riffed on. None of them were too terribly horrible, but they all had flaws that stopped them from being anything that was remotely a good film. The Holland setting made for some good jokes as did the fact that the agent of the piece really did not do all that much in the way of action. They were also dead on when they would say that the villain of the piece did not make much of an impression at all. I did love the joke where the villain takes the poison and they riffed Secret Agent Super Dragon kind of smugly getting the last word in right before he died.

So, this one had some good in it despite not being all that great. The Holland setting was interesting, a few good jokes here and there and at least it wrapped up nicely. They just needed to have a few more action pieces in this one, they did not have a single chase scene in the film that I could tell. What spy film does not have a super cool chase sequence? Even the Agent From H.A.R.M managed to get on a motorcycle and try to stop a plane and the guy in Danger, Death Ray had a chase, albeit slow and involving toy cars. The fights they did manage here looked poorly choreographed too, not anything that really gets the excitement up, and just what was the deal with Super Dragon rolling the guy up in the carpet? Seriously, he couldn't find a better way to hide the unconscious body than that?

Secret Agent Super Dragon has become a touchstone of Bondian spoofs thanks to wide availability on the gray market and the misguided shenanigans of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Those who actually watch this movie will find, much to their surprise, that it is a competent and fairly serious exercise compared to many of its genre kindred. Admittedly there is enough cheapness and silliness to keep the viewer from thinking too highly of it but it won't disappoint entirely.

It's hard to think of a more goofy film with a more goofy premise than "Secret Agent Super Dragon". Apparently, a terrorist mastermind and his henchman have been lacing bubblegum with a substance that makes you act stupid. Evil isn't it? Of course the only one who can save the world is Secret Agent Super Dragon: a greasy, deep-throated "tall guy" that should have been called Secret Agent Super Sportjacket. While dispatching villains in absolutely ridiculous methods (karate chops), he manages to bed plenty of women with fake eyebrows and fake hair color. The dubbing is atrocious along with just about everything else in this movie. The highlight is a sequence in which the Super Dragon is sunk in a wooden coffin and is suddenly saved by inflatable rubber bags - which should have kept him from sinking in the first place! Also, the sets in Holland are hilarious looking; imagine walking through the garden section of a local Walmart. Be sure to watch the MST3K version of this pathetic mess.

As a young James Bond fan, if I had seen this one in the theater it likely would have rated a 5 just for the goofy gadgets! 53 years later, it's almost as difficult to watch as today's main stream, self-absorbed fluff and high tech digital cartoons. Like so many other films, this one is best served with a generous helping of MST3K.

I'll keep the plot synopsis short and sweet. Most of Secret Agent Super Dragon was so unnecessarily confusing that little of the plot seemed to matter anyway. In this James Bond wannabe, CIA agent Super Dragon (Ray Danton) goes up against a Venezuelan drug lord who uses candy to distribute his merchandise. Anything else beyond that wouldn't be much more than speculation as I found myself completely in the dark during much of the movie. I'm not one who needs to be spoon-fed plot points, but how about making what's going on just a little clearer? Too much of the movie seemed like a series of unrelated set pieces that didn't fit together.

But the biggest problem with Secret Agent Super Dragon is the same thing that plagues a lot of these James Bond inspired films - money. The James Bond movies had the financial backing to pull it off. These Italian movies like Secret Agent Super Dragon can't match that kind of money. As a result, they suffer from weak scripts and acting, a lack of interesting multiple locations, poor special effects, a very anti-climatic ending, and anything else you can spend money on to make a movie better.

That's not to say the movie was a total waste. In fact, I enjoyed quite a bit of it. Danton is above average in the title role. He's slick and clever - just what you would expect from a secret agent. Marisa Mell and Margaret Lee would give any Bond girl a run fir her money. Finally, there is a sense of fun about the movie that I liked a lot. Those behind the movie were smart enough to never take it too seriously. As a result, the movie's light, almost bubbly, feeling is an asset.

The 1960s produced tons of James Bond-like films. Many are pretty famous and are seen on American TV quite a bit, such as the Flint and Matt Helm movies. But most of them are European movies...ones that at least for me are only available on YouTube. Of these European Bond wannabes, the best are probably the Jerry Cotton movies starring George Nader, though there are countless other ones featuring a wide variety of actors (often Americans in the lead and Europeans playing the other roles). One of the more obscure Bondian movies is "Secret Agent Super Dragon"...starring the American actor Ray Danton.

Now before I tell you waht I thought of the film, I should point out that it's been parodied on "Mystery Science Theater 3000"...and that might mean it's a terrible movie. I say 'might' because there are many examples of decent films the series made fun of and I can only assume they did this because they ran out of bad movies for which they could secure the rights to show. I also point this out because invariably after a film is shown on "MSTK3000", the fans of the series give the film tons of 1s...whether the film is good, bad or somewhere in the middle. So the overall score of 2.6 might have very little to do with the actual quality of the movie.

I should also point out that Ray Danton is a man mostly forgotten today though in the 1950s-60s he was frequently the star of lesser American movies. He was handsome but also a bit bland in most of these roles, though he was better at playing cads and baddies. How he handles this Bondian role...well, that was something I was curious to see.

Brian Cooper, AKA 'Super Dragon' (Danton) is a retired spy when the movie begins. But when his friend is murdered, he comes out of retirement to solve the murder. Naturally, the culprit turns out to be a supervillain bent on taking over the world! In this case, by distributing mind-altering drugs around the world in a most unusual way.

So is this any good despite it's paltry 2.7 rating? Yes. Now I am not saying it's great by any standard, but it's a decent, if flawed time-passer. On the positive side, it features a lot of tough fights as well as a total lack of gadgetry...a major plus, as the Bond films of the 70s were marred by the abundance of gadgets. But, at the same time, the film is a tad slow and it drags a bit. Additionally, a weird problem for the YouTube copy is that parts of it were dubbed into English and parts were in German with subtitles! Odd...and I've seen this a few other times. I think this is because there probably were multiple versions and scenes not present in the American copy were inserted...even though there was no dubs for these scenes. Odd...but not a major problem.

First off, I've seen three versions of this film. All of them in really poor quality except for the Italian language version which was at least complete. SWV put out a DVD of it which ends abruptly before the movie's climax happens. The other English version has the climax in German. Ironically, the onlynway you can actually hear the ending in English is the MST3K riff of the movie. Those English language versions had other major flaws like broken film splices, and incomplete scenes caused by them. A real mess.

People.say alot about Eurospy movies but they still get the least amount of respect and attention of other low budget European action movies. I've seen Hercules against the Moonmen and dozens of Spaghetti westerns with a prestine remaster job done for them but never one eurospy movie. What's left are these messy releases if any release at all. Maybe the worst is The Million Eyes of SuMuru with about 15 minutes of light comedy cut out of it. Again, MST3K had the.most complete version I ever saw.

This movie is something I enjoy and that's because of Benedetto Ghiglia's really great score. Ghiglia was the Italian film score Composer you never heard of from the 60s who was excellent, just not Ennio Morricone. I went so far as to buy the album and still enjoy it as much as John Barry's score for the Ipcress File (and I like them both more than any Bond film's score).

As for the movie.....The plot is a reluctant former spy is pushed back into service to finish the mission a friend of his died trying to complete. The case was of strange incidents of.violence randomly occurring at a Michigan college. This leads to an investigation of a mind controlling drug some.weird rich guy wants to use to.rule the world. Ray Danton plays Super Dragon who is almost indistinguishable from his portrayal as Jaguar in Code Name Jaguar (different from the Jess Franco eurospy comedy spoof. Never saw a good print of that to make it remotely enjoyable.). Marisa Mell has beautiful dark red hair, probably to distinguish herself more from Margaret Lee. Jess Hahn is his.partner on the case. I know him from Welles The Trial as one of the arresting officers who is subsequently tortured at K's office.

It isn't the best Eurospy movie I've seen but I enjoy it for the music. A shame it and basically all eurospy movies will never get much attention..yeah. It's cheesy but they're still more interesting than Ray Dennis Steckler, Ed Wood and at least 2/5ths of Roger Corman's film output.

This is the kind of movie, like Diabolik, that the French would find funny, but everyone else in the world would think is incredibly DUMB. Man, there sure were a lot of James Bond clones in the late 1960's, and finding them is really a crap shoot. On this one, chances are you'll not like it. A joint project among four countries (and a nice rule of thumb is the more countries involved, the worse the film.) by Monaco, France, West Germany and Italy, the film features none of those countries, but was filmed in the Netherlands. (I can't say I blame these countries for not wanting their country in the film.) Secret Agent Super Dragon himself reminds me of one of those perfect jocks who always got his way in school and nobody would even think of being against. I ended up hating him, and the film. Perhaps if he was more imperfect and human, we could root for him.

Secret agent Bryan Cooper (aka Super Dragon) is called out of retirement to investigate mass hysteria in Fremont, Michigan where college students are committing murder and mayhem en masse. He figures out that it's got something to do with chewing gum being handed out in a local bowling alley and he traces the source to Europe where, with the help of a gangster (a dead ringer for Andy Devine) sprung from Sing Sing to give him a hand, he contacts "our man in Amsterdam", Charity Farrell (luscious Marisa Mell), and together they discover an Ernst Blofeld-type megalomaniac hellbent on, what else, world domination...

Robotic Ray Danton, with his black patent leather hair and flinty onyx orbs that make him look positively reptilian, was at his best playing slimy bastards and the role of a smarmy, quick-thinking government agent doesn't suit him. He does his own stunts (as threadbare as they are) with all the agility of a mechanical bear and since he's an unlikely babe magnet, Ray's feminine conquests are as absurd as the plot. Amsterdam locations and a bit of tacky flair here and there can't elevate this James Bond rip-off any higher than sub-par but Marisa Mell, here "by special arrangement" according to the opening credits, ups the pulchritude ante as does sexy British starlet Margaret Lee (looking a bit like Diana Dors) as Cooper's Miss Moneypenny-ish "old reliable". Unless you're as fond of the dramatis personae as I am, find something better to do with your time but, that said, there's an MST3K version out there and I'll bet it's a blast.

Goldfinger came out in the summer of 1964 and created a world-wide sensation. For the next five years, movie goers got wannabe 007s from all over the globe, as every cheapjack knock-off house tried to cash in on the trend. A few of these hand me downs found their niche, but most failed. Super Dragon falls into the majority. Spy movies by their nature are highly contrived and artificial, requiring tight plotting and clever legerdemain by the writers to hide the story gimmicks - double-crossing double agents, conveniently timed plot twists, etc. This is a monumental task for masters of the genre, and far beyond the talents of the C- level hacks who scripted the imitators. Super Dragon is one of the worst offenders I can ever recall seeing, less coherent even than that death ray abomination with Gordon Scott that had about eleven different titles outside of Italy. Stuff happens of course, agents go missing and the protagonist agent shows up and starts asking questions. (How often has the set up for Dr. No been ripped off? I wonder.) People start getting dead soon, so he knows he must be onto something, but nothing that happens actually leads anywhere. It's just stuff. A collection of unrelated happenings is not a narrative. Just stuff. Calling Super Dragon hard to follow presumes that it can be followed, which seems optimistic. It does not help that Ray Danton, who made a soft living playing oily villains in TV westerns and crime dramas, was chosen as the hero. Murders go on around him while leaving him unfazed to a degree that feels sociopathic. Contrast that with Margaret Lee and Marisa Mell, who overplay trying to be coy so hard it comes off as just bad acting. Danton wanders around Amsterdam like a tourist, which I suppose fulfills the exciting location quota, but it all looks cheap and hackneyed. Don't be fooled by cheap imitations. Watch From Russia with Love one more time and enjoy the authentic Bond experience.

Italian film, but dubbed into english. it starts so S-L-O-W.... chick in pink dress talks to guy near the pool. After he throws her in, he hears about a dead agent, and must go investigate. American Ray Danton is "the Dragon", investingating poisoned gum or something. this has a mix of american, italian, and british actors. according to imdb, this was filmed in netherlands. editing and sound quality are pretty lame. we can see why mystery science theater did a parody of this in one of their episodes. moves at a snail's pace. and there's just barely an outline of a plot to follow here. Snore-A-rama. probably some of it was lost in translation. or maybe not. a whopping five writers came up with the screenplay... maybe that was too many. or maybe not enough. Directed by italian director Giorgio Ferroni. not a lot of info on him in wikipedia. apparently he was known for his gladiator and sandal films.

Yes, it's another B spy thriller from the '60s, nowadays known for appearing on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". "New York chiama Superdrago" ("Secret Agent Super Dragon" in English) has what you might expect in one of these flicks -- hot babes and a lot of fighting -- but the plot is just weird: the title character (Ray Danton) investigates a plot to smuggle drugs in vases from Amsterdam. Seriously, it involves drugged chewing gum!

As can be expected, Joel, Servo and Crow had fun with this flick. They found the time to mention J. Edgar Hoover*, Audrey Hepburn and Edie Adams. Pretty fun stuff.

*I wonder if Leonardo DiCaprio looks, um, flamboyant as the FBI director in Clint Eastwood's new movie.