Ein tollkühner Himmelhund

Right at the beginning it happens. Never has the manufacturer of a plane lent itself so superbly to a one-liner.

This film is simply awesome. We have three copies of it just in case something happens to one of them. Its subtle and downright silly all at the same time but desperately clever.

You'll never be able to look at a chicken in quite the same way again. From start to finish every comment is hilarious - from the "Oh Bullshot!" on the cliffs to the "Its so big and wubbery" in the castle dungeons. Context is obviously everything here!

You haven't seen me looking like this huh Binky? xx

This film came out in 1983 and got pounded by the critics, but was actually quite amusing. It was spoofing "Sapper"'s BULLDOG DRUMMOND stories, about the super-hero of Britain post World War I. Facing his version of "Carl Peterson" or "Dr. Lakington" in Otto Von Bruno (an unreconstructed German warrior from the Great War), Captain Hugh Bullshot Crummond is trying to thwart the latter's plots to resurrect a super - Germany. The jokes were basically making fun of all the plot problems and story failings in the Drummond novels. For example, Von Bruno manages to get a drug into Crummond while he is at lunch. It causes his features to bloat out, and his voice to turn Churchillian, but in the worst possible sense: he sounds like an ultra-reactionary Tory attacking minority groups and foreigners (which is what "Sapper" did believe in).

The film did not take itself seriously. Highpoints was the drugging of a room full of scientists (including Einstein) with marijuana. Also was a moment when Von Bruno sets up a trap based on the crashing of a bathroom door, which the hero is seen about to crash when he takes a large breath of air outside the door. A bit later we see him untouched (as is a hostage who was inside the room). A complicated, and totally improbable explanation about the physics that kept the death trap from working (apparently a vacuum was created when he took his breath of air). After the film's unseen narrator explains this, all the characters stop their activities and look helplessly at the audience trying to grasp what they've just been told.

A clever film spoof, it is worth watching when it is available.

Alan Shearman was brilliant as the dashing Bullshot Crummond (with apologies to Bulldog Drummond) the all-round sportsman and know-it-all! The usual 'true Britisher' saving the earth from world dominating foreign types! The writing team was of three people Ron House, Diz White and Alan Shearman. I can't say that I have ever heard of the first two people, but Alan Shearman was in a TV comedy called 'Mog' with En Reitel, another very funny chap.

Ron Pember and Mel Smith are in supporting roles, clearly before Mel Smith went to the US to live and work; as did Alan Shearman, which is a pity really, as I thought that he had a lot to give in Britain. Perhaps the roles didn't come his way, so he decided to 'up and off' to the land of plenty!

Very much along the lines of Ripping Yarns, so essential viewing if that's your kind of thing. The cast by itself should give you a fair idea of whether you'll like it. Unashamedly "dated"; I never find that term valid as criticism - surely any film/programme that so strongly represented its era that morons have to call it "dated" isn't necessarily a bad thing? Don't be disturbed by the moronic female lead - the actor playing her co-wrote the script and, remember, it is satire!

Ra ra ra!!

I first watched this in the 80s by pure chance. I had never heard of it and it was just on TV that day. I sat there there with my flatmates rolling about the place laughing our socks off. Wonderful little film with all kinds of toungue-in-cheek references to British culture. If you like PG Wodehouse, although a little more over the top, then this is the film for you. It still makes me laugh to this day and the American actor who plays Crummand is just wonderful. Thank you Alan Shearman for pulling our legs in that way. A very underrated actor and a rare talent, if you ask me. I always thought this film would become a cult classic yet nobody seems to have heard of it which is a big shame. One of Handmade Films' best efforts!