Ein tollkühner Himmelhund

I remember when this movie was first released. I loved it and saw it many many times. I bought it on video some years later and watched it over and over again, sharing it with friends as often as possible.

This movie got really bad reviews and I cannot understand why - it is quite possibly one of the best movies ever made.

If you like Mel Brooks movies you'll probably like this.

I won't even try to describe the plot here. The best thing you can do if you are reading this is to try to get hold of a copy of this classic while you can, and watch it, many many times.

Expert spoofing on the British comic book heroes of Victor, Warlord, The Eagle etc mixed with dashes of Biggles, Inspector Clouseau and (of course) Bulldog Drummond, produced Bullshot.

It is dashedly funny. With a cast of several, it follows the antics of Captain Bullshot Crummond, WWI fighter ace turned amateur sleuth. Explaining a joke ruins it and so I can't give too many details about the plot. All I can urge you to do is seek this film out.

You will never look at a banana and a pair of plums in quite the same way again.

Hurrah !

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!

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.