Bulldog Drummond Escapes

I was very pleasantly surprised by this racy little number,available in the UK on one DVD with two other movies from the same series.A simple but effective plot and some good stand out action scenes,pretty well mounted for a 'programmer'.Bulldog Drummond was served better by these movies than Dick Barton fared in the Hammer productions that came a dozen or so years later.Well worth watching,with a nice late thirties flavour,and far superior to the later Richard Johnson attempts at the character.Maybe its time for a resurgence of interest in Bulldog Drummond !! Ray Milland is a suave hero,and Heather Angel a pert heroine.When major stardom priced Ray Milland out of the series,John Howard played the part with equal charm.

Bulldog Drummond is supposedly the inspiration for James Bond. I don't see it, but Ben Mankiewicz gets a lot wrong. Amazing that TCM doesn't have a fact-checker. In truth, Ian Fleming said 007 was "Drummond above the waist and Mickey Spillane below."

This 1937 film stars Ray Milland, who only played Bulldog once. Someone on this board wrote that this film was only a B film, and wasn't Ray Milland a big star at one time? As if his career was on the decline. Actually it was just starting, and while I never thought of him as a superstar, he did come up the ranks after this.

In this film, Captain Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond returns to England in his plane. Driving home, a young woman (Heather Angel) lands in front of his car. He doesn't hit her, but she falls.

He is attempting to revive her when he hears a shout and gunshots in the woods. He leaves her for a minute, and the woman jumps in his car and leaves.

She's left her purse and handkerchief in the car, so he goes to her home, Greystone. She asks him to help her as she is being kept prisoner there.

Meanwhile, Bulldog's pal Algy is about to become a father for the first time and is going crazy with worry in the hospital. Guy Standing is the inspector, and when he hears from Bulldog, he tells him to leave town. The Inspector is on vacation and doesn't want to get involved in one of Bulldog's murders.

Lots of fun, with Ray Milland a charming Drummond, very attractive, and very smooth. I would have loved to see him in more than just this Drummond film.

Many actors have played Bulldog, including Carlyle Blackwood in the silents, Richard Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Beatty, Tom Conway, Ron Randell, John Howard (who played the role 7 times), Ronald Colman, Athol Fleming, Ralph Richardson, Kevin McKenna, and Jack Buchanan. Whew.

Actually, the film The Man Who Knew Too Much was a Drummond story adapted by Hitchcock.

It's interesting that so many characters were inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Like Sherlock, Bulldog has a sidekick and a nemesis (in the books), Carl Peterson.

Looking forward to seeing more of the films on TCM.

Ray Milland's only outing as Bulldog Drummond is a pretty good start to Paramount's series. The story is about Drummond trying to help a woman who's being kept prisoner by her nefarious guardian at the ominously-named Greystone Manor. There's also a subplot about Drummond's right-hand man Algy being a nervous wreck waiting on his wife to give birth. Milland makes for a charming and lively Bulldog Drummond. He was one of three actors to play the character in 1937 alone and, for my money, he was better than the other two. Reginald Denny and E.E. Clive offer fun support. Lovely Heather Angel plays the heiress and has a nice playful chemistry with Milland. She's also something of a tough cookie, helping fight the bad guys instead of just standing around doing nothing. The rest of the cast features fine actors like Porter Hall, Walter Kingsford, Fay Holden, and Guy Standing. This was Standing's final movie, dying from a rattlesnake bite (!) a month after this was released. The Bulldog Drummond series wasn't one of my favorites of the many detective film series that littered the '30s & '40s but I have liked many of them. This one is particularly enjoyable with lots of humor and some nice foggy atmosphere. Short runtime and good pace also help.

Bulldog Drummond returns to England and, when driving home, encounters a young lady who steals his car. He traces her to a manor house and she asks for his help to get out of a difficult situation.

One of a series of B films in that period which featured the character Bulldrog Drummond. On this occasion Ray Milland fills his shoes and does a decent job but, with his star rising, he soon moved on to better films. Watchable and of interest to fans of the series.

Mix a cup of Sherlock Holmes with a quarter of James Bond, add plenty of low budget adventures, some comedy gags, a pinch of romance, the language and the attire from the Thirties, shake well, and you'll have Bulldog Drummond: a bunch of pre-war B-movies, if you will, yet with some intriguing elements and entertaining moments. "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" is one of the three "Bulldog Drummond" productions of 1937, and one of the high points in the series in my view.

A few words about Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond for those who do not know him yet: charming and gentlemanly, but a man of action when needed, he is a former WWI British officer who spends his spare time helping Scotland Yard solve intricate cases. "Bulldog" is accompanied by deadpan, witty and vaguely surreal butler Tenny (my favourite character) and by useless, dumb friend Algy (a downer, usually unfunny), and is constantly on the verge of marrying his fiancée Phyllis (adventures will happen and delay the marriage, naturally). All these fictional characters were created by "Sapper", nom de plume of Herman Cyril McNeile, and continued by Gerard Fairlie after McNeile's death -their novels inspired more than twenty motion pictures, many of them in the Thirties.

Similarly to Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, the Bulldog Drummond title hero has been played, over time, by several actors, who gave a different flavour to each episode. In this instalment of the series, which tells of Captain Drummond trying to save a beautiful heiress in distress (played by Heather Angel), the leading man is Ray Milland, a young, bright British actor -a few years later, he won an Academy Award for Best Actor in Billy Wilder's "The Best Weekend". Ray Milland's Bulldog Drummond is charming and funnily flamboyant, but not as clever as he is supposed to be, so the mystery often steers to lighter tones and to comedy.

The result, however, is fast paced and involving, while the unfunny gags are kept to a minimum. "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" is no cinematic masterpiece, but it is enjoyable if you like the genre and if you concede to stereotyped characters and some holes in the plot.

Like other movies from that age, this old flick shows the signs of time, such as scratchy sound and random vertical lines. On the other hand, it is in the public domain, so you can watch it for free on the Internet, if you want.