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.

This is a solid low-budget feature that delivers the main things you hope for in a 'Bulldog Drummond' movie. It has good action, a plot involving a heroine in distress and some crafty villains, and a confident, good-natured hero played here by Ray Milland. All of the actors who portrayed Drummond gave the movies their own feel, but Milland, like most of them, gives the character the right balance of energy and British poise, while putting his own style into the role as well.

The story is set up by an odd encounter between Drummond and Phyllis (Heather Angel) that leads to an involved sequence of events, with Drummond determined to find out exactly what dangers Phyllis is facing, at times even having to oppose his friend Colonel Neilson. The story moves at a good pace, moving quickly from one predicament to the next. There are times when it doesn't quite fit together smoothly, and with even better writing and editing it could have been even more effective, but the basic idea works pretty well.

Heather Angel makes a good Phyllis, winning and energetic. It's interesting to see her in this early Drummond episode, since she later came back to play Phyllis after the character was played by other actresses for the next few features. Neilson is not given a particularly large role here, but the rest of the usual crowd is present, with E.E. Clive as the resourceful Tenny and Reginald Denny as the befuddled but helpful Algy.

Porter Hall also helps out, with one of his many good character performances as Drummond's slippery opponent. The low budget look is helped by having most of the action take place at night and/or in darkened settings, giving it a decent atmosphere despite the lack of detail. It makes for a solid feature that works well enough as light entertainment.

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.

As with most of the items in this series, one must put aside a great deal of incredulity. There are far too many coincidences and events dependent on the victim, for the bad guys to be as successful as they are. That said, there is a great deal of byplay among the principles, including the police department and others makes it a good deal of fun. The thing that really stretches things is that the young woman whom we focus on is semi-conscious much of the time and participate a bit too much in the plot to conceal her. There are, however, so many opportunities to escape or to get help, the ultimate rescue seems a little unnecessary. Ray Milland as Drummond is quite good. I always found him unflappable in his many portrayals (even the Hitchcock classic). He has suavity down to a science. The byplay with the butler is quite delightful. I'm still not sure why they were hanging on to this girl (she seemed like excess baggage) and what the mystery was, but I still had a fine time. I have six of these films and look forward to the next one.

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.