Le retour de Bulldog Drummond

This has got everything: a damsel in distress, dastardly sinister foreigners, a haunted house, disappearing corpses and an evil plot which only our dashing English adventurer can foil.

Bulldog Drummond was astonishingly popular in the 20s and 30s. He was James Bond, Indiana Jones and Poirot all rolled into one. Ronald Colman is wonderfully, fantastically and magnificently over the top as the epitome of the English gentleman. "You're like something out of a book" Loretta Young tells him and that's just what he is. He doesn't try to be realistic, he's a super hero pure and simple.

It's rare that you can say this about a film from this era but every single second is exciting. It's one of Daryl Zanuck's first productions from his new 'Twentieth Century Pictures' since he broke away from Warner Brothers and for this he poached top director Roy del Ruth from his old studio. Their result is superb. Everything works: the pace is perfect, the story is intriguing and exciting and the cast were surely born to play these roles.

Lastly, if you've not seen a 1930s Loretta Young picture for a while you'll be absolutely staggered by how insanely beautiful she was back then. Although she's also a marvellous actress, she's not actually the star in this. Obviously Ronald Colman steals the show but close on his heels is Charles Butterworth, the comedy relief. Often the comedy relief in a 1930s film was just an annoyance but he's brilliant in this. That dry wit and befuddled insouciance is one of the many highlights of this hour and a half of joy.

They knew what they were doing when they made this - pure entertainment.

This is an enjoyable light murder mystery, but I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't recently seen BLIND ADVENTURE, made the year before by Ernest B. Schoedsack for RKO. The plot elements, as I recall, are strikingly similar: a foggy London night, the hero accidentally going into a house and finding a body, which is then missing when he comes back with help; a young girl's relative disappearing, and a foreign ambassador of some sort who seems legit but is a bad guy; constant breaking into the house in question; all the action occurring in one evening; and the hero and the girl-in-distress an item by the evening's end. And, in both instances, comedy relief that actually adds to the film! Roland Young was very pleasing in BLIND ADVENTURE, but no one can match Butterworth at his best, which he is here. Once again, one feels that he had to have written many of his lines. Here, he's married that very day to Una Merkel, who affectionately calls him "Mousey." Colman: "Never leave your wife." Butterworth: "I'll speak to her about it." When Drummond finds adventure, he calls up Butterworth and asks him to tag along, without a care that it's Butterworth's wedding night. Butterworth isn't really an innocent here, he knows what he's missing out on. In response to one of these calls, he says, "we've reached sort of a critical moment." Robert Armstrong in BLIND ADVENTURE seems a more real, more interesting character. Here, both the script and Colman play it as a not-to-be-taken-seriously, boy's-own adventure, a tacit acknowledgment that this is just another caper in a series. One nice addition here is that the inevitable policeman who doesn't believe there's a problem is C. Aubrey Smith. You're on his side, really. Why doesn't this boy scout let him get some sleep?

Apparently Butterworth was an off-screen drinking buddy of such literary wits as Robert Benchley and Corey Ford. Note that Benchley wrote "additional dialogue" for BLIND ADVENTURE, presumably for Young's Butterworth-like character.

This is certainly an absolute highlight of the long and prolific 'career' of amateur sleuth Bulldog Drummond. A very clever story, not quite unlike Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes": a young woman knows someone is in great danger, but a very influential person has instructed everybody around her to tell her lies until she almost thinks she's crazy - and while in "The Lady Vanishes" it was Michael Redgrave, here of course it's charming, nonchalant and fearless Ronald Colman alias Bulldog Drummond who rushes to her aid - happy that he's stumbled upon a mysterious case again at last, while he was just about to 'retire' to Essex...

But this time the madness goes even further: while Drummond thinks he's got the girl in a safe place, she disappears - and when he manages to 'kidnap' her aunt in turn from the baddies and take her to his home, she disappears too - and now his old friend from Scotland Yard, Colonel Nielsen, thinks Bulldog's mad! But of course he's not...

So there's plenty of entertainment and examples of British humor here amidst the contrasting creepy, foggy night streets of London with mean faces lurking in the dark: Bulldog spoils his best friend Algie's wedding night asking to assist him in this strange case, and he doesn't let poor old Colonel Neilsen get a minute of sleep all night with his constant disturbances, who in turn threats he'll hang him someday...

In short, a real feast for every fan of classic murder mysteries with a good dose of humor - laughs as well as shudders guaranteed!

I have been lucky enough to collect all the old Bulldog Drummond movies and I believe that this one is the best all-around offering.

Ropnald Coleman comes across as sophisticated without being pretentious, as adventuresome without being an unreasonable risk-taker. In fact his whole demeanor is one of having fun and inviting the audience along for the ride.

Loretta Young is as beautiful as ever and plays the damsel in distress in true 1930s melodramatic splendor.

Warner Oland comes across with one of his classic, pre-Charlie Chan villian portrayals that is both menacing as well as full of oily charm, also common in the 30s adventures.

I loved it when I first saw it a year ago and I have brought it out for several viewings since then and I have enjoyed it every time.

In short it is the kind of movie that reminds the viewer of how charming and full of fun Ronald Coleman was on the screen.

Ronald Colman gets to repeat the role he made his talking picture debut in with Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back. Though it did not yield an Oscar nomination as his first essay of the Bulldog did it is still a marvelous entertaining film. There's also a distinct improvement in the casting of Charles Butterworth instead of Claud Allister as sidekick Algy Longworth.

I remember so thoroughly disliking Allister as Algy in the first Bulldog Drummond, he was more of an annoyance than anything else. Butterworth was an actor possessing a nice droll presence on screen and he handles the part so much better. Even when he screws up as he does in this film it's really not his fault and in fact he covers up a vital clue that the villain wants badly.

That villain being Warner Oland who plays a rich Middle Eastern tycoon who has relocated to London. Oland has a very important cargo coming in on a freighter he owns and nothing must stand in the way of his receipt of said cargo. That includes murder, the murder victim being Loretta Young's father who knew about the cargo and had a mysterious coded radiogram from the ship which he was killed for.

Colman's English charm was working on all cylinders in Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back. He managed not to get thrown in jail by C. Aubrey Smith of Scotland Yard and that in itself is a feat as he thoroughly annoys Smith with his constant calls for assistance. Similarly poor Butterworth has just gotten married and leaves his bride Una Merkel twice on the wedding night to come to Colman's assistance. Not to mention Loretta Young who is captivated by Colman as most of the English speaking world was.

Incidentally a pair of London bobbies lend timely assistance to Colman twice inadvertently as he is in the clutches of the villain. Those scenes are truly funny as Colman emerges from the clutches of Oland debonair as ever.

Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back is a great introduction to the debonair charm and class of Ronald Colman, possessor of the great voice in the English speaking world.