Le retour de Bulldog Drummond

This is not only the best Bulldog Drummond film, it is simply one of the best series detective films ever made and I would even go so far as to say it is one of the ten best classic (e.g. pre-1950) detective films ever made. It is not a mystery in the sense that the perpetrator is evident from near the start of the film...the real mystery is why the crimes, including kidnapping and murder, are being committed (another crime is why until recently we have not been able to buy watchable home video copies!). The merits of this film are well stated by the late William K. Everson in his book "The Detective in Film" but for the record: the director Roy Del Ruth does a great job of keeping the action moving; the lively cast, including Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Butterworth, Una Merkel, and of course, Warner Oland, is first-rate from top to bottom; the script by Nunnally Johnson is witty and intelligent; and its production values including fabulous sets like Oland's living room in his cavernous London mansion, are untouchable. This film, which is part screwball comedy as well as detective film, is in my view the only one which comes close to being as good as The Thin Man (1934) in weaving the two genres together. I can not believe there is anyone who thinks this is a bad film -- those who rate it low must be having a bad day or confusing it with the 1947 Columbia "B" remake of the same title with Ron Randall! It is too bad that copyright hassles have never made it available for television broadcast in North America; otherwise I think this would be a very well known and regarded film rather than one known mainly to die-hard genre specialists.

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.

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.

This was Ronald Colman's second and last appearance as Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond - although there were a couple of unrelated Drummond films since the 1929 original - and, while made at a different studio (Fox as opposed to Goldwyn), the film-makers seem to have learned their lesson by approaching the whole as if it were a spoof on the genre (in my review of the earlier film, I had criticized the star's unflappable nature for being incongruous with the melodramatic narrative involved)!

Incidentally, I was initially disappointed to find here a very similar plot of a girl's extended relatives (these damsels-in-distress never seem to have parents, siblings or even boyfriends, only elderly – read: useless – uncles and aunts!) being victimized by the villains for some reason or other...but the denouement of this one does contrive to expose a foreign potentate's nefarious plot to infect the United Kingdom with cholera (again, the necessity to think big in this department has, sensibly, been taken in stride). Interestingly, the chief heavy here is none other than Warner Oland – concurrently engaged to play famed Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan in a long-running series at the same studio!

Anyway, Colman has not only changed his 'home' here but also his central sidekick, Algy – resulting in a less buffoonish, and amusingly laid- back, interpretation by Charles Butterworth (he spends the entire movie, which unfolds during a single night, coming and going, at Drummond's behest, to his patient brand-new wife Una Merkel); even the leading lady (Loretta Young) is, for lack of a better word, more up his alley...though she still does little more than look frightened and faint! Another notable character, who would become a fixture of the series when it moved over to Paramount, is that of Col. Neilson (a typically splendid C. Aubrey Smith, who would reunite with Colman on his best film i.e. the definitive 1937 version of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA) – whose slumber Drummond frequently interrupts with tall tales of murder and intrigue, only to have the evidence subsequently disappear on him (years before the comedy team of Abbott & Costello made this a classic routine)! So flustered does the elderly Scotland Yard man become with the hero's 'ravings' that he appoints two 'bobbies' (one of them being archetypal British 'twit' E.E. Clive) to prevent him from further importuning Oland at his mansion; still, this whole business leads to delightfully Hitchcockian sequences in which Drummond actually finds the police's intervention a blessing!

The extended climax, too, is wonderful: having rescued the heroine and her aunt beforehand from the oblivious baddies, the imprisoned Drummond then takes pleasure in disorienting Oland & Co. (including Kathleen Burke from ISLAND OF LOST SOULS {1932} as the evil Prince's daughter – exotically made-up but given little to sink her teeth into, though she is involved in the movie's biggest laugh-out-loud moment when forced to take shelter behind a settee with one of her minions upon entering Colman's house to kidnap a wary Young! – and an unrecognizable Mischa Auer) by phoning from the dungeons to let them in on his supposed feats in liberating the captives!; eventually, he and Algy escape detention and race to the docks to destroy the contaminated vessel – with Oland bowing out by his own hand, having graciously conceded defeat. The "Bulldog Drummond" series was singled out by the late British film critic Leslie Halliwell among his second batch of favourites, yet he opted for a title from the lesser later efforts, BULLDOG DRUMMOND COMES BACK (1937), rather than either of the character's initial Talkie adventures! For the record, I still have 18 of Colman's vehicles lying unwatched in my collection...and a future 1947 entry in the series landed the exact same title as this one (a curious fate which also befell BULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAY)!!

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.

Ronald 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.

Lorreta 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.