Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934)

Fresh and Exciting

Brilliant and touching

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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)!!

Algy, Hugh Drummond's right hand man has gotten married. At the wedding Drummond (Ronald Coleman) tells Algy that his days of adventuring are over since the partners must retire together. As Drummond walks home he becomes lost in the fog and deciding to phone for help he walks up to the nearest house. Once there he finds the door open and a dead man on a divan. After racing to find a cop he returns to the house and finds the body gone and Prince Achmed (Warner Oland) and his group acting suspiciously. After the cop and Drummond leave together, Drummond returns to investigate where Achmed warns Drummond to leave the matter alone or die. What follows is a round and round affair through the night as Drummond attempts to rescue a damsel and get to the bottom of matters, all the while not letting anyone, including the newlyweds, sleep.Good little thriller is better once things get going about a half an hour in. Coleman is an amusing hero and his battle with Oland, particularly towards the end, is rather amusing since it leaves Oland's character completely apoplectic, something we never saw in all of the Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu films that Oland made. The film's mix of danger and comedy doesn't always work, especially when we find out what is really going on, the denouncement is much darker than some of the earlier silliness suggests, and I for one felt rather uneasy laughing at what Oland and his crew was really trying to do.A solid thriller of the sort they don't make any more, and didn't make as an A film that often after this was released. Worth a look if you get the chance.Around 7 out of 10.

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.

Bulldog Drummond was sort of the James Bond of the 1930s (not least because in both cases, a rather thuggish and brutal book character was made more gentlemanly and dashing on screen). Ronald Colman had a huge success with 1929's Bulldog Drummond, which is fairly creaky as a film but unquestionably showed him off as one of the first actors to understand acting for talkies, and remains watchable today because of his relaxed and charming presence.Where it took three or four increasingly over-the-top Bond films before the spoofs started coming, two of the next three Drummond films (all made in 1934) were at least semi-tongue-in-cheek-- sort of like if Casino Royale and In Like Flint had followed immediately after Dr. No. While the British Return of Bulldog Drummond (with Ralph Richardson as the only screen Drummond apparently as racist and violent as the original) was serious, Bulldog Jack starred the rather dire comic Jack Hulbert as a nebbish ineptly posing as Drummond (with Richardson again, phoning in a performance as a shaggy-haired villain). And then there's this sort-of sequel to the 1929 Colman film ("sort of" because apart from Colman it's a completely different cast, crew and even studio), which is ostensibly a straight thriller, and quite suspenseful in parts-- yet has a self-mocking, absurdist edge far beyond anything in the 1929 film.Under the fast-paced direction of Warner Bros. veteran Roy Del Ruth, there's a definite screwball influence here, with bodies disappearing and reappearing and Colman reacting to it all with a kind of bemused unflappability that goes well beyond even Powell and Loy's approach to detective work in The Thin Man. For a 1930s film it's startlingly self-referential and conscious of being a movie-- Colman declines a ride because he says it fits his image better to be seen disappearing into the fog, and at one point he flat out predicts that this is just the moment when a beautiful woman in distress should appear at the door, which of course she does. You half expect Basil Exposition's father to turn up and help him advance the plot.Warner Oland makes a nicely exasperated villain, part straight man and part genuine menace, and though Charles Butterworth's exceedingly dim Algy is a bit tiresome (when Algy turns out to be a ex-wartime cryptographer, you're startled to discover he can even read), it's a genuine delight to see C. Aubrey Smith playing a real character and not Stock Crusty Old Gent #1.Now then, if this is so good, why haven't you ever seen it? Unfortunately, 20th Century (not Fox yet) only owned the rights to the story it's based on for a certain period, so though they still own the film itself, they no longer have the legal right to exhibit it in the US. So it's never been released to TV here (although for some reason they have shown it on TV in Britain, and passable copies reportedly circulate in this country duped from British TV broadcasts). Fox ought to look past the constant repackaging of its ten most famous movies, write a small check to the McNeile estate for permanent rights and then make a big ballyhoo about the rediscovery and video release of a lost classic from the golden age of Hollywood.