Customer Reviews

Bulldog Drummond [VHS]

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Bulldog Drummond was indeed made in 1929, yet after watching this early talking picture, it's hard to contemplate that it was made then. It is so sophisticated and daring for its time that you feel that it was made at least in the 50's! The acting efforts of Ronald Colman and Joan Bennett are fabulous. The last line of the film is perhaps the best tagline of all movies made. This picture is sort of like a Citizen Kane of England. A marvel it is!

Producer Samuel Goldwyn wanted to make sure Ronald Colman's first talking picture was a success, which explains why he hired Sidney Howard and Wallace Smith to write the screenplay for this 1929 film directed by F. Richard Jones. Colman plays Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, a British veteran of the Great War who is bored and looking for some excitement now that he is back in civilian life. So when young Phyllis Benton (Joan Bennett) needs his help in freeing her uncle from a nursing home from the evil Erma Peterson (Lilyan Tashman) and Carl Peterson (Montagu Love--yes the names of the actors sound more evil than their characters), our hero jumps at the chance for action. It seems the villains are trying to use nefarious means to get the uncle's fortune. The result is a fairly comic game of cat and mouse between Bulldog and the girl against the not too bright villains. Our hero and the lady are forced to make a couple of exciting last second escapes, always employing a nice deftness that gives the proceedings a touch of class. However, it is impossible not to recognize that this is a very early talking film every time all of the actors huddle around some object that is hiding the microphone. Colman received an Oscar nomination for his performance, as did William Cameron Menzies for the Art Direction. A lot of actors played Bulldog Drummond over the years, including Ralph Richardson and Ray Milland, but none of them had the elegance and panache of Colman. In 1934 Colman made "Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back."

After advertising for adventure, ex-war hero Colman is approached by American Bennett whose uncle is being held prisoner. Colman's pleasing, euphonic voice enchanted audiences in 1929; many great silent star's careers were over the moment they spoke for the microphone! The lack of action is offset by Colman's grand performance which was true to the original Drummond character. This rather stiff early talkie is consistently interesting, however a sequel, BULLDOG DRUMMOND STRIKES BACK (1934) is even better!

This 1929 talkie was the movie that saw silent film star Ronald Colman transition to talking pictures. This was his first such film and a good thing for the public that he made the transition or we would never have known that unique velvet voice of his.

This film is a plot boiler type of film. Ronald Colman, as Bulldog Drummond is a World War I vet now left to his own devices and wanting a bit of excitement. He places an ad in the paper stating, in substance, that he is looking for adventure and is contacted by a very young and beautiful damsel in distress, Phyllis Benton (Joan Bennett). It appears that her wealthy uncle is being kept captive by an insane doctor and a husband and wife crime duo, who wish to divest the uncle of his fortune.

Drummond, raring to go for a bit of action, comes to Ms. Benton's aid, ready, able, and willing to save the day. While the plot is ludicrous and the antics in the film Mickey Mouse, it is still a treat to watch Colman in his first talkie. He looks like he is just plain having fun, and his mood is infectious. The film, however, though a talkie, is really plotted and acted as if it were a silent film with sound. It is as if no one were really quite comfortable with this new film development.

All in all, it is a film that Ronald Colman fans will enjoy, as will those who love vintage films.

Ex-army captain Hugh Drummond, first introduced by Hector McNeil (Sapper) in 1920, was, at the time of his first appearance in print, meant to be the embodiment of everything that was good and upright in the English character, but closer examination reveals someone distinctly less appealing, an educated fascist thug who is constantly seeking an outlet for his built-in violence...

Finding it in a kind of moralistic crusade against crime, he delights in the suffering imposed by his brutal methods, nonchalantly breaking people's necks and organizing the military Black Gang to terrorize Bolshevik agitators...

Drummond's first screen appearance was in 1922 when Carlyle Blackwell (as Drummond) and Gerald Deane (as his resourceful companion Algy Longworth) starred in a straight adaptation of the original novel: Singer/dancer Jack Buchanan came next in "Bulldog Drummond's Third Round" (25) but it was Colman's restrained and immaculately well-timed performance in Sam Goldwyn's first talkie "Bulldog Drummond" that proved the most popular of all...

He was a character far removed from Sapper's original... In place of an upper class thug was a twentieth-century adventurer, a gentleman amateur complete with tweed jacket, white scarf and open sports car who, to relieve the boredom of his life, advertises in 'The Times' for his cases.

He receives a large number of letters, the most promising coming from a beautiful young woman (a lovely Joan Bennett in her movie debut) who tells him that her uncle is being held prisoner in an insane asylum by doubtful doctors - who are in reality a gang of international crooks...

So enduring was Drummond's popularity that an eight-film series (with John Howard) was made between 1937-1939 and the character was played by such famous stars as Sir Ralph Richardson and Ray Milland... Even the Sixties saw him in action with Richard Johnson in "Deadlier Than the Male" (1966) and "Some Girls" (1988).

I remember having watched several actors impersonating Bulldog Drummond already, but none comes even close to Ronald Colman.He is charming-kissing the lady in distress on the hand-,funny, the perfect gentleman-someone surely giving you "Drummonditis"-and a coldblooded killer,strangling the doctor with his bare hands.Thus he is a sort of proto-James Bond only much,much better.
Furthermore I like to add that the movie although being one of the first talkies manages to exploit the possiblities of this new medium very well.The dialogues are greatly written and add to the overall thrilling atmosphere , and people are talking offscene,which is certainly a feature provided by the talking movie.I strongly recommend this movie!!!

Bored war vet "Bulldog" Drummond places an ad in the newspaper looking for something to do, and the answer arrives in the form of a pretty blonde whose uncle is being held captive by a mad scientist and his partners in an asylum. To say that the plot is farfetched would be an understatement. There are so many holes you stop counting and just "go with it". Ronald Colman as Drummond gives a fun, charming performance, and is one of the main reasons to see this early talkie. Another reason is his sidekick, Algy, played well by Claud Allister. He provides much of the film's humour. Joan Bennett is awkward as the heroine, and would develop into a much better actress as she became older. Bulldog Drummond is a breezy action film, and if you overlook the ridiculous plot and instead focus on the humour and Colman's performance, you will enjoy the movie.

Ronald Colman's star ascended even more prominently when, in 1929, he transitioned from silent films to talkies, and he owes it to BULLDOG DRUMMOND. Colman, in the silents, was dashing and athletic and handsome and heroic, and talk about a guy what's got the cornucopia in his back pocket: it turns out, in BULLDOG DRUMMOND, this Englishman could also deliver his lines like a real proper posh gent. Cultured, he was, his voice so well modulated, dripping like honey. And, so far, in spite of the many actors who've taken on this very same role, no one's come close to matching Colman's performance. What he does in this film is indelible enough that it got him nominated for Best Actor.

We can only imagine how much of a landmark treat this film must have been in 1929, with talkies still wobbly on the legs and BULLDOG DRUMMOND coming across as this self-assured and accomplished piece of cinema, with the actors and their dialogue seamlessly integrated. In its technical dexterity, it looks and sounds like a film shot some years later, when the technique would have been more perfected.

"Demobilized officer finding peace unbearably tedious would welcome any excitement..." is the ad which the supremely bored Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond places in the newspaper. But, of the piles of responding correspondence, only one letter catches his eye. Phyllis Benton (Joan Bennett), beautiful damsel in distress, fears for her uncle, whom she believes to be imprisoned in a sanitarium. The intrigued Captain agrees to investigate, his eyes agleam with the spirit of adventure and as well quite appreciative of Ms. Benton's charms.

BULLDOG DRUMMOND moves briskly, breaks away from its more stiffly inclined contemporaries; I don't think you'll have time to be bored. Even in those scenes which are dialogue-heavy, a lot of those feature Ronald Colman and, honestly, I could listen to his melodious voice all day. He could read the grocery list and I'd be all enthralled with the way he would recite "a can of Spam, a tube of Clearasil, and a pack of Q-tips."

The scoundrels are fairly sinister, especially that malevolent, kinda pervy doctor, and the design of the insane asylum calls to mind any number of horror films in which those odd, foreboding laboratories are featured. And yet the tone of the film is consistently lighthearted, with Drummond treating it all like a big lark. Claude Allister plays Bulldog's thick-witted comic relief chum, Algy Longworth, and Allister's take is sort of like Sir Percy Blakeney in full-on fop mode. However, the one time in which Drummond really get serious, he goes to the absolute extreme, and what he does then is fairly jarring, a brief shift from the established blithe form. I do like the ruthless streak Drummond unveils here, and also the call back to the running gag between him and the villainous femme fatale, each breezily shrugging their actions off on some bogus "old Spanish custom." The way the film ends, however, brings it all back to how nonchalantly Bulldog Drummond views this adventure. It also demonstrates that he's a damn good sport. Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond is nothing if not the quintessential gallant Englishman.

This is a terrible movie, in spite of all the historic blah blah about Colman's first talking film. The movie makes no sense. It is a series of drawing room scenes interspersed with car chases and kidnappings that are incoherent. Colman is amusing, but everyone else is a disaster: Joan Bennett (an early film) is absurd, and the rest of the characters (and some of the scenery) are out of some German silent expressionist film (a bad one).

The only interesting thing in the whole film is a few moments when they actually appear to have hired some traditional singers to do old a cappella pub songs from southern England. Everything else is unredeemable.

BULLDOG DRUMMOND was an important movie in 1929. It marked the sound film debut of Ronald Colman and it was one of two movies in that year for which Colman was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.

BULLDOG DRUMMOND was also a big commercial success at the box office. The cast included Joan Bennett as Phyllis Benton and Claud Allister as Bulldog's buddy Algy Longworth. The screenplay was based on both the novel by Sapper and the play by Gerald du Maurier.