ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

GManfred A good addition to the Bulldog Drummond canon. It begins in a very mysterious vein, which leads you to believe you are in for a treat, as Drummond follows a woman to a house that appears empty, save for a dead body on the living room couch. He races outside and brings a bobby back to the scene, only to find several people inside and no corpse. Even though the film quickly descends into farce, it is fast-paced and holds the interest right to the end as Drummond (and us) try to decipher the mystery. Warner Oland is sinister, Charles Butterworth is hysterical as Algy, Loretta Young is lovely and C. Aubrey Smith is flustered as the Chief Inspector. Just my observation; characters in 30's movies seem to fall in love instantaneously, and at the end Colman and Loretta Young announce their wedding after the briefest of encounters. Nevertheless, 'Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back" is very entertaining and well worth you time at 83 minutes.7/10 - Website no longer prints my star rating.

davidjanuzbrown I just saw this film today on Youtube, and it is another Colman winner. His version of Drummond is very much like William Powell's Nick Charles, except there is a lot more action to it. Spoilers ahead: One major plus is seeing Warner Oland as Prince Achemad, who is trying to smuggle furs into London, despite the fact they are infested with cholera. What I like about the film is the way that Drummond always finds a way to come out on top and does it with class and sophistication, which includes catching the villain (With a note hidden in a cigarette case, warning about the cholera), and marrying the girl Lola Fields (Loretta Young). Anyone who likes Colman and or detective stories should make sure they catch this film. I consider myself lucky that I caught it, because although it is listed as being available on DVD, I have never seen it anywhere except Youtube.

tedg You've seen this plot before: someone sees a body and then it disappears. Flustered unbelieving cops, Irish because of the era. In this case, that same device is pulled three times on the cops, then in the finale is turned around and pulled twice on the bad guys. Here we have a charming detective who takes enough nonchalant risks to get himself in trouble, and enough pluck to get himself out. But we have some cool narrative devices that play with the detective genre, not yet quite fully formed, but formed enough to honk with. Our detective remarks that the mystery would be more interesting if a beautiful woman in distress appeared. In a few seconds this happens, with absolutely no reason. Its as if he just wrote it that way. She mentions that he is like someone out of a book. Later, he calls in a story to the bad guys and they believe it.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

mgmax 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.