![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So as previously threatened, for the 100 Things challenge I'm reviewing my way through the Mystery Classics 100 Movie Pack, and first up is a 1939 serial called Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police, starring John Howard, Heather Angel and Reginald Denny.
So before anyone asks, there's no actual "secret police" in the movie. I don't know if that term had a less sinister connotation in 1939, but the title comes from a throwaway scene where Drummond and his sidekicks all band together to catch the killer in the dead of night. I confess, this is my first time hearing of the Drummond character but after a quick visit to wikipedia I can see how why he'd be called a kind of proto-version of Bond and Doc Savage - he has that suave veneer Bond's made famous and his crew definitely reminds me of Doc's running buddies.
(You see that a lot in Golden Age comics, now that I think about it: everyone has a crew. It's a lot more common nowadays for a hero to have a sidekick or two, but a lot of modern age supporting casts don't really join the hero in the adventure as often as you used to see. Excepting Batman of course, which is always my favorite part of his Lone Warrior Of The Night routine. It's right up there with John "Only Trust Family" Winchester having so many old friends it seemed like "Sam and Dean run into an old friend of John's" was happening every other week for a while.)
Anyway, the plot's fairly basic: Drummond is set to finally marry his long suffering fiancee Phyllis (there's a montage from previous Drummond serials showing previous wedding attempts ending in various disasters) and the two of them are touring his new(?) estate while Phyllis' aunt sniffs at everything and tries to talk her niece out of it. A character makes a comment that one of Drummond's best talents is getting into trouble when he's about to get married and the pattern holds true: a professor contacts him to say he has a book with a cipher that, if he can crack it, will lead to treasure hidden in one of the walled-off rooms. (Three guesses what happens to the professor once he cracks the code!) Before long it becomes apparent there's a killer afoot who also wants the treasure, they realize the killer's in the house, the lovely Phyllis is kidnapped and the chase is on.
What struck me most about this is how...I think the word I'm looking for is jaunty the whole thing is. I'm used to PIs being a lot more noir flavored but for all the murder and theft and fist fighting in underground cisterns this is a pretty breezy affair. And there's some really abrupt tonal shifts; there's a lot of slapstick, especially when the professor character is introduced, then in the middle of all the English butler jokes constables are getting shot in the garden and everyone just stands around seeming mildly inconvienced. And at the same time it really set me back on my heels to see the hero just straight-up shoot the bad guy as soon as he had the opening; there's the bones of James Bond and Doc Samson.
Phyllis was kind of a thankless role (complete with the always odious sub-plot of "we have to be nice to your old maid aunt or she'll whisk you away, because Heavens, you can't be here without a chaperone!") but once she stumbled on the bad guy and got kidnapped she actually got some interesting things to do as she tried to talk him down. I think the story would have been stronger without the "funny" marriage plot but that seems to be in the DNA of the character so I'll have to get used to it. There's a bunch more where this came from on the set.
Up next: Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937), starring John Howard, J. Carroll Naish and Louise Campbell
(You see that a lot in Golden Age comics, now that I think about it: everyone has a crew. It's a lot more common nowadays for a hero to have a sidekick or two, but a lot of modern age supporting casts don't really join the hero in the adventure as often as you used to see. Excepting Batman of course, which is always my favorite part of his Lone Warrior Of The Night routine. It's right up there with John "Only Trust Family" Winchester having so many old friends it seemed like "Sam and Dean run into an old friend of John's" was happening every other week for a while.)
Anyway, the plot's fairly basic: Drummond is set to finally marry his long suffering fiancee Phyllis (there's a montage from previous Drummond serials showing previous wedding attempts ending in various disasters) and the two of them are touring his new(?) estate while Phyllis' aunt sniffs at everything and tries to talk her niece out of it. A character makes a comment that one of Drummond's best talents is getting into trouble when he's about to get married and the pattern holds true: a professor contacts him to say he has a book with a cipher that, if he can crack it, will lead to treasure hidden in one of the walled-off rooms. (Three guesses what happens to the professor once he cracks the code!) Before long it becomes apparent there's a killer afoot who also wants the treasure, they realize the killer's in the house, the lovely Phyllis is kidnapped and the chase is on.
What struck me most about this is how...I think the word I'm looking for is jaunty the whole thing is. I'm used to PIs being a lot more noir flavored but for all the murder and theft and fist fighting in underground cisterns this is a pretty breezy affair. And there's some really abrupt tonal shifts; there's a lot of slapstick, especially when the professor character is introduced, then in the middle of all the English butler jokes constables are getting shot in the garden and everyone just stands around seeming mildly inconvienced. And at the same time it really set me back on my heels to see the hero just straight-up shoot the bad guy as soon as he had the opening; there's the bones of James Bond and Doc Samson.
Phyllis was kind of a thankless role (complete with the always odious sub-plot of "we have to be nice to your old maid aunt or she'll whisk you away, because Heavens, you can't be here without a chaperone!") but once she stumbled on the bad guy and got kidnapped she actually got some interesting things to do as she tried to talk him down. I think the story would have been stronger without the "funny" marriage plot but that seems to be in the DNA of the character so I'll have to get used to it. There's a bunch more where this came from on the set.
Up next: Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937), starring John Howard, J. Carroll Naish and Louise Campbell
