User Reviews

"Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police" is a particularly cheap entry in the series (after the opening scene, the action never leaves Drummond's home, and there is even a clip show with footage from previous entries) but it does have some good points: Heather Angel is (once again) admirably feisty, Leo Carroll is perhaps the best-cast villain in the series (he doesn't have many lines, but he doesn't need them - his face is enough!), Algy gets what is possibly his first funny gag in the series (the one with the Ming vase), and the new guest character of the absent-minded professor is both amusing and kind of endearing - which makes it uncomfortably mean-spirited when he gets killed. On the whole, this one is mainly for the series fanatics. ** out of 4.

The long playing wedding scenario between Captain Hugh Drummond (John Howard) and fiancé Phyllis Clavering (Heather Angel) manages to get within one hour of the ceremony in this outing, but not before another adventure gets in the way. This time the action stays local, as a scatterbrained professor intrigues Drummond with a tale of treasure hidden somewhere at his palatial Rockingham Tower. A long shot of the Tower reveals a rather imposing structure, made to order for the creepy fun that's about to follow.

In the early going, Miss Clavering's Aunt Blanche makes it a point to remind Phyllis of the five previous failed attempts to make it to the altar. Obviously this had an impact on Drummond, as he relives those events in a dream sequence, unable to get a good night's sleep on the eve of his wedding. With the prospect of a million pound fortune somewhere close by, it's a safe bet that the marriage will be put on hold once again.

This time, the villain of the piece is Leo (minus the 'G') Carroll. He impersonates a butler named Boulton hired for the wedding occasion, but is really Henry Seton, arrested three years earlier for the attempted theft of papers held by Professor Downie (Forrester Harvey). Just released from prison, Seton's timing is perfect. He dispatches Downie and begins to solve the cipher that leads to the treasure. For all the mystery involving the cipher, it comes as a bit of a letdown that it simply involves a reverse alphabet.

The hunt for the treasure leads Seton and his unwilling captive Miss Clavering into an underground series of murky caverns beneath Rockingham Tower. Harry Potter would have been inspired by what he found there, the secretive 'Tower of Water' and 'Chamber of Spikes'. With Drummond and Company in hot pursuit, the hapless villain manages to discover the hidden treasure only to lose it just as quickly. Seton becomes distracted in a rather inept cat and mouse game with Miss Clavering over control of a lever that operates a trap door gate meant to keep Drummond's gang at bay.

As usual, Captain Hugh Drummond finds himself aided by his regular cast; Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive and H.B. Warner in the role of Colonel Nielson of Scotland Yard. If you've seen all the Drummond adventures up till now, you'll wonder if Nielson has anything else to do besides serving as Drummond's personal attaché. At least Nielson provides the rationale for the movie's title when Drummond assigns areas of Rockingham to his accomplices for inspection; it was then that the Colonel referred to themselves as the 'secret police'.

For at least the third time in a Bulldog Drummond film, the old lights out trick is used when Seton/Boulton attempts to get his hands on the diary containing the cryptic cipher. That lack of originality and the aforementioned clumsiness in dealing with Miss Clavering seemed to undermine his threat as a villain. Too bad he couldn't swim either.

Too bad also the way the film ended; for all the time spent pining for her long delayed wedding, it's Miss Clavering who disappears this time when Algy's Molotov cocktail explodes during the wedding rehearsal, compliments of a rigged bottle of Mountain Mary Scotch. The finale didn't make much sense except to justify one more sequel. I wonder what happens in "Bulldog Drummond's Bride"!

Bulldog Drummond was definitely a lesser detective-adventure series of the 30s and 40s. Unlike some of the better Bs (such as Charlie Chan or Sherlock Holmes), this one never quite caught on with the public--though they did make a ton of them. In many ways, the closest films to these were the Falcon and Saint series--as Drummond isn't exactly a detective--he just seems to fall into adventures and dangerous plots. But so may of them just didn't do much to entertain--probably because the leading man turnover rate was higher than in perhaps any other B series--with at least 14 different leading men!! John Howard (who was in this film) played the character in the most films--seven--and I think he might have been one of the best of the series.

So, as you can see from my first paragraph, I am NOT a huge fan of the Drummond films--though I do love the genre. However, I must give this film its due--it is excellent all around and compares to the best of any series. Too bad more of the films weren't like this one. It's also too bad that the next film ("Bulldog Drummond's Bride) really sucked.

This film, like many other Drummond and Falcon/Saint films, finds the leading man about to get married. These marriages almost always seem to fall through at the last minute and you assume this will once again happen. But it's really NOT Drummond's fault, as this time the killer comes to Drummond's own ancestral home!! It seems there is a hidden treasure--left there from the English Civil War of the early-mid 17th century. An old professor has learned about this and has a secret code that might unlock the mystery. But, naturally, a baddie is on hand to do mischief.

The film gets very high points for setting a great mood, good acting (Algie was better than usual here) and I liked the presence of his fiancée's grouchy aunt (Elizabeth Patterson). Fun and well worth seeing.

Where were we? Phyllis Claverling is once more impatiently waiting for Hugh Drummond to make her his wife. She's been left standing at the altar several times already while Hugh -- 'Bulldog' to friends and enemies alike -- goes chasing off to solve ingenious crimes. This time the wedding is scheduled to take place at Drummond's Rockingham estate. Little does Phyllis know that a decidedly odd professor, horrid murder, a secret cipher and a hidden fortune somewhere on the estate will postpone the nuptials once again.

By now John Barrymore, who had lent a faded, poignant but authoritative presence to the part of Colonel Neilson, head of Britain's most secret service, had gone. Colonel Neilson is now played by the fine, skeletal and unauthoritative H. B. Warner, an actor who was much more interesting on the rare occasions when he played a villain. Hanging on in the series is John Howard, bland and manly as Drummond, Reginald Denny as Drummond's twit of a best friend, Heather Angel as Phyllis and, best of all, E. E. Clive as 'Tenny' Tennison, Drummond's aged, efficient and acerbic valet.

Dithering and eccentric Professor Downie shows up at Rockingham just after the wedding party has arrived to inform Drummond and his wedding guests that a fabled treasure in jewels belonging to Charles I, worth at least one million pounds, is hidden somewhere in the dank passages underneath Rockingham Tower. Foolish legend? Professor Downie's corpse, discovered later that evening, implies not.

Once Hugh starts investigating, the clichés of a dark old mansion storyline kick in: Dripping passageways, a spiked ceiling clattering slowly downward, a swirling abyss of tidal water...all good stuff but a little late to save this 56-minute programmer. Before we get to them we have to wade through a four-minute dream sequence in which Hugh flashes back through movie clips to his past adventures and wedding frustrations. This time-wasting sequence is just more semi-amusing distraction that the screenwriters use to eat up time, to economise and to keep us away from exploring the bowels of Rockingham. The serio-comedy mystery is half way over before anyone even starts thinking about creeping down secret passages. By then the writers have told us who the murderer is.

I'm afraid there's not much to Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police except tired comedy unless you, like the Bulldog and Phyllis, thrive on delayed gratification.

"Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police" was originally released back in 1939.

Anyway - As the story goes - Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond is, yet again, all set to wed his long-suffering fiancee, Phyllis Claverling. The wedding must wait when the eccentric Professor Downie appears. The Professor informs Bulldog that a fortune is buried on the Rockingham estate where he is to get married and he has a secret cipher that will lead them to it. Before he can follow through, the Professor is murdered, and the hunt is on to find the killer and the hidden treasure.

Once again you know who the villain is in this short B mystery, the last of the John Howard series that managed a two year run and seven films. This time, he manages to get down the aisle with longtime fiancee, Heather Angel, or at least in a dream, and that leads to a sequence of flashbacks where Drummond compares marriage to his love of adventure. Angel's got a new aunt in this, the nagging Elizabeth Patterson, not as loveable as Zeffie Tilbury, but still funny in small doses. H. B. Warner shows up again as the head of Scotland Yard, but has little to do.

The villain this time around is Leo G. Carroll who has quite a few resourceful ways of dispatching of his enemies including a room that crushes its victims and impales them, like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. There are lots of good things here, and the conclusion in a Dracula's castle like basement is exciting. But the fun is not as frequent with the mystery surrounding a bunch of civil war era memorabilia leading to a convoluted stretch of events that are more perplexing than entertaining. Reginald Denny adds some comedy playing a truly clumsy character.