Bulldog Drummond

I've been checking out Bulldog Drummond lately. So far I've seen three of the movies from the '30s (Bulldog Drummond at Bay, Bulldog Drummond's Revenge, and Bulldog Drummond Comes Back) and the '60s revival/attempt to cash in on the Bond craze, Deadlier Than the Male.

The '30s films can be confusing. There's a buttload of them and only a handful are available on DVD. Bulldog Drummond at Bay (the 1937 version; the title was re-used in 1947) was the earliest I could find and stars John Lodge as the retired, British WWI captain who lives in a remote castle and constantly gets caught up in adventures. Lodge is a rugged, likeable, manly man who lives with a dog and an elderly maid. It's easy to see how his character may have influenced James Bond. In At Bay, he accidentally gets mixed up with foreign agents who are trying to steal plans for an experimental airplane. It's a short (about an hour long), uncomplicated adventure, made enjoyable by Lodge's performance.

The next film in the series though, Bulldog Drummond's Revenge, stars John Howard (Lost Horizon) as a considerably more dashing Drummond. Without any thought to continuity, Howard's Drummond begins the movie engaged to a woman who wants him to give up his adventurous life and the plot centers around his inability to do that. What's especially interesting is that top billing for the film doesn't go to Howard, but to John Barrymore (Drew's grandfather) as Drummond's former colonel who now works for Scotland Yard and acts as a sort of unwilling "M" to Drummond's Bond. In both Revenge (which doesn't actually feature any) and its follow-up, Bulldog Drummond Comes Back, Drummond is a joking, swashbuckling character. Very different from Lodge's version, but likeable in his own way. His adventures seem to center around trying to get married, but constantly being thwarted in the attempt by the constant appearance of mysteries in need of solving.

Comes Back also stars Howard and Barrymore, as well as the rest of Revenge's supporting cast. Louise Campbell plays Drummond's fiancé, E.E. Clive plays his faithful manservant Tenny, and Reginald Denny is Drummond's cowardly, comical, best friend Algy. Barrymore and Campbell stuck with the series for only one more film after this one, but Howard, Clive, and Denny lasted for a while, so I guess this was a popular version.

Comes Back is based on the Drummond novel The Female of the Species, which also serves as inspiration for the 1967 film Deadlier Than the Male (the title of Female of the Species comes from a Kipling poem "The Female of the Species," which includes the line: "The female of the species must be deadlier than the male."). In Comes Back, Drummond is plagued by friends of a criminal named Carl Peterson whom Drummond helped put away. In Deadlier Than the Male, Peterson is the main villain, though he remains behind-the-scenes for most of the film, letting his hot, female assassins do his dirty work for him.

As '60s Bond rip-offs go, Deadlier Than the Male gets off to a good start. The plot is introduced slowly and in a round-about way that makes you pay attention, there are some interesting, but not outlandish gadgets, and the women are gorgeous and competent. Richard Johnson is a good Drummond. My wife pointed out that he had Greg Brady's eyes and that made him hard to buy as dangerous at first, but then I noticed that he also had a Timothy Dalton quality to him whenever he was pissed off. Most folks don't like Dalton as Bond, but the comparison is a compliment coming from me. The only thing I didn't like about Johnson's Drummond is that he's an insurance investigator of all things. It gets him involved in a pretty brutal plot, but he seems really overqualified for the job.

Instead of Algy (who was also in Bulldog Drummond at Bay, though not played by Reginald Denny), we get Drummond's nephew Robert who's still comical, but not as exaggeratedly cowardly as Algy. It's actually a good trade.

But even though it starts off okay, the last third of the movie gets silly. It's like they realized there were still some big Bond elements they hadn't included yet and decided to hurry up and toss them in. So we get a pointless make-out scene between Drummond and the lead assassin and a stupid sequence in which Drummond and Peterson do battle with a giant chess set. And Peterson makes all the dumb, Bond-villain mistakes, but unfortunately doesn't have the charisma that most Bond villains do to distract us.

I'm not sure that I'm intrigued enough to track down the original novels, but I'm definitely up for more of the movies. And Moonstone did a comics adaptation a while back by William Messner Loebs and Bill Bryan. I'd love to see if I can get my hands on that. Knowing Moonstone, it'll be the most faithful to the feel of the books without having to actually read them. If I like that, I'll be more inclined to start hitting the bookstores.