Arrest Bulldog Drummond (James P. Hogan, 1938)

Richard Gannett, the self-styled "Earl of Destiny" (The Mummy's Leonard Mudie) sends a letter to Colonel Nielsen of Scotland Yard (H. B. Warner, Mr. Gower in It's a Wonderful Life) saying with his invention he will bring peace to the world, whether they want it or not. Meanwhile, Captain Hugh C. "Bulldog" Drummond (The Invisible Woman's John Howard) is preparing for his forthcoming nuptials to Phyllis Clavering (Alice in Wonderland's Heather Angel) when his chum Algy Longworth (Rebecca's Reginald Denny, no relation to the truck driver who was a victim in the L.A. riots) shows up, having also received a letter from Gannett about his invention. They go to Gannett's flat in Birnam Wood Road to investigate. Gannett is showing his machine, an explosive ray, to Rolf Alferson (the ever-dependable George Zucco). Gannett wants to offer his device to the governments of the world, beginning with his own country's, but Alferson murders him with something called "the Stinger."

Arriving at Birnam Wood Road, Drummond and Algy discover the lights in the building have been flickering every night. Breaking into Gannett's place, they find his body, and are promptly arrested by the police. The autopsy confirms their innocence, and reveals he was murdered by a stingray. Drummond and Algy become resolved to look into the matter further, aided by Drummond's butler Tenny (Bride of Frankenstein's E. E. Clive), even though it may jeopardize Drummond's wedding plans.

Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond was the two-fisted hero of a series of novels by H. C. McNeile, who wrote under the pen name "Sapper." Drummond was a Great War veteran who found peacetime utterly monotonous, and being an adrenaline junkie, soon found himself getting mixed up in thwarting evildoers, notably the master of disguise Carl Peterson, who appeared in several of the books alongside his equally sinister mistress Irma. Arrest Bulldog Drummond was the fourth film Paramount Studios made with John Howard as Drummond; he was neither the first nor the last to play the character, the latter being Richard Johnson in Deadlier Than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969).

The reason the character has not been seen on film since is probably due to some unfortunate content in the novels. Their depiction of non-WASPs is not always very enlightened. I hesitate to call them "a product of their times," since that implies everyone in the past was a bigot, but of the two Drummond novels by McNeile I've read, The Return of Bulldog Drummond has Drummond using the expression "n***** in the woodpile" in the very first chapter, while one of the criminal conspirators in Bulldog Drummond at Bay is a wealthy anti-Semitic stereotype. I understand, however, from people who've read more of the series than I have, that McNeile dialed back the xenophobia in the later books, and Gerard Fairlie, who continued the series after his death, even called out some of Hugh's earlier methods of crimefighting as fascist in the text of the books themselves. Apart from the cringeworthy bits, I found the ones I read enjoyable if not particularly deep adventure stories.

Arrest Bulldog Drummond is based on McNeile's The Final Count, but makes several changes, including replacing Carl Peterson with the somewhat less distinctive Rolf Alferson. Carrying over from the previous films, Hugh's significant other, the lovely Phyllis Benton, has her surname changed to the more unwieldy Clavering, while Drummond's butler Denny's name is changed to Tenny, presumably to avoid confusion with actor Reginald Denny playing a different role. The script was written by Stuart Palmer, better known for his series of novels about spinster sleuth Hildegarde Withers. Howard pulls off the literary Drummond's wisecracking swagger reasonably well, though he's a little too good-looking compared to McNeile's Bulldog's "pleasantly ugly" features. The aforementioned Reginald Denny and E. E. Clive provide some adequate comic relief, with one notable example being Tenny lighting a candle in a warehouse that turns out to be storing fireworks, with predictable results. George Zucco is as sinister as ever, and deserves more screen time than he actually gets.

Being based on a book of the mostly male-oriented "clubland heroes" genre, it's no surprise that the women come off pretty undeveloped here. Heather Angel as Phyllis is a pretty bland love interest, and her Aunt Meg (Werewolf of London's Zeffie Tilbury) doesn't do much more than provide moral support for her niece in her nuptial travails, while Jean Fenwick doesn't do much as Alferson's female accomplice, presumably taking Irma's place.

As with other movies from the '30s I've seen there's surprisingly little music in the film - only a bit at the beginning and the end. One thing that I find astounding is that when Drummond is rehearsing his speech at his bachelor party, he addresses his "fellow members of the Drones Club." For the uninitiated, this is the name of the London gentleman's club (not in the ecdysiastal sense) many of P. G. Wodehouse's upper class twit protagonists, including the immortal Bertie Wooster, belonged to. I love crossovers myself - in fact, I've written two massive books on the subject, and if you haven't bought them yet, click this link RIGHT NOW, so finding a shout-out to Wodehouse in an unexpected place tickled me to no end. This is a fun film, the second with Howard in the role I've seen, and you can bet I'll check out the others.