Bulldog Jack [Alias Bulldog Drummond] *** (1934, Jack Hulbert, Fay Wray, Claude Hulbert, Ralph Richardson) – Classic Movie Review 12,611

Jack Hulbert is on best exuberant form as a man-about-town who masquerades as Bulldog Drummond to solve a British Museum heist by a gang based in a shut-down London Tube station, in the bright and brisk 1934 British film Bulldog Jack.

Director Walter Forde’s 1934 British film Bulldog Jack [Alias Bulldog Drummond] is a brisk and blithely entertaining vintage comedy thriller. It provides a lovely role for jaunty Jack Hulbert, who is on best exuberant form as a man-about-town who masquerades as Herman C McNeile (Sapper)’s detective character Bulldog Drummond when Drummond (Atholl Fleming) is put out of action, in order to solve a British Museum heist by a gang based in a shut-down London Tube station.

A pacy, amusing script gets witty playing from an expert team – Jack Hulbert, his brother Claude Hulbert as his pal Algy Longworth and Ralph Richardson as the smooth bad guy, who abducts jeweller Fay Wray and her grandpa Paul Graetz to make them swap a museum statue’s gems with paste fakes.

The direction is handled a breathless speed by Forde, who stages the madcap sequences on the London Underground, at (fictional) Bloomsbury Station and at the museum with particular brio. A tendency to tip it towards out-and-out farce instead of taking it more seriously as a comedy thriller slightly spoils the fun but it is a sweet, highly entertaining ride nonetheless. King Kong’s pal Fay Wray was imported to do the screaming.

Jack Hulbert writes the new story based on Herman C McNeile’s characters.

The script is by Gerard Fairlie, J O C Orton, Sidney Gilliat and Jack Hulbert.

Ralph Richardson plays Drummond in the 1934 The Return of Bulldog Drummond.

The cast are Jack Hulbert as Jack Pennington, Fay Wray as Ann Manders, Ralph Richardson as Morelle, Claude Hulbert as Algy Longworth, Gibb McLaughlin as Denny, Atholl Fleming as Bulldog Drummond, Paul Graetz as Salvini, Cyril Smith as Duke, Henry Brahm, Henry B Longhurst, Ronald Curtis, and Harvey Braban.

It premiered at the Tivoli Theatre in the Strand, London, on 15 July 1935 and was released in the US in September 1935 as Alias Bulldog Drummond.

It is largely shot in the studio on stage sets, but real driver views of the Underground tunnels are shown, and it gives of the Tube in the 1930s.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,611

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