You won't be disappointed!

How sad is this?

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

I wonder how many film fans, for no one else would choose to watch a very early talkie, for they are a very bumpy watch with such stilted over the top acting, and rounded exaggerated word delivery, while the crude sound equipment of the era made moving and talking impossible, so the actors stand still and well talk, its all very much like filming a dull play, and so often, so very very dull. Off coarse, modern audience completely fail to get the thrill of seeing the silver screen talk. The poster makes the point Ronald Coleman "All Talking" Bulldog Drummond. Well i do believe this is the best early talkie i have ever seen by long way, the script from a stage play i assume, is witty and lively, and by switching from "Talkie" to "Silent" where we are treated to silent movie tricks such as shadows, the film makers deliver a very lively picture full of twists turns and some very gay old fashioned thrill's and spills. Ronald Coleman was Oscar nominated for this role and i can see why, for while all around him give perfectly fine period performances typical of the era, Coleman on the other hand is Bulldog Drummond and simply cruises through the movie by being totally natural, he is so good in fact, he could walk out of a 1929 film by instant time warp and be perfectly plausibly playing a role in a 2017 film, no bother at all. But, who and what is Bulldog Drummond, well i'm trying to work on this my self, he tells us he is to rich to work and he is bored. So ex army captain Drummond a very fine posh very rich beautifully spoken top rank English gentlemen, saves damsel's in distress, to relieve the boredom of it all. Well what else could he do? Most i think would, simply play cricket. To sum up, i loved it. A time warp 9 from 10. well no one's perfect, not even the British Bulldog!

This 1929 adaptation of the famous Sapper hero is one of the earliest screen incarnations of the character, only the third to be made as far as I can tell. The film was produced by big shot Samuel Goldwyn in America, although by all respects and purposes it looks and feels like a British movie and it was shot in London. It stars popular actor Ronald Colman in the leading role and he's a good fit for Drummond; he looks the part physically and he has a kind of macho charisma to boot.The film's plot is quite simplistic but we must remember that this was made right at the outset of the talkies when cinema was still in its early days. Drummond advertises for adventure and is contacted by a beautiful young woman who claims that her uncle is being held hostage by a crooked gang. With the help of his buddy Algy and his butler Danny, Drummond heads off to investigate.Most of the action is centred around a creepy old mansion with plenty of sinister characters making up the cast. Ther's a surprising hint at rape along with set design and atmosphere familiar from the era's horror pictures. The story could have used a little more physical action but we do get a car chase. Some parts of the story are a little dissatisfying, particularly the ending, but overall it holds up very well and certainly doesn't feel its age. I particularly enjoyed Claud Allister's humorous performance as comic relief character Algy.

Captain Bulldog Hugh Drummond (Ronald Coleman) is bored. He is bored of peace in a contracting British empire made so by the decimation of everybody who was of fighting age in WWI. Hugh is one of the few survivors of that war and he longs for adventure. So he puts an ad in the paper saying he is looking for adventure, and would rather crime not be involved but won't rule it out.He gets tons of responses, but the letter of Phyllis (Joan Bennett) asking for help strikes his fancy and especially the mystery she puts around their meeting. She has reserved a room for them in a local inn. On the appointed day Drummond arrives at the inn, goes to the room, and soon in walks a woman dressed from head to toe in black. She uncovers her face, and Drummond is instantly smitten. She tells a rather fantastic tale of how her fabulously wealthy uncle is being held captive in an asylum in a plot to rob him of his assets and how she is being watched by the people who run the asylum. That was why she chose the remote inn in the middle of the night. Now Drummond's friend Algie and Drummond's butler have followed Drummond to the inn, and prior to Phyllis' entry Drummond has locked them in the bedroom. While all of this conversation is going they are listening in.Now Phyllis could have been a complete crackpot, but in the middle of their meeting in come the people running the asylum and fetch Phyllis back, validating her story. Drummond follows them, gets Phyllis out, manages to grab the uncle too, and then after some clever maneuvers in a high speed chase, makes a bone headed mistake - he takes them BOTH BACK to the inn where the villains found them in the first place. Of course they show up AGAIN. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.This is not to say that the villains do not make mistakes or strange decisions. They seem to be running an asylum in a huge castle like structure in which Phyllis' uncle is the only inmate. Nice work if you can get it. This was a very well done early talkie. The entire film takes place at night, the architecture looks like something straight out of a German expressionist film, and the dialogue and performances are not static or stilted at all. There is clever use of the camera to give the illusion of motion where there really cannot be any, and the same is true for Colman's performance - he was actually wounded badly in WWI and could not use one leg hardly at all. Yet when you think back after watching, you'll swear he was climbing and swinging about like Errol Flynn.Lilyan Tashman steals the show as the villainess, who for some reason is dressed up in an evening gown for all of this skulking about. Drummond may be her technical enemy, but you can tell by every word she says she is sexually attracted to him, if only she could get him under her spell.This film was Joan Bennett's first talking film, Ronald Colman's second talking film and first surviving one, and Lilyan Tashman's second talking role. For these three actors, the coming of sound was a boost to their careers rather than the end of them. Of course, Colman had been a star for some years, but his marvelous voice would have made it a pleasure to listen to him recite the dictionary. Watch it for the fun, romance, and adventure of it all.One more thing, unlike James Bond, apparently Bulldog Drummond was extremely monogamous. In the later low budget Drummond pictures of the late 30's with John Howard in the starring role Drummond is engaged to a girl named Phyllis. The joke of the series is how the planned wedding just never manages to come off because of some mystery into which Drummond becomes entangled. It's good B fun but this is the first and the best of the talking Bulldog Drummond films, largely because of the charming Ronald Colman.

This started off yet another series devoted to the exploits of a literary detective figure (though he is actually an ex-British military officer); even if the films themselves never reached particular heights and, following the first two entries starring Ronald Colman (both, incidentally, included in the "Wonders In The Dark" poll), fell definitely into the B-movie league, this initial outing did yield two Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies)!Despite being 85 years old and thus understandably stagey in treatment, the film survives quite nicely as pure entertainment (save for the frequent singing by a young man at an inn, summarily booted out when the villains turn up!), and can even be seen to have left its mark on culture (the presence of both a mad doctor and a femme fatale among its cast of characters). It is only the attitudes that have dated: Drummond's constant cheerfulness and over-confidence (we never really feel he is in danger throughout, also because there is a chivalric sense of mutual respect between hero and antagonist – though he does dispose violently and gratuitously of the slow-talking scientist, albeit offscreen); the latter, then, is an archaic gangster type; Drummond is assisted by silly ass Claud Allister's Algy (who, annoyingly, repeatedly asks for the afore-mentioned vamp's telephone number as if it were the most natural thing to do under the circumstances, or that she would ever even deign to give him the time of day!) and a butler; Drummond's romantic attachment to the heroine is likewise merely an obligatory convention (though 38 at the time, Colman always seemed to look middle- aged – which makes him that more unsuited to blonde Joan Bennett, not yet out of her teens and still a decade away from her 1940s heyday!). Curiously enough, though this tale is depicted as being Drummond's baptism of fire in the sleuthing business, the villainess already calls him by his "Bulldog" nickname! Being a Samuel Goldwyn production, the film is slickly-handled (Gregg Toland was one of the cinematographers) and, as I said, includes a number of welcome elements that would eventually find their utmost expression in other popular genres (horror, noir and espionage thrillers – the latter in the deployment of a criminal organization, even if their objective here involves nothing more earth-shattering than the simple extortion of money!).