the audience applauded

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

All assassinations that happened in this "episode" happened over a diamond. Bulldog must find who is killing them.A real yawn. A very weak plot, poorly filmed. Nothing special, very average and basic. The plot is an over used plot that has nothing new to bring us to the table of 1930s crime films. How this one plays out is not all that grand either.Seems to me they could have put Bulldog in films that will bring a new story or at least find a good way to change up an over used plot to make it more interesting.I'm sorry but this one is the worst of all the 6 Bulldog films I have in the Mill Creek Mysteries 50-pack.1/10

Once again Bulldog Drummond is planning to marry his fiancée Phylllis. Once again, he gets sidetracked. This time by a mystery involving synthetic diamonds and, of course, murder. This would be the third and final Bulldog Drummond film for both John Barrymore and Louise Campbell. Barrymore would be replaced by H.B. Warner and Campbell by Heather Angel, who returned to the role she played in Bulldog Drummond Escapes. The reason for Barrymore leaving is his alcoholism, which was affecting his performance. Reportedly he had trouble reading lines even when they were written for him on cue cards. You can definitely see something is off with him here. He shouts all his lines, for one thing. I'm not sure of the reason for Campbell's departure. This was the biggest role of her short career and I think she was very good. But I admit Angel was better so I'm not terribly upset over the replacement. The rest of the cast of regulars that would continue on with the series (John Howard, Reginald Denny, E.E. Clive) are fine. Clive has some of the movie's best scenes. There's a nice supporting cast that includes Halliwell Hobbes and Porter Hall. As with most of the entries in the Paramount series, this is a middling B detective flick with a short runtime. This one passes the hour mark (barely) but the last couple didn't even do that. I don't mind the runtime. It works fine for this type of picture. It's not like Paramount was doing anything innovative or unique with this series, after all. It's just this one is pretty dull. Still, if you're fan of the series you will want to see it. If nothing else, see it for the scene with the cool old-school sci-fi laboratory.

Preview: Summary: This one has a trained penguinThis is the twelfth Bulldog Drummond film, the third starring John Howard as Drummond, and the second based on Sapper's novel 'The Third Round' (the first version of which was the silent film of 1925 'Bulldog Drummond's Third Round' starring Jack Buchanan, of which one print is said to survive in an archive). This one is tauter and more dramatic than most because it was edited by Ed Dymtryk. John Hogan also did a fine job of directing, with many dramatic angles and more closeups than were seen in the previous Drummond film by another director. There is interesting second unit material of London. The budget for this film was fairly ambitious, more so than in later efforts. Louise Campbell and Nydia Westman, the two irritating women, are kept under control and their roles minimized, to my great relief, and to the improvement of the drama. The lead billing once again is given to John Barrymore, who plays the Commissioner, but in this film, he acts up a storm and has many strong scenes, unlike the previous offering, 'Bulldog Drummond's Revenge', in which he sleep-walked through the story. So in this one, he really earned his fee for a change. The wonderful character actress Zeffie Tilbury here plays an amusing housekeeper who puts policemen in their place with the best East End cockney applomb, and takes no nonsense. Hogan, having just directed her in 'Scandal Street' (1938), evidently was responsible for introducing Elizabeth Patterson to the series, as a hysterical Aunt Blanche. Porter Hall puts in another of his villainous appearances, to excellent effect. (Villains are always so much more menacing when they speak quietly, as he does.) There are some amazing laboratory scenes in this film, reminiscent of Tesla, with surging electric currents and so forth, and one half expects a Frankenstein monster to appear. The story is about the manufacture of artificial diamonds, of the need to protect the diamond industry and, as Barrymore admits, to protect the Empire, from the threat of being able to make diamonds 'become as cheap as pebbles' and 'to be larger than the crown jewels'. Naturally, there is scope for villains galore with such a scenario. There is lots of action, plenty of train, car and motorbike chases, climbing up walls, and in this one, E. E. Clive as Tenny the gentleman's gentleman has the most energetic and active of all his Drummond roles, and hijacks a truck at gunpoint, hanging upside down from the roof. But most ingenious of all is the cute trained penguin who has more scenes than Louise Campbell and is a finer bird. Watch him hop and squawk, dear little thing. He also discovers a corpse under the table, which was a fine feathered deed worthy of this fast-moving film, which does not disappoint any stout Drummondonian.

One of the weaker entries in the Drummond series, but it's still entertaining. Perhaps I've seen too many of the Drummond films too close together. The humor is not as sharp as earlier entries. The pacing is fine, but the plot and villains don't seem to be up to snuff. The villains don't appear evil or sharp enough to harm a fly, let alone our hero.There is a nice sequence of that wonderful 30s "lab equipment" working its magic. So much more exciting and dramatic than computer chips and LEDs! Now that's evil!