Very Cool!!!

Sadly Over-hyped

disgusting, overrated, pointless

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Following the lines of this film, a few years later 20th Century Fox did a version of The Three Musketeers where the Ritz Brothers take the place of the real musketeers and tell part of Dumas's story. It's not one of my favorites. But Alias Bulldog Drummond where the real bulldog is incapacitated so Jack Hulbert takes his place as Fay Wray goes to him for help.Algy who was never much help to Bulldog Drummond in any event is also along for the ride. It doesn't go too good at first, Fay Wray who is seeking help for her father gets kidnapped, Paul Graetz her father who the crooks really want is also kidnapped and Scotland Yard is put out no end.As it turns out Ralph Richardson in one of his earliest films is the leader of a gang of jewel thieves. They want Graetz to make a duplicate of a valuable necklace to replace the original when they steal it. Richardson and his gang are playing for some very high stakes.Jack Hulbert and his brother Claude who plays Algy have some nice comic bits in the film. Richardson is quite the suave master crook. There are some nice scenes in the London Underground where Richardson's crew have made their hideaway and there's a great climax involving a train, shades of The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3.As for the real Captain Drummond, who cares if it's an ersatz bulldog as long as the job gets done.

Released in the U.S. as 'Alias Bulldog Drummond', Bulldog Jack is just about the only one of a long series of patriotic Jack Hulbert comedies to survive the test of time and still be entertaining without being somewhat alien today.The past is another country, so they say, and this piece of the past seems to have another London Underground system.The film is very ably directed by Walter Forde, the former silent comedian who directed Rome Express and three other Hulbert comedies. It has a witty script by J.O.C. Orton, Sidney Gilliat and Gerard Fairlie, worked humorously around the serious 'Sapper' characters created by H.C. McNeile.There is some gorgeous early film noir photography by Mutz Greenbaum on excellent sets of the British Museum and tunnels and an abandoned station on London's 'Central' Underground Line built at the Gaumont British studios at Shepherd's Bush (which just happened to be on the Central Line).They changed the names of stations in the film to fictitious ones (though, oddly, later expansion of the real Central Line adopted two of the station names from the film) but there was a genuine closed 'Museum' station (called Bloomsbury in the film) which I can remember seeing the abandoned platforms of while passing from Tottenham Court Road to Holborn on the Central Line back in the '60s. It's not visible now. I've looked.However, the idea for the film is said to have come from writer J.O.C. Orton noticing the abandoned Brompton Road station on the Piccadilly Line. Still, there are such a lot of abandoned stations in London that it could have been any one of them.The film is remarkable for an incredibly eccentric performance by Ralph Richardson in the role of the master criminal Morelle, and as being the first of a number of British films that American star Fay Wray appeared in without ever being asked to scream once. In this film she looks simply beautiful - as ever - in some very beautiful clothes not suited at all to adventures in elevator shafts and tunnels. But her clothes never seem to get dirty once – which is how it should be.There is also amusingly able support from Jack Hulbert's brother Claude as bumbling upper-class twit Algy Longworth - a role he seemed born for with his cartoon mouth and flappy ears.In part we have to thank producer Michael Balcon for the film being so watchable today as he was the only British producer at the time inclined to apply high production values to comedies.But we must also thank German expatriate Alfred Junge, who had designed for British silent classic Piccadilly, and who would go on to work with Powell and Pressburger on The Canterbury Tale, Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death (US title: Stairway to Heaven).His stunning work is really only let down by the occasional use of models which are a little less than convincing but quite acceptable in the spirit of a very silly film which abandons reality fairly early on.It is perhaps best to see this film in its very crisp Super 8 version, which, at only one hour long, disposes of the tedious, unfunny and dated dialogue scenes at the beginning of the full feature to leap right into the action with an impressive and dangerous accident on The Devil's Bend.The somewhat aboriginal fight scene in the British Museum is beautifully crafted and well worth seeing, and I am still pondering over how many takes there must have been to get the boomerangs to perform precisely as well as they did.The film has a very exciting climax on the Central Line (which at the time hadn't extended quite as far west as the film takes it) but I shall not spoil the ending for you by saying any more than that.

** small spoiler **Bulldog's car is sabotaged and he crashes into another car on his way to a mysterious mission. As it turns out, the driver of the other car is a great fan of Bulldog's work and his lifestyle. So, while Bulldog is mending in the hospital, the fan agrees to take on Bulldog's work for him. Thus begins an exercise in comedic silliness that only the Brits can do.It's not hysterically funny. It just has that sort of laid back, gentle, situation type humor that the Brits do better than anyone else.There is also enough tension and mystery to make all the running about worth while.I gave it the nine it deserved.

Have seen this film several times now and generally chuckle/grin/smile most all of the way through. Always enjoy seeing the Underground and the British Museum settings again. Excellent "escapist" antidote to today's generally depressive "gloom and doom" national atmosphere. These days, I feel we need more of this type of film and less of the kind that's too light on dialogue and too heavy on violence and special effects.