Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police (1939)

Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police is a very late entry in Paramount’s popular Bulldog Drummond B-movie cycle.

Captain Hugh Drummond (John Howard) is about to marry his lady love, Phyllis Clavering (Heather Angel). He has decided that they will live in his ancient ancestral home, Rockingham Tower, which has been closed up for years.

A tedious ongoing gag in these movies is that Hugh and Phyllis are always about to get married but then Hugh gets caught up in another crime-fighting or espionage adventure and the wedding gets postponed once again.

In this case the first sign that wedding bells might not be in the offing after all is the arrival of a dotty historian, Professor Downie (Forrester Harvey), who claims to have found evidence that there is a fabulous treasure hidden somewhere in Rockingham Tower. It is the treasure of King Charles I, concealed there after the Battle of Naseby in 1645.

However there is dirty work afoot, there is murder and it is clear that someone else is after that treasure.

To find the treasure Hugh will have to crack a fiendishly complex 17th century cypher. Everybody knows that Rockingham Tower is riddled with secret passageways but no-one knows how to find them.

After several further murders it all leads up to a fairly exciting action finale.

The character Bulldog Drummond was created by H. C. McNeile (using the pseudonym Sapper) in 1920 and featured in a wildly successful series of thriller novels. The character in these B-movies bears no resemblance whatsoever to McNeile’s character. McNeile’s Drummond is a larger-than-life character, much more ruthless, much edgier, much rougher, much more boisterous and rambunctious and has a schoolboy sense of humour. A far cry from the bland debonair upper-class nonentity of the movies.

The movies are played mostly for comedy. In fact almost entirely for comedy. This was the same mistake that made the 1930s Perry Mason movies almost unwatchable. Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police is mostly comic relief with a few thriller elements thrown in.

There is quite a bit of humour in the novels. The difference is that the humour in the novels is actually funny and it doesn’t overwhelm the thriller stories.

The novels also have properly constructed properly thought-out plots which is more than can be said for the paper-thin plot of this movie.

John Howard is not a terrible actor but he’s totally wrong for the part. Reginald Denny is exasperatingly tiresome and unfunny as Hugh’s pal Algy Longworth. Elizabeth Patterson as Phyllis’s aunt adds even more unnecessary and irritating comic relief.

Worst of all we get an extended dream sequence which is just an excuse to pad out the running time with clips from earlier movies in the series.

The action sequences at the end are done quite well but they’re not enough to compensate for the tedium one has to go through first.

Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police is a chore to watch. I’d avoid this one.

I have a copy of this movie in a Mill Creek 50-movie pack. The transfer is as you’d expect - it’s watchable but rather poor.

This movie is ostensibly based on H. C. McNeile’s 1929 novel Temple Tower but has almost nothing in common with the novel. Don’t judge the Bulldog Drummond novels on the basis of these mediocre B-movies. They’re highly entertaining. I’ve reviewed Temple Tower elsewhere and it’s very good.