Good movies, if only you could see and hear them clearly
calvinnme | 01/20/2008
(3 out of 5 stars)
"These are both very good B movie mysteries from the 1930's. The premise behind the Bulldog Drummond series was that Drummond is always trying to marry his girlfriend, Phyllis Clavering, when some mystery interrupts and postpones the proceedings. These two films are from the early part of the series. "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" has a young Ray Milland in the lead where he meets, falls in love with, and rescues Phyllis. "Bulldog Drummond Comes Back" has Drummond proposing to Phyllis prior to the crime drama portion of the film. Reginald Denny is great as Drummond's faithful if inept friend, and E.E. Clive is the model of efficiency and ingenuity as Drummond's gentleman's gentleman.
The problem with this double feature is that "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" is barely watchable because the video is so dark and the audio is so bad it is impossible to hear quiet conversation over the awful audio hum. However "Bulldog Drummond Comes Back" has pretty good audio and video quality for a public domain feature. A better buy might be the "Mystery Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection". It has six Bulldog Drummond films including these two and 44 more public domain mystery films."