Bullshot (1985)

This was the twenty-fifth and final Bulldog Drummond film, a spoof, with actor Alan Shearman playing 'Captain Bullshot Crummond'. It is not funny. Dick Clement was not a good director. Early in his career, he took a fascinating stage play by Iris Murdoch and J. B. Priestley, 'A Severed Head' (which was mesmerising in the theatre, where I saw it at the Criterion in London), and made one of the worst films in British history of it (1970). This is very much a 'let's all get together and make a spoof on Bulldog Drummond' venture, as the three lead actors, Shearman, Diz White, and Ronald House, all wrote the script. They must have been in fits of laughter cooking up all those gags, really clever. But spoofs are not as easy to make as you think, and this was just a total flop. A really clever director might have pulled it off, who knows. It falls into the category of 'totally cringe-making'. The only person (apart from Mel Smith, of whom we get a glimpse now and then) in the film who is any good is my old friend of yesteryear, the late Bryan Pringle, as a waiter. Bryan was always good. You couldn't put him down. I am frankly amazed that several other viewers have been thrilled and delighted at this film, believing it to be hilarious and indeed wonderful. There's no accounting for taste, especially in comedy. (Some of the 'comedy' on television is so appalling I wouldn't dirty my eye-sockets with it, if that isn't too complicated a metaphor.) However, I do not wish to malign those joyous souls who loved this film. I just wish to say it stinks!

Alan Shearman was brilliant as the dashing Bullshot Crummond (with apologies to Bulldog Drummond) the all-round sportsman and know-it-all! The usual 'true Britisher' saving the earth from world dominating foreign types! The writing team was of three people Ron House, Diz White and Alan Shearman. I can't say that I have ever heard of the first two people, but Alan Shearman was in a TV comedy called 'Mog' with En Reitel, another very funny chap.Ron Pember and Mel Smith are in supporting roles, clearly before Mel Smith went to the US to live and work; as did Alan Shearman, which is a pity really, as I thought that he had a lot to give in Britain. Perhaps the roles didn't come his way, so he decided to 'up and off' to the land of plenty!

This film came out in 1983 and got pounded by the critics, but was actually quite amusing. It was spoofing "Sapper"'s BULLDOG DRUMMOND stories, about the super-hero of Britain post World War I. Facing his version of "Carl Peterson" or "Dr. Lakington" in Otto Von Bruno (an unreconstructed German warrior from the Great War), Captain Hugh Bullshot Crummond is trying to thwart the latter's plots to resurrect a super - Germany. The jokes were basically making fun of all the plot problems and story failings in the Drummond novels. For example, Von Bruno manages to get a drug into Crummond while he is at lunch. It causes his features to bloat out, and his voice to turn Churchillian, but in the worst possible sense: he sounds like an ultra-reactionary Tory attacking minority groups and foreigners (which is what "Sapper" did believe in).The film did not take itself seriously. Highpoints was the drugging of a room full of scientists (including Einstein) with marijuana. Also was a moment when Von Bruno sets up a trap based on the crashing of a bathroom door, which the hero is seen about to crash when he takes a large breath of air outside the door. A bit later we see him untouched (as is a hostage who was inside the room). A complicated, and totally improbable explanation about the physics that kept the death trap from working (apparently a vacuum was created when he took his breath of air). After the film's unseen narrator explains this, all the characters stop their activities and look helplessly at the audience trying to grasp what they've just been told.A clever film spoof, it is worth watching when it is available.

Very much along the lines of Ripping Yarns, so essential viewing if that's your kind of thing. The cast by itself should give you a fair idea of whether you'll like it. Unashamedly "dated"; I never find that term valid as criticism - surely any film/programme that so strongly represented its era that morons have to call it "dated" isn't necessarily a bad thing? Don't be disturbed by the moronic female lead - the actor playing her co-wrote the script and, remember, it is satire!Ra ra ra!!