STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 835, 2 December 1929, Page 15

STRAND

“BULLDOG DRUMMOND”

The mystery thriller has been lifted from the level of indiscriminate spinechilling to that of an artistic vehicle in “Bulldog Drummond,” the picture version of the famous stage playjiow at the Strand Theatre, with Ronald Colman as star. Ronald Colman’s masterly handling of a role that combines both romance and comedy, the swift action contributed by the director, and photography which matches in sheer appropriate effectiveness anything ever turned out in either Europe or Hollywood makes it a motion picture event. In his second individual starring picture, Colman proves that he has been keeping a fine gift for comedy pretty well out of sight while he has been so eminently satisfactory in the past as a serious romantic lover. “Bulldog Drummond” gives him an opportunity to combine the two and marks a great advance in his development as an actor. Just as handsome and dashing as he ever was in "Beau Geote’\ or “The Night of Love,” he.handles the suddeh transitions from swift action to flashes of comedy with consummate skill. Mystery and horror are well combined in the famous story which made both a successful novel and a successful play, dealing with the operations of a gang of criminals whose long suit is torturing their victims through the fiendish ingenuity of Dr. Lakington, a physician who delights in inflicting pain. Bulldog Drummond is a demobilised British officer, seeking danger in order to escape from the boredome of peace time. An advertisement in the newspapers, requesting trouble, brings him to Phyllis, the beautiful niece of a wealthy American who has fallen into the hands of the criminals and is being tortured' to death in their fake sanitarium. Drummond’s courage and dare-devil cleverness allow him to outwit the fiends almost single-handed. Joan Bennett, daughter of the famous Richard Bennett, makes as beautiful a reward for valour as anyone could wish in her first appearance on the silver screen. Montague Love and Lawrence Grant are a hideous pair of villains, ably aided by Lilyan Tashman as the seductive siren whose charms are the criminals’ means of getting victims into their hands. The talking supporting programme includes a Fox Movietone News, songs by Dale Smith, the baritone, and in addition the latest Eve’s Review.