Quote of the Day

"I say Rosemary, if you weren't a girl, you'd make a jolly fine chap!"

and...

"Is this seemly, Mrs. Platt-Higgins, playing popular music and your husband only ten years dead?"

Alan Shearman as Captain Hugh "Bullshot" Crummond in Bullshot (1983)


This movie is packed with great one-liners. It's a spoof of the old Bulldog Drummond films, which in turn were inspired by the novels of Herman Cyril McNeile. Drummond was a WWI hero who retired and - bored to death of civilian life - took up private detection. I understand that the novels are racist and nationalistic. I caught a glimpse of one of the early movies and that was hopelessly sexist.

So you here you have a hero, post-Holmes, pre-Bond, who is ripe for satire. And he was brilliantly satired in Bullshot. Unusually, the script was co-written by the three lead actors of the movie: Alan Shearman (Bullshot), Diz White (Rosemary) and Ronald E. House (Count Otto von Bruno). They're all so good in it and there are supporting performances by Billy Connolly, Robbie Coltrane and Frances Tomelty.

Reading up a bit more on the original Bulldog films, I was stunned to see the array of actors who have played him:

Carlyle Blackwell (1922)
Jack Buchanan (1925) - the singing Buchanan in a silent role!
Ronald Coleman (1929)
Kenneth MacKenna (1930)
Atholl Fleming (1935)
Ralph Richardson (1934)
John Lodge (1937)
Ray Milland (1937)
John Howard (1937-39)
Ron Randell (1947)
Tom Conway (1948)
Walter Pidgeon (1951)
Richard Johnson (1967 - 1969)