STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 836, 3 December 1929, Page 15

STRAND

“BULLDOG DRUMMOND” Ronald Colman lias come into liis own as the hero of a dashing comedy melodrama at the Strand Theatre in a creepy, spine- curdling, picturisation of the famous “Bulldog Drummond.'’ The handsome Samuel Goldwyn ''fetar whose serious love-making has made him a national figure has lost none of his sense of romantic appeal; but to it he has added a genuine feeling for comedy which results in there being just the right mixture of thrills and laughter in the picture. The movie public has learned to expect that Samuel Goldwyn will produce pictures mounted beautifully down to the latest detail. But “Bulldog Drummond” goes the past Goldwyn productions one better in making the settings as important a part of the picture as the plot. Brooding shadows, weird camera angles, sinister slants to walls and staircases, lighting that makes faces eerie, all add tremendously to the horror of the devilry of the criminals who specialise in torturing their victims under cover of a fake sanitarium. From its great success, both in book form and on the stage, many people may already know the story of the demobilised officer who gets so bored with “after the war quiet” that lie writes a letter to “The Times,” London, offering his services in any kind of hair-raising adventure, so long as it is dangerous. This business-like procedure immediately involves him in the troubles of a beautiful girl w*hose uncle is being tortured by a gang of criminals headed by two men and a woman. There is plenty of hand-to-hand fighting and gun-play, but it is by outguessing his antagonists that Drummond finally breaks up the criminals’ nest in the fake sanitarium and wins the girl. The talking supporting programme includes a Fox Movietone News, songs by Dale Smith, the baritone, and in addition the latest Eve’s Review.