Bulldog Drummond and 'The Ludlow Affair'

This is -- ironically -- a distinctly un-British Bulldog. (Not only does our hero sport an American accent, but he delivers lines such as "It's a quarter of two {o'clock}", and "Ready or not, here we come!") As a quick half-hour's entertainment, it's lively, and manages to pack a surprising amount of plot into a short running time, although said plot is quite literally formulaic -- and I for one managed to guess the real culprit from a very early stage, when the motive is laid out before us on a plate...

There is a rousing theme tune, and a good deal of driving around very fast in sports cars; Drummond doesn't seem to have any worries about the subtleties of tailing people, or else the shooting schedule didn't allow for such niceties. I couldn't help feeling that the villains could scarcely have ignored him! The surviving print is of fairly poor quality, such that the opening titles are initially unreadable due to lack of contrast and most of the paler areas of the picture are washed out. The action can easily be followed, however, and ironically the characters' expressions are actually clearer in the moments when the screen darkens prior to a fade-out.

On the evidence seen here, I'm not entirely surprised that this pilot didn't make the proposed series, but then I don't know what the competition was like. The banter between Drummond and his man Kelly is nicely done -- and stays just this side of annoying -- and we get glimpses of the hero's robust and unorthodox approach to detection. This is a curiosity, but not without its charm.