Bullshot (1985)

So much average

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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!

'Bullshot' was one of several productions from Hand Made Films, created originally by George Harrison and Denis O'Brien to make 'Monty Python's Life Of Brian' ( 1979 ). There is nothing Pythonesque about this romp however. It has more in common with Michael Palin and Terry Jones' 'Ripping Yarns' television series, in particular 'Whinfrey's Last Case'. Sapper and Gerald Fairlie's dashing hero 'Hugh Drummond' ( known to all and sundry as 'Bulldog' ) was just ripe for sending up. The resulting film, based on a stage play, compares favourably with those wild, wacky American spoofs 'Airplane!' and 'Blazing Saddles'. Professor Rupert Fenton ( the late Michael Aldridge ) lives in the country with his unmarried daughter Rosemary ( Diz White ), who cannot say her 'r''s properly. When he is kidnapped by the German villain 'Otto Von Bruno' ( Ron House ), she calls on England's greatest hero - Captain Hugh 'Bullshot' Crummond ( Alan Shearman ). Von Bruno wants the secret half of the formula Fenton devised - it is in the locket Rosemary wears round her neck. While they plan to get it, Crummond has to suspend his investigations because of a prior commitment - he is due to take part in the London to Brighton car rally... Shearman, who bears a striking resemblance to Stanley Baxter, cuts a dash as Crummond, all stiff upper lip, slicked back hair, and plus fours. Instead of depicting him as a buffoon, the writers went to the other extreme by making him impossibly brilliant at everything he does. He can work out complicated mathematical equations in the blink of an eye, and wins the boat race at the Henley Regatta all on his own! Despite his tendency to indulge in stirring patriotic speeches, he contrives to be a bigger fascist than his arch-enemy. Global warfare is his answer to the world's ills. Every one of the men who served under him in The Great War is now either dead, crippled or destitute. Witness his stance on feminism; "This country would be in a right mess if they made a woman Prime Minister!. White is delightful as 'Rosemary', with Ron House looks suitably villainous as the bald, monocled 'Von Bruno'. This is terrific fun, the post-W.W.1 flavour is nicely caught by director Dick Clement, and the cast throw themselves into the thing with gusto, particularly Shearman, White and House ( who also wrote it ). Frances Tomelty ( Sting's ex-wife ) is stunningly sexy as the seductive Lenya, while Mel Smith, Billy Connolly and Nicholas Lyndhurst crop up in smaller roles. Much of the humour is 'end of the pier', such as the unseemly bulge in Crummond's underwear, and the Fokker reference, but the film's no more smutty than your average 'Carry On'. Better than most of them in fact. The film surprisingly opened to a critical drubbing and none too impressive box office grosses. Since then, it has grown in popularity. Deserves a major critical reevaluation. Oh and John Du Prez's music's fabulous too. Toodle pip!

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.

Expert spoofing on the British comic book heroes of Victor, Warlord, The Eagle etc mixed with dashes of Biggles, Inspector Clouseau and (of course) Bulldog Drummond, produced Bullshot. It is dashedly funny. With a cast of several, it follows the antics of Captain Bullshot Crummond, WWI fighter ace turned amateur sleuth. Explaining a joke ruins it and so I can't give too many details about the plot. All I can urge you to do is seek this film out.You will never look at a banana and a pair of plums in quite the same way again.Hurrah !