US
1939
56mins
Dir: James Hogan
Starring: John Howard and Heather Angel
Bulldog Drummond investigates clues which he hopes will lead to treasure hidden buried within his house
This was another of the many films based on H.C. McNeile’s adventurer Bulldog Drummond, and it is centred on the 1929 novel Temple Tower, which was itself made into a Drummond film in 1930. Oddly, despite the phrase ‘Secret Police’ in the title their is nothing relating to any form of secret police in the film, merely a quip made between the cast during one scene towards the end. In fact, by 1939 some of these tales featuring the original cast were beginning to get tiresome and this movie overall was a poor spectacle. The opening sequence involves Drummond chasing a train in the studio which features back-projection of an American train. However, the station scene that follows shows the arrival of a British train, with what appears to be an LB&SCR Class I3 4-4-2T tank loco pulling into a station on a Pullman train. This is quite a rare shot, but the station remains unidentified.
