BULLSHOT! (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

Another "combative comedy" for this review is 1983's BULLSHOT!, the film version of BULLSHOT CRUMMOND, a successful stage-play that spoofing the famous British hero Bulldog Drummond. It might've been interesting had the film spoofed the original prose hero. I've read four of the novels originally printed in the 1920s, and they're a fascinating cornucopia of fascism, racism and brutality.  However, what's being spoofed here is the version of Bulldog promulgated through American cinema, particularly the first sound film, 1929's BULLDOG DRUMMOND, wherein the debonair Ronald Colman essayed a polite, "veddy British" hero that has become the best-known persona of the hero.

In contrast to the lackluster scripts for OLD DRACULA and PANDEMONIUM, BULLSHOT's writers know just the right buttons to push for the laughs-- though I'm not sure how funny the film would be to someone with absolutely no knowledge of the original film-franchise. As in the 1929 film, the noble athlete-hero Bullshot Crummond faces the menace of a foreign criminal, Otto Von Bruno, and his equally Teutonic aide Lenya.  The Germans are trying to wring scientific secrets out of, well, a scientist, though they themselves seem to have technology far in advance of a World War I setting-- such as force fields, of all things. The single best joke plays upon Crummond's "Rue Brittania" assumptions: when Von Bruno predicts that someday the most powerful country will be the one with the greatest oil reserves, Crummond is duly scandalized.

It's no AIRPLANE, but BULLSHOT is a better than average parody.