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.
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.