Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police is a 1939 American country house murder mystery film directed by James Patrick Hogan, based on the H. C. McNeile novel Temple Tower.
An absent minded Professor Downie (Forrester Harvey) makes a call upon Drummond as he is making plans for his much-delayed wedding to fiancee Phyllis Claverling. The professor informs Drummond that a fortune was buried in one of the walled off storerooms underneath his estate, and that Downie was in possession of a book written in code that would lead them to discover the treasure. Unfortunately for the professor, someone else also wanted the riches and Drummond once again is dragged into the plot as the code book is stolen, Professor Downie is murdered, and Phyllis is kidnapped.
The film uses flashbacks from previous Drummond films and dream sequences extensively, which has led some to criticize it as tiresome. Oddly, despite the phrase 'secret police' in the title, there is nothing relating to any secret police in the plot except Col. Neilsen's quip when several of the characters are together. The production values are high as the sets are of high quality, but the script has not received much acclaim.
Famous quotes containing the word secret:
“Come now, let us go and be dumb. Let us sit with our hands on our mouths, a long, austere, Pythagorean lustrum. Let us live in corners, and do chores, and suffer, and weep, and drudge, with eyes and hearts that love the Lord. Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)