My Best Film: Carry On!

[patiirc]

Carry On Up The Jungle. It's where it went from feeling cheeky to feeling smutty.

Jungle was more direct in its approach than the others, but there were still a few films afterwards that are in the classic style (Convenience, Matron, Abroad). Carry On Loving is definitely a move towards competing with the Confessions film, so I can only conclude that the smuttier approach was to satiate Terry Scott.

 

Dick is probably the one that sits on the fence as to whether its the last good one, or the first poor one, depending on who you talk to. It's certainly more crass than the "golden era", but the cast and writing are still decent. The next in the series (Behind) is a big step down in terms of quality.

 

I think the Carry on Films quality suffered muchly when Talbot Rothwell started to decline healthwise. He eventually quit writing them midway through Carry on Dick through nervous exhaustion. He wrote something like 16 of the Carry on Films and was very well acquainted with Peter Butterworth, following their Prison Camp. The decline after Dick was noticable with the series limping on for three more films, before stopping during it's original phase.

 

Unlike the multiwriter phase we have with films and TV today, much rested on one persons shoulder to deliver the goods, and I think the decline is noticable when traced to the continued and relentless pressure to serve up another 'hit'

[Snitsky's back acne]

Carry On Dick

 

Quite like Carry on Dick, have to be honest.

 

What do people think of Cowboy?

I think it's a bit 'm'eh' personally but I do think the line:

 

'I ain't gonna have no shooting at my place, Cowboy'

'Honey, I wouldn't dream of shooting at your place!'

 

...was particularly funny, most probably in part to Sid James fantastic delivery.

 

Do like Cleo too: 'Julie!' 'Tony!'

[sgmilne]

Interesting topic. It's been some considerable time since I've watched any Carry On films, although I have seen them all at one point or another.

 

Certainly, the one that got me interested in the series was Abroad, and that would probably still hold up well.

 

Most are pretty decent; the only ones I remember not liking are Emmanuelle (obviously), England (ditto), Again Doctor and At Your Convenience (the lead Trade Union guy was awful).

 

Some of them I struggle to remember at all though, like Constable, Teacher & Jack.

 

I'll throw a shout out to Carry On Spying, as nobody has mentioned that yet, along with Follow That Camel.

 

But I would say the best is probably Carry On Sergeant. It wasn't being played on anything that happened before, it has a strong cast (in a unique sort of way), and it has one of the only bits that still makes me chuckle to think about (where they attack the sandbags with bayonets).

Edited February 18, 2014 by sgmilne

[PowerButchi]

The cowboy gets a thumbs up just for "The Rumpo Kid". If I ever become a wrestler so some reason, that's my name.

[Surf Digby]

What do people think of Cowboy?

Cowboy gave me my first impure thoughts about Joan Sims, when she puts the gun in her cleavage. If the internet was around in the 80s, I'd have done myself an injury.

 

Jack's a funny one in that it's not very Carry On in style, and I tend to forget it exists.

 

Follow That Camel is flawed in that it puts too much focus on Phil Silvers, and he's not particularly likable in it. It's another where there's a divide, depending on whether you're a fan of Bilko or not.

[Snitsky's back acne]

b) Valerie Leon was dubbed by June Whitfield in Carry On Girls. All those sultry words came from June Whitfield's mouth. June Whitfield.

 

Never knew that! Now you mention it, I do recognise June Whitfields voice in Carry on Girls.

 

Is it explained why they dubbed her?

 

Oh, and NSFW pics of Margaret Nolan.

 

http://www.harrison-marks.com/portfolios/mn1.asp

Edited February 18, 2014 by Snitsky's back acne

[Surf Digby]

I'm sure I've been told why, but I can't remember offhand.

 

Old nudey pics of Margaret Nolan can also be found under her old professional name of Vicky Nichols. She was the gold painted girl in the Goldfinger credits, you know?

[bAzTNM#1]

Follow That Camel is flawed in that it puts too much focus on Phil Silvers, and he's not particularly likable in it. It's another where there's a divide, depending on whether you're a fan of Bilko or not.

Part was wrote for Sid James, but he had a massive heart attack around the time of filming. No time to rewrite the script, so Silvers stepped in.

[tiger_rick]

The next in the series (Behind) is a big step down in terms of quality.

I remembered liking it. Watched it last night. You're right, it's awful. Windsor Davies is no Sid James and the twitchy bloke from Abroad is a naff sidekick. Bresslaw is the only good thing about it.

 

The blonde bird who plays Ian Lavender's sidekick is seriously annoying.

 

Carry On is normally great for a bit of innuendo but that's all there is in this and it's not even clever about it.

 

I'm still a sucker for Joan Sims and Peter Butterworth reuniting though. And I do like the line: "My ball's burning". "Don't stand so close to the fire then".

[Surf Digby]

If my memory's on form (cue canned laughter), Patsy Rowland is on pretty good form in Carry On Behind. Considering how many of the films she's in, it's a bit odd that she doesn't get mentioned often as one of the core cast.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I loved Cowboy, but Jim Dale always made me laugh. Plus I had a massive crush on Angela Douglas when I was a young un.

[PowerButchi]

Fucking horrible post on the cookdandbombd forum.

 

The Carry On films - as British as fish and chips, as salty as the very briny itself, as cheeky as a loveable moppet sticking his tongue out at a startled vicar, part of the very fabric of our national identity. That seems to be the default argument cultural commentators who really should know better seem to adopt when discussing this string of modest comedies. As Will Self once said, tawdry beliefs may well be comfortable, but that's no reason to cherish them.

 

Strip away the after-the-fact enshrining of the Carry On franchise as 'an integral part of British culture engaged in projecting the English character and capturing the mood of the sixties and seventies for future generations' (Pseud's Corner ahoy!), discard your personal affection for certain cast members, scrap all those comfort blanket notions of damp Sunday afternoons spent enjoying gentle, undemanding chuckles over a heavily edited ITV3 screening of Khyber or Camping. What are you left with? A series of lowbrow, low-budget, technically inept and indifferently scripted films that weren't so much bawdy knockabout fun as horribly creepy, seedy and depressing.

 

Nothing wrong with comedy being creepy, seedy and depressing, of course - that accusation could be levelled against Bottom, several Monty Python sketches, the raincoat-and-mouldy-sandwiches world of Pete and Dud, Les Dawson's Cosmo Smallpeace character, Steptoe and Son, certain facets of Granville and Arkwright's characters in Open All Hours (Granville is obviously a slightly 'simple' man-child kept in a state of arrested development by a miserly old man with an extremely narrow view of the world who divides his time between counting his pennies and courting a woman who, for the most part, puts up with him as opposed to genuinely even liking him), the grim and ratty East Cheam inhabited by Tony Hancock - I could go on - but there was always something so glaringly and obviously unsavoury about the Carry Ons, exacerbated by the fact that they were trying so hard to be broad, family-friendly, slapstick (to say nothing of slap-and-tickle) entertainment.

 

Try watching an entire Carry On film from start to finish - it's an arduous task. Once the cosy glow of nostalgia has dissipated, you're left with very meagre pickings indeed. Every joke is mercilessly telegraphed and over-explained; every misunderstanding is hammered home with swanee whistle fanfares, kettledrum blows and reaction shots of Kenneth Williams looking like a startled donkey; even 'funny' names are repeated and referenced in case somebody didn't immediately pick up on the side-splitting hilarity of 'Stuart Farquar' ("Stupid what?") or 'Major Leap'. Technically, the films are level pegging with the dreary shot-on-16mm-on-a-grimy-September-afternoon filmed inserts from contemporary sitcoms, only the maestros at the BBC and ITV at least had the decency not to subject us to flubbed takes, the actors stumbling over the dialogue, all-too-obvious stunt doubles or sequences that appear to have been edited with a razor blade and a tube of UHU.

 

The nostalgia aspect, too, is questionable. Little Englanders may sigh contentedly at the well-kept housing estates, the spotless streets, the uncongested roads and the immaculate gardens on display, but it's also a world of sex-starved homunculi, hopelessly closeted and frustrated homosexuals whose lot in life is to be sneered at, pointed at and openly mocked; dolly birds - who appear to have slept in their make-up -

[Sergio Mendacious]

Edited May 28, 2014 by Bill Diarrhea

[patiirc]

Fucking horrible post on the cookdandbombd forum.

 

The Carry On films - snip.

 

Ah, the film 'reader' as opposed to someone who watches films for the shits and giggles. Took a long time to drum that out of me, and I'm surprised the 'reviewer' didnt go on about Mise en Scene or other such bollocks.

 

Watching a Carry On is arduous? The writer of that article can fuck off. Disengage brain, enjoy and embrace it's shoddyness and dont over analyse the crap out of it. In short, they should fucking live a little

[Surf Digby]

Fucking horrible post on the cookdandbombd forum.

This article holds no weight, because...

 

Try watching an entire Carry On film from start to finish

 

Okay

 

it's an arduous task.

 

No it isn't.

 

If you can't get that bit right, then it undermines every other "I'm too clever for Carry On films" whine put on paper. It was only yesterday that I had a little strop when I realised I hadn't chucked one of the Carry On DVDs in my bag.