Carry On Films
From Conservapedia
The sequence of some 30 Carry On Films was a peculiarly British phenomenon of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (although there were attempts to revive the genre in the 1990s and much more recently).
Despite tiny budgets, laboured puns and endless double-entendres, the 30 Carry On films produced by Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas are among the most fondly remembered comedies in British cinema. This is largely due to the popularity of the wonderful cast. Its mainstays, from 1958 until 1978, were Kenneth Williams, master of comic voices and flared nostrils; the roguish Sid James with his lecherous laugh; and the waif-like Charles Hawtrey, who could get a laugh simply by walking in front of the camera in a pair of shorts, and Kenneth Connor, a somewhat diminutive actor with a cheeky manner. Barbara Windsor (she of the cheeky laugh - ‘Saucy!’) will forever be linked with the Carry Ons, though she only appeared in nine of them. She is best remembered for the scene in Carry On Camping where a carelessly aimed fishing rod dispensed with her bikini top. The true ‘Carry On Queen’ however, was Joan Sims, who was in 24 of the 30 films.
Arguably the best of the genre was Carry on Cleo (1964), which benefited from sets left behind at Pinewood from the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor film of Cleopatra, and had one of Talbot Rothwell’s strongest scripts. This is the film where Kenneth Williams, as Julius Caesar, utters the immortal line: “Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!”, and where Sid James, as Marc Anthony, after an amorous encounter with Amanda Barrie (Cleo) shuts the door behind him and says : "Puer, .. Oh Puer, ... Oh Puer".
The Carry on Film with the biggest budget was "Carry on Up the Khyber", in which Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond (played by Sid James) is Queen Victoria's Governor in the province of Khalabar near the Khyber Pass. The province is defended by the much-feared 3rd Foot and Mouth Regiment known as ‘The Devils in Skirts’, and who are reputed to not wear anything under their kilts. This mythology becomes a central feature of the film, and upon which a lot of the humour rests. When Private Widdle (Charles Hawtrey) is found to be wearing long underpants after an encounter with Bungdit Din (Bernard Bresslaw), a Burpa chief, he informs the Khasi of Khalabar (Kenneth Williams). The Khasi then makes plans to use this information to incite an anti-British rebellion, with the aim of dispelling the "tough" image of the Devils in Skirts by revealing that, contrary to popular belief, they do indeed wear underpants under their kilts. The culmination of the film is a wonderful scene where a dinner party ensues, with a fierce rebellion erupting all around: the epitome of the British stiff upper lip. The film makes repeated references to Tiffin [1], which in the film was a euphemism for an amorous encounter, and as the plot of the film progresses, Sid James seems to partake of more than his fair share of tiffin.
A new film, Carry on London, was announced in 2003, but filming had still not begun by February 2006. Peter Rogers assured readers of The Sun newspaper, that the film would be released within the following year. In May 2006, it was announced Vinnie Jones and Shane Richie are to star in the film, which is to be directed by Peter Richardson.
Notable Films in the series
- Carry on Sergeant (1958) - the first of the films, and one in which the style had not yet developed.
- Carry on Constable
- Carry on Nurse
- Carry on Regardless
- Carry on Camping
- Carry on Up the Khyber
This Link provides a full list of Carry on Films with dates.
References
- ↑ The word is still widely used in India for any hot light meal or snack taken at any time during the day. More than any other word, tiffin evokes British India, and entered into the language at the beginning of the nineteenth century. see: http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-tif1.htm
