thisbluespirit | "I only ask, because your butler told us you were dead!"

Since I did find quite a few of the films a while back, here are the rest of my waffly reviews. (And before people wonder why I've got the little sanity I have left to me, these were watched over the last 3 or so weeks, not just today or something!)

New friends, well, you remember I said I was slightly mad... Here be proof.

So:
Carry On Screaming.
Very, very good. And I know exactly why I hated it as a child. The trauma blocked from my mind came back as soon as I saw the vats. It's very funny to think I was so horrified by the ending. I didn't do horror. Mind you, if you have too much imagination, what happens is actually the same as the oh-so-shocking death in Spooks 1.2. (And YouTube has solved for me the worrying mystery of why I was so attached to Kenneth Williams as a child - it wasn't Willo' the Wisp; it wasn't even Galloping Galaxies, it was Jackanory - James and the Giant Peach. I didn't really like Jackanory because I liked to read to myself, but that one I loved.  Of course.  KW would read fast enough to keep me happy. This is a relief. I knew children's TV brainwashing was to blame somewhere.) Oh, where was I? Dan Dan the Lavatory Man - still the best bit. (Oh, aside from maybe this- see especially 3.50 onwards - brilliant!

Carry On Cleo
It makes The Romans look earnest and historically accurate. And I like the completely unsubtle way of saying that Caesar and Mark Antony were friends every time they appear together: "It's Mark Antony - he's my friend." "Julie!" "Tony!" (Plus MA and Agrippa on killing Caesar: Agrippa: "I wish you hadn't asked me to do it."/ MA: "Why not?"/ Agrippa: "I'm his cousin."/ Mark Antony: "Well, I can't do it, can I?  I'm his friend.") And the oh so backward Britons. (With Boudicca, stone age settlements, dinosaurs, Hengist Horsa and Ethelred the Unready all in a jumble. Who's been reading 1066 And All That? And Ian and Barbara so should have got sold by Marcus and Spencius.)

Carry On Cruising
I was going to say last of the b&w era, but it's in colour. Still is though. Norman Hudis's last script (?) and he seems to have run out of steam. (There seems to be a missing subplot - Liz Fraser gets oddly sidelined). Mind you, anything that lets a smug Kenneth Williams rescue a trembling Sid James from an attractive female ("Who did you say was scared of who?") is amusing in itself. And Kenneth Connor still doing his shy guy routine: "I shall tell her - I'm a simple, plain man, with simple plain feelings... I'm pimply! No...")

Carry On Don't Lose Your Head
Funniest bit: Sid James, to Jim Dale and dancing partner: "Mind if I cut in?"
Jim Dale: "If you must."
They waltz off together. :-D
But well worth £1 just to see Charles Hawtrey sword-fighting as the Duc de Pomme Frites.   I like the asides to camera. I wonder if it was a particular Scarlet Pimpernel film or show they were parodying? And the locket with his mother's teeth is nicely daft.

Carry on Behind
All right, so one of the last ones I was supposedly not watching, but my sister and I used to like this one. We adopted Elke Sommers as a heroine and loved the tomato sauce gag. It is trying too hard to go too far, but amusingly this effort lasts seriously for a few minutes before it's back to caravans, a big dog, a talking Mynah bird and people discovering they're better off with their spouses. Plus, the tomato sauce / blood routine does lead to this little exchange at the hospital:
Prf. Crump: What are you, a vampire? (As the Doctor tastes the 'blood').
Doctor: It's tomato sauce.
Crump: Tomato sauce??!!
Doctor: Well, tomato sauce, tomato ketchup, what's the difference?
Nurse: 2p per bottle.

And I remembered there being a sweet twist to the Joan Sims and Peter Butterworth characters, but it's a lovely scene and also builds on Carry On expectations and subverts them. (Joan Sims is relegated to not only being a nagging wife, but a nagging mother-in-law and Peter Butterworth is doing his usual turn of wandering around the edges of the film as the tramp-like, money-grasping shifty odd-job man.) JS at one points explains that she left her husband because he was too coarse and scruffy but when they meet we find he's been scrimping and saving and living like this to save up and be worthy to take her back. I'll try and do the exchange, because you don't really want to have to watch the film (though Elke Sommers did indeed manage to redeem a tacky, tacky part and it's even got a long-haired be-flared Sam Kelly, which pleased me lots).
PB: Look! (Showing her his bank book)
JS: £20,000! I don't believe it!
PB: They won't write it in if you don't put it in.
JS: But how?
PB: I scrimped and saved for ten years. And then last year I won the football pools.
JS: How much?
PB: Nineteen thousand, nine hundred and fifty pounds.
And later, when a lot of holes (suspiciously neatly dug holes, I'd add!) appear, catapault her into his arms.  JS: What just happened?
PB: (joyfully, finally getting the girl after 14 or so Carry on films): Who cares?
Daft, but because they're both first and foremost good actors, it really comes across with depth.

Carry On Abroad
This one's bizarre, but it has a good beginning and the bit with the telephones is priceless - the hotel is not yet finished and everyone rings Peter Butterworth's Pepe to complain. He gives up and patches them into each other and it's very funny. By and large I'd say, it's most worth seeing if you like Peter Butterworth as this one's his film. He gets to pretend to be several different hotel staff, do the phones thing and spend about 20 minutes trying to single-handledly stop the hotel from falling down while everyone else is drunk. And he's very, very good at that sort of thing.

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... Oh, and while we still are talking about Screaming: Not only did I borrow Jon Pertwee's bit (and "It's worse than rabbits!") for The Engineer's Thumb, I'd had it in mind for some time.

Yes! I think maybe I do still qualify as marginally saner than someone... I'll have to go reread that, then. (Any old excuse!)

"Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me!"

Ah, Carry Ons...I used to watch them all the time as a kid, and it was usually the dodgier later ones that seemed to get repeated on TV in those days. Although I sort of built up a familiarity with all of them almost by osmosis via those clip-shows they used to have on all the time; "What a Carry On" etc.

It's only in later years that I've come to realise a) how much risque humour went straight over my head as a wee nipper, and b) just how good some of them are. I think Screaming and Cleo may be the pick of the crop, for me, although I do like Up the Khyber rather a lot. I am in sort of quiet awe of Kenneth Williams in most things I see him in, actually.

Yes, even the later ones have redeeming features. (Except the very last 2). I'd be in agreement with your top 3, except for loving Cabby and Cowboy quite unreasonably. ;-) KW is great. It's just as a 9/10 year old I was really attached to him in the films. (As in the film's no good if he's not in it / playing an undead evil scientist who gets killed at the end / wearing a moustache and putting on a funny accent. So THANK YOU YouTube, because I knew it must be something like that!!!)

I've seen Screaming, Cleo and Abroad recently and I know I've seen Don't Lose Your Head, but I don't remember the other two. I really enjoyed Screaming and Cleo was great fun although my brain got a bit stuck on Cleopatra being 'er off of Corrie!

Heh. She's one of the female drivres in Cabby as well, you know. Being terribly posh...

Mind you, if you have too much imagination, what happens is actually the same as the oh-so-shocking death in Spooks 1.2. - Oh, yuck yuck yuck. If I were ever to make a list of horrible ways to die, that would be at the top.

Doctor: Well, tomato sauce, tomato ketchup, what's the difference?
Nurse: 2p per bottle.

Heeee!!!

Yes, although thankfully no one yells out "Frying tonight!" in Spooks. And technically he was dead already...

I know - it's a great because a) obvious joke - it's not blood, it's tomato sauce; then the doctor thinks Crump is being snobbish at him for saying 'sauce' and the nurse chips in with the bit of complete pragmatism. (In far less words than it took me to say it.)

And I love the odd job man taking 10 years to save £50... (My parents were just married and living on £5 a week in 1975, when this was made - how far away does that make it all seem?)

You mean, like...head...chip pan...?? I'll go on record and say that that was possibly the most horrible thing I'd ever seen in a 9-10pm BBC drama up to that point; it certainly underlined the fact that the Spooks were playing for keeps...

*nods* I love Spooks. I mean, more for twistiness and sarcasm than that, but still... And even though some of the deaths since have been possibly more shocking, nobody can forget the chip fat incident!! :-D

I'm reading a book about Julius Caesar, and there's this bit in the section about Caesar in fiction:

More recently there have been a number of cinematic portrayals of Caesar, of which probably the most memorable comes from Rex Harrison's performance in Cleopatra (1963). [footnote: For British readers Kenneth Williams' portrayal of Caesar in Carry on Cleo (1964) - with the immortal line 'Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me.' - may be equally memorable, if not for reasons of historical accuracy.]

*helpless laughter*

What do they mean, not for reasons of historical accuracy? Are they casting doubt on the squre wheels, dinosaurs, and Marcus & Spencius...?

Peter Butterworth is definitely the best thing about Carry On Abroad. He's hilarious. Poor Pepe!

Don't Lose Your Head is one of my favourites. I love Sid James's Sir Rodney Ffing ("with two 'f's") as the Black Fingernail. And, of course, Peter Gilmore as Robbespiere. I think, in general, the historical films are my favourites.

Carry On Cleo...again, just so hysterically funny. Marcus and Spencius! And I love Kenneth Connor going back with that potion and it totally changing his marriage.

I love Marcius and Spencius. It's one of my favourite Carry On things, I don't know quite why. :-)

And, wow, I woke up to all these comments on my old Carry on entries! :lol:

"I only ask, because your butler told us you were dead!"

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