Sergeant, Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless, Cruising, Cabby, Jack, Spying, Cleo, Cowboy, Screaming!, ...Don't Lose Your Head, ... Follow That Camel, Doctor, ... Up the Khyber, Camping, Again Doctor, Up The Jungle, Loving, Henry, At Your Convenience, Matron, Abroad, Girls, Dick, Behind, England, Emmannuelle, Columbus
A package holiday to Spain is ruined when the hotel is only partly-built. This is the Carry On that divides fans and is either a last gasp of greatness or evidence of the series' decline depending on your fancy.
Jim Dale is the accident-prone doctor forced to work in a mission abroad. Sid James is the man who supplies him with a slimming cure with which to get rich. This is probably the best of the Carry On medical films and features Dale going down the stairs on the hospital trolley and Charles Hawtrey getting into drag as Lady Puddleton.
It's the one set in the toilet bowl factory so cue plenty of jokes about feeling flushed and going round the bend. It's also the one with Kenneth Cope as the stupid trades union official leading the workers out like sheep every time he's slighted or fancies a day off. Portraying your core audience as mindless followers isn't the best way to fill cinemas and this was the first big Carry On flop. However, it does have the Brighton sequence when the gang go off for a glorious works outing which sums up working class culture more effectively than Ken Loach's entire body of work.
Lumme, that's Elke Summer as an archaeologist in this not-so-good re-run of Camping. There are some prize moments among the dross, but the series was definitely on the skids at this point.
Feminism arrives in the Carry On world as Sid James refuses to employ female cab drivers and his wife Hattie Jacques starts up a rival company using only dolly birds (and Esma Cannon!). It feels more like an Ealing Comedy than a Carry On but has glorious moments and lines (especially "What! With tweeds!" from Michael Ward)
This is the one that contains one of the most seminal of all British film moments when Barbara Windsor finally loses her bikini top. Most of the gang are present and it also contains Round the Horne's Betty Marsden's best film role as the nagging wife from hell.
With a bunch of sets and props lying around from Cleopatra, it was natural that the budget-conscious producers of the series would want to use them. It's a smashing spoof which contains the classic "Infamy, infamy . . ." possibly the most quoted line in British cinema. Amanda Barrie gives the screen's definitive Cleopatra and if Sid James isn't quite how Marc Antony would have been, that's tough on Marc Antony.
Ill-fated attempt at resurrecting the series with a new generation of comics. Jim Dale is Columbus with a dream of sailing round the world. He's good and so is Julian Clery as the campest gaoler ever. The first half isn't bad but once they reach America it all falls flat. Pity.
Number four and Sid arrives and instantly takes charge. He's a police sergeant whose entire station is down with flu. So he has to take on some trainees: Connor, Hawtrey, Williams and Leslie Phillips. Cue mayhem.
Sid is the Rumpo Kid terrorising the town of Stodge City. When the townsfolk decide to hire someone to clean up the town they don't expect English plumber Jim Dale.
The first in colour, and Sid James is the captain of a cruise ship who desperately wants to get transferred to a better boat. The regulars work well but Esma Cannon steals every scene she's in with some of the most outrageous overacting ever committed to celluloid.
You'll know, if you've read My site that I make an exception for the Carry On films when it comes to chronology. It makes up for all the po-faced serious dramas from the fifties I now have to watch thanks to starting this site. This is an okay entry in the series. It's the last with Sid James, and the last watchable one. Sid is a vicar by day and Dick Turpin by night. Most of the regulars are here (Williams, Windsor, Jacques, Sims, Connor, Bresslaw) and there's even an appearance by former Miss World Eva Reuber-Staier.
With virtually no plot to get in the way, this is a relentless collection of hospital gags and as such is utterly irresistible. Most of the regulars are here and newcomer Frankie Howerd fits right in. Highlights include Charles Hawtrey's phantom pregnancy and Dr Williams' forced operation. Classic stuff from the team.
Sid James is Sir Rodney Ffing, seemingly an English fop but actually he's The Black Fingernail, secretly rescuing aristos from Madam Le Guillotine and Kenneth Williams' Citizen Camembert.
The Carry On team in their first film for Rank (hence the temporary loss of the Carry On prefix in the title) take on the French Revolution and come up smiling.
Sad, sad, sad. The remnants of the Carry On team parody the hit soft porn film with predictably dire results.
The last few tattered remnants of the Carry On team (only Connors has a decent-sized role) take on army life in WWII. Too dreadful for words.
This Foreign Legion tale only got the Carry On label in order to drum up trade. It has most of the series regulars but stars Phil Silvers.
Feminism hits the Carry Ons with Sid trying to put on a beauty contest to promote a fading seaside town. June Whitfield is the counsellor leading the feminist protest. As a film it's a perfect compendium of seventies sexism but you still have to side with Sid.
With the Six Wives of Henry VIII a mega-hit on TV, it was only natural that the Carry On team would take on the Tudor monarch. And who better to play him than Sid!
The Carry Ons' first historical is a tale of seafaring folk. Too few regulars and the presence of a proper plot means this doesn't feel like a Carry On, but it's an enjoyable film.
Sid and Hattie are the bickering couple who run a computer dating agency. More sexually harping than any other Carry On this still has its moments though none are particularly memorable.
Not one of the best, but put the gang in a hospital setting and you can't really go wrong. Sid's a crook trying to nick the hospital's supply of contraceptive pills. Son Kenneth Cope has to drag up as a nurse to get in. Hattie Jacques gets the title role at last, but it's not worth having.
Sergeant was the first, but this is the one that really established the Carry Ons. The regulars are beginning to assemble: Hattie Jacques gets to play matron, and Joan Sims gets to do something rude with a daffodil. It's fun all the way, though without the outrageous camp of the later ones.
The Helping Hands agency is run by Sid James. The agency will do anything for anyone. So Williams gets to walk the chimp and Hawtrey gets to enter the boxing ring. This is the most bitty of all the Carry Ons with no attempt at a plot. Still, if you don't like one sequence, there's always another along in a minute. It only falls apart at the end with a slapstick house decorating/wrecking scene.
"Frying tonight!", "Do you mind if I smoke?" and many other rotten gags fill this glorious spoof of the Hammer films by the Carry On team.
This is the one that started it all. Based on a story by R.F. Delderfield, it actually owes a lot to the popular sitcom The Army Game and includes several of its regulars (Norman Rossington, Charles Hawtrey, William Hartnell). No Sid James yet, but it does have Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques. Highlights include Hawtrey's bayonet practice: "Have at you, varlet!".
Barbara Windsor's first Carry On and she fits right in. It's a parody of James Bond and The Third Man and is one of the finest.
Number three and the most sentimental of the series. Ted Ray is the headmaster of a rough school who is up for promotion to a posh place. The pupils like him so much they decide to play havoc when the school inspectors visit in order to scupper his plans. It's a nice film and we don't see enough of Ted Ray any more since his best work was on TV, but it's not really a Carry On despite the presence of Connor, Hawtrey, Sims, Williams and Jacques.
A parody of all those dreadful jungle epics. An expedition goes in search of a lost child brought up by apes. And who better to portray the rugged heroism and animal sexuality of the Tarzan-like figure than Terry Scott!
Probably the team's finest hour. When Charles Hawtrey gives the game away to Indian natives that the feared Devils in Skirts actually wear underwear, the British army's tenuous grip on India begins to loosen.
(See also Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick and Cor, Blimey!)
