Loving, At Your Convenience and Regardless
RL has caught up with me with a vengeance, but I'll catch up with some reviews of things what I been watching lately.
I completely forgot about posting the Carry On reviews for the last 3 films I found. I'm sure you must have been devastated. (In fact I'm not sure I have since I got lots of new friends. Erm. Don't run away. Just don't read...)
Two of the dodgier end of the run from the 70s and one from very early on. Here goes:
Carry On Loving
To be honest, much as I liked some bits, this seems a poor rehash of Carry on Cabby, although I love the impressive computer which isn't. Richard O'Callaghan and Jacki Piper play the romantic leads like they've escaped from a Wodehouse novel. (Jacki Piper seems to actually be a Wodehouse heroine in both of these films. In one she's called Sally and in the other Myrtle.) Much fun with the milk bottle tops (it really is social history, isn't it? Aw, for the passing of milk bottle tops and the making of things with them). However, there are three outstanding cameos that make it well worth the watch. Charles Hawtrey (as ever) as the private detective Hattie Jacques forgets to tell to stop trailing Sid James, which he does in a variety of daft disguises. (Charles Hawtrey + physical comedy + silly disguise = can't go far wrong.) Better still is Joan Hickson, guesting as a dragon of a mother, but she does it with this glint in her eye that suggests she might be having everyone on at the same time. However, she's bettered by Patsy Rowland's even more impressive turn as Kenneth William's housekeeper. Transforming from mouse to attractive woman seems to be her general purpose, but in this she goes from anaemic to vamp and her ruining KW's date with Hattie Jacques is outstanding. If I was into custard pie fights, I'd like the ending more, although I like the very last line "And so they fought happily ever after." Plus, it's another one that tries to be daring for about two minutes and then pretty much gives up and reverts to the Stay With Your current Partner moral, which amuses me. Aw.
Carry on At Your convenience
This also has much to forgive, but I watched it as a child and how can you not love a Carry on set in a toilet factory when you're about 9 or so? But this one has - and for this EVERYTHING is forgiven - Hattie Jacques, Sid James and the betting budgie. There is no withstanding Hattie, Sid and a betting budgie.
Downsides are no less than two losses of trousers/skirts (although the first does prompt the nice line, when Vic Spanner, getting his divided trousers back: "Oh, very useful - that'll come in handy if my legs ever split up!"), but an unexpected plus is Sid James and Joan Sims as next door neighbours on the verge of an affair that never happens. There's the endless innuendo throughout, yada, yada, but then it ends with a suddenly little affecting bit where she doesn't ask him in and they walk down their driveways separated by a fence. Aside from that, it's what you'd expect from a film that revolves around labour relations in a toilet factory, in which the own W C Boggs refuses to do as his son Lewis suggests and expand into bidets (and I'm ashamed to admit that I only just got why the son is called Lewis). But it has a betting budgie...
Carry On Regardless
This one is different to all the other films, in that it's virtually a sketch show. I like it (especially the beginning at the job centre), but a lot of people don't for that reason. (It's one of the early B&W's and between this and Carry On Cruising, it's plain that first scriptwriter Norman Hudis was already running out of steam, so they needed to go find a Talbot Rothwell.) For those who don't know, it's about the Helping Hands agency, who'll tackle any odd job they can. As a result, the cast list is incredible. It's like a complete list of British comedy actors of the time (1961). (Although if anyone can explain to me which one is Nicholas Parsons I'd be grateful, because even reading the cast list on the net, I'm still none the wiser).
The highlight is Kenneth Connor's spy spoof, I have to say, but it's all fun of varying levels. Next up is the bit where Esma Cannon's (it has Esma Cannon in!) filing system goes to pieces and they all end up with random tasks. Kenneth Williams takes a chimp to a tea party at the zoo & also has an unexpectedly emotional translating scene; Joan Sims gets drunk at a wine tasting and Liz Fraser's modelling is amusing, too.
I'm just disturbed because I seem to have imagined a scene in my memory. This is very strange and I'm going to have to watch it again in case I blinked at the wrong moment or not, because I thought that Kenneth Connor and Joan Sims had a scene in which she tries to cheer him up over how useless he is and ends by getting depressed about how useless she is and then they get together. This does not appear to exist. I'm worried. I iamgined Carry on romances???! However, the blink theory may not be so far wrong, because there is a preceding scene (in which they give up smoking and eating sweets together) and they do seem to be together at the end. I'll have to go back and check... Oh, and worth it just for this: Joan Hickson gets to out-Matron Hattie Jacques, who is a mere sister in this. You won't see that again.
On an end note, I was contemplating sexism and Carry on Films again. (I do this a lot. It's because of an A-Level assignment I did once and a B-tec teacher who insisted on us taking a feminist angle, but the more we watched the Carry ons, the less we wanted to.) There's all the innuendo, of course (and the budgie scene above is preceded by Sid James wanting his meals cooked - his wife is neglecting him. But then again, Joan Sims's husband is neglecting her...). I think, in the end, it's hard to really see it that way when the overall philosophy is voiced in the conclusion to Carry on At Your Convenience:
Vic Spanner: Are you going to do what a load of women tell you?
Picketer: Why not? It's what we always do!
And, give Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers their due: their casting is impressive throughout. The female heroines might on occasion be chosen for, erm, obvious reasons, but there's very, very few that aren't genuinely good at the comic acting, even those who turn up for one film only. So a brief cheer for (among the many others): Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims, Liz Fraser, Esma Cannon, Patsy Rowlands, Jacki Piper, Barbara Windsor, June Whitfield, Angela Douglas, Amanda Barrie et al. The men don't stand a chance.
BTW, since I last did this, Peter Rogers has died, so I think that means the Carry Ons finally are at an end. (Thankfully, really, but still.)
I completely forgot about posting the Carry On reviews for the last 3 films I found. I'm sure you must have been devastated. (In fact I'm not sure I have since I got lots of new friends. Erm. Don't run away. Just don't read...)
Two of the dodgier end of the run from the 70s and one from very early on. Here goes:
Carry On Loving
To be honest, much as I liked some bits, this seems a poor rehash of Carry on Cabby, although I love the impressive computer which isn't. Richard O'Callaghan and Jacki Piper play the romantic leads like they've escaped from a Wodehouse novel. (Jacki Piper seems to actually be a Wodehouse heroine in both of these films. In one she's called Sally and in the other Myrtle.) Much fun with the milk bottle tops (it really is social history, isn't it? Aw, for the passing of milk bottle tops and the making of things with them). However, there are three outstanding cameos that make it well worth the watch. Charles Hawtrey (as ever) as the private detective Hattie Jacques forgets to tell to stop trailing Sid James, which he does in a variety of daft disguises. (Charles Hawtrey + physical comedy + silly disguise = can't go far wrong.) Better still is Joan Hickson, guesting as a dragon of a mother, but she does it with this glint in her eye that suggests she might be having everyone on at the same time. However, she's bettered by Patsy Rowland's even more impressive turn as Kenneth William's housekeeper. Transforming from mouse to attractive woman seems to be her general purpose, but in this she goes from anaemic to vamp and her ruining KW's date with Hattie Jacques is outstanding. If I was into custard pie fights, I'd like the ending more, although I like the very last line "And so they fought happily ever after." Plus, it's another one that tries to be daring for about two minutes and then pretty much gives up and reverts to the Stay With Your current Partner moral, which amuses me. Aw.
Carry on At Your convenience
This also has much to forgive, but I watched it as a child and how can you not love a Carry on set in a toilet factory when you're about 9 or so? But this one has - and for this EVERYTHING is forgiven - Hattie Jacques, Sid James and the betting budgie. There is no withstanding Hattie, Sid and a betting budgie.
Downsides are no less than two losses of trousers/skirts (although the first does prompt the nice line, when Vic Spanner, getting his divided trousers back: "Oh, very useful - that'll come in handy if my legs ever split up!"), but an unexpected plus is Sid James and Joan Sims as next door neighbours on the verge of an affair that never happens. There's the endless innuendo throughout, yada, yada, but then it ends with a suddenly little affecting bit where she doesn't ask him in and they walk down their driveways separated by a fence. Aside from that, it's what you'd expect from a film that revolves around labour relations in a toilet factory, in which the own W C Boggs refuses to do as his son Lewis suggests and expand into bidets (and I'm ashamed to admit that I only just got why the son is called Lewis). But it has a betting budgie...
Carry On Regardless
This one is different to all the other films, in that it's virtually a sketch show. I like it (especially the beginning at the job centre), but a lot of people don't for that reason. (It's one of the early B&W's and between this and Carry On Cruising, it's plain that first scriptwriter Norman Hudis was already running out of steam, so they needed to go find a Talbot Rothwell.) For those who don't know, it's about the Helping Hands agency, who'll tackle any odd job they can. As a result, the cast list is incredible. It's like a complete list of British comedy actors of the time (1961). (Although if anyone can explain to me which one is Nicholas Parsons I'd be grateful, because even reading the cast list on the net, I'm still none the wiser).
The highlight is Kenneth Connor's spy spoof, I have to say, but it's all fun of varying levels. Next up is the bit where Esma Cannon's (it has Esma Cannon in!) filing system goes to pieces and they all end up with random tasks. Kenneth Williams takes a chimp to a tea party at the zoo & also has an unexpectedly emotional translating scene; Joan Sims gets drunk at a wine tasting and Liz Fraser's modelling is amusing, too.
I'm just disturbed because I seem to have imagined a scene in my memory. This is very strange and I'm going to have to watch it again in case I blinked at the wrong moment or not, because I thought that Kenneth Connor and Joan Sims had a scene in which she tries to cheer him up over how useless he is and ends by getting depressed about how useless she is and then they get together. This does not appear to exist. I'm worried. I iamgined Carry on romances???! However, the blink theory may not be so far wrong, because there is a preceding scene (in which they give up smoking and eating sweets together) and they do seem to be together at the end. I'll have to go back and check... Oh, and worth it just for this: Joan Hickson gets to out-Matron Hattie Jacques, who is a mere sister in this. You won't see that again.
On an end note, I was contemplating sexism and Carry on Films again. (I do this a lot. It's because of an A-Level assignment I did once and a B-tec teacher who insisted on us taking a feminist angle, but the more we watched the Carry ons, the less we wanted to.) There's all the innuendo, of course (and the budgie scene above is preceded by Sid James wanting his meals cooked - his wife is neglecting him. But then again, Joan Sims's husband is neglecting her...). I think, in the end, it's hard to really see it that way when the overall philosophy is voiced in the conclusion to Carry on At Your Convenience:
Vic Spanner: Are you going to do what a load of women tell you?
Picketer: Why not? It's what we always do!
And, give Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers their due: their casting is impressive throughout. The female heroines might on occasion be chosen for, erm, obvious reasons, but there's very, very few that aren't genuinely good at the comic acting, even those who turn up for one film only. So a brief cheer for (among the many others): Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims, Liz Fraser, Esma Cannon, Patsy Rowlands, Jacki Piper, Barbara Windsor, June Whitfield, Angela Douglas, Amanda Barrie et al. The men don't stand a chance.
BTW, since I last did this, Peter Rogers has died, so I think that means the Carry Ons finally are at an end. (Thankfully, really, but still.)