Entertainment For Lively Minds
Ooh, Matron!
Posted by Gatz on 22 December 2009 - 10:08pm.
I always try to find time to watch a few favourite old films over Christmas and here is my Christmas confession. I love the Carry On films and have Screaming, Spying and Cleo lined up for the holidays.
They may be ropey, dated, and sometimes offensive but they are generally a joy to re-watch. Not all of them obviously, as anyone who has had the misfortune to see Carry On England or Carry On Eammuelle will tell you, but how many men can honestly say that they didn't break into a grin and attempt a throaty 'hyah, hyah, hyah' laugh when they saw the photo of Sid above?
Let's be having you (as the actress etc ...) Favourite clips, lines, opinions for or against?
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"Ta daddy... ta daddy....TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
Ah, you can't beat the 68-73 vintage. Again Doctor, Girls, Matron, Abroad, Loving, At Your Convenience - the latter two featuring my favourite Carry On 'guest' actor, Richard O'Callaghan, and perhaps my faves of the lot.
I agree
The pastiches, like Screaming, Spying and Cleo now I come to think of it, tend to get the kudos but I love the ones made around the time I was born (1967) which show a naughty but prelapsarian Britain.
Abroad is a particular favourite ('Miss Plunkett! You're squashing my itinerary!') I might have to add it to the Christmas playlist.
At Your Convenience
also manages the astonishing trick of a genuinely touching thwarted romance between Joan Sim and Sid James. I remember seeing it in my early teens and starting to get a slight idea of what adulthood may actually be like.
Aside from that, the works outing on Brighton Pier is a camp delight and the remarkably vitrolic level of politicised anti-union rhetoric comes as a strange surprise.
Without getting too pompous, I think they're genuine social documents.
Along with On the Buses (a sort of brutal psycho-sexual nightmare which Lars Von Trier would quail at) and the Steptoe movies (added misery and bleakness. Utterly despondent) the films reveal more about where we've came from than any number of academic studies.
Can I also recommend The Best Legs in the Business with Reg Varney? A festive favourite for some reason and bleaker than a burning orphan.
Sitcom Spin-offs
I often tend to enjoy the movie spin-offs of those you mentioned (both Steptoe's bleak but equally good, and would add 'Please Sir!' to the list) more than the series they sprang from.
On 'Convenience' - Kenneth Cope's battleaxe mum almost steals the film.
I am wondering how long it takes for thread to descend to debating the 'acting' talents of, hmm, Margaret Nolan, Valerie Leon, Imogen Hassall, etc... :-)
Thank God!
Its not just me!
I will happily sit through any "big screen" version of any 70's sitcom. Even Are You Being Served. The one where they went to Spain. I think Mrs Slocombes pussy got spit roasted.
I may have made that up.
Mind Your Language was like watching Nick Griffins psyche piped directly onscreen but at least put racism out there so it could be recognised and despised.
There is something remarkably evocative about those films though. Kia Ora in plastic cups, that big germ slide thing, local ads in the cinema, smoking on one side of the cinema only and, usually, no-one else there except you. Dissapointed and deeply alienated.
With you on most things
but 'that big germ slide thing'?
Re: How long ....
You're fogetting Fenella Fielding in that red dress in ... Screaming. No picture as I'm at work, but I'm most of us remember.
The Carry On gals...
Well, I shall out myself as a female member of the Massive, so perhaps I shouldn't necessarily be recalling Fenella in her red dress :-). Funnily enough, there'd be at least 10 I'd watch before Screaming, but it is (really) a bit like choosing your favourite Beatles song -...almost impossible. Just a pleasure to watch that core cast do what they do, in whatever guise.
Not pompous at all
The quotidian and the prosaic is always so much more revealing than any number of more worthy attempts to document the time.
On the Buses (particularly the movies spin-offs) are horrendously bleak pieces of work when you look at them now. They manage to give a genuine shudder to the early 70's, with Stan (how old was he supposed to be,anyway?) at home with his mum, Olive and his brother-in-law.
And if future historians have any sense, these are the things that they will dig out of the archive to pore over. I'd even include the awful Mind Your Language in that, as that says huge amounts about the culture we lived in at the time. Steptoe is, I think, rather less time-reliant. The socially ambitious Harold could be afrom any time at all.
Ahh, Convenience, the quintessential Carry On
Apparantly it was a flop upon release....
Here's Sid doing what he did best
An obvious choice...
The bit I like starts at 4.09...
The pastiches...
One thing I love about the historical Carry On's (oh no, forgot 'Don't Lose Your Head' *that* might be my favourite... or 'Henry'... or 'Khyber'... aarghh) is the production values. These films were legendarily made for peanuts and I guess borrowed sets sitting idle but it was that attention to detail that makes them so great. On the other hand, I absolutely love the 'cravats 'n' hotpants' era circa '70/'71. A great snapshot of that time.
Oh, so many...
I love Carry On Screaming ('Frying Tonight!'), but must be perverse in loving Carry On Dick, a gem amongst the late period descent into diminishing returns like Carry On Behind and Carry On England (ugh.)
My faves (in no real order) are:
Dick
Screaming
Don't Lose Your Head
Khyber
Abroad
But I love many of the others.
Infamy, infamy
they've all got it in for me.
Age
shall not wither its power...
Obscure Carry On fact
Jim Dale penned the lyrics to The Seekers' Georgy Girl
I bought
the complete DVD set in Tesco for £45 about 3 weeks ago, Its alsop got loads of extras, inucluding the ill fated TV series...I shall be breaking it out over Christmas (and no, that wasn't a euphemism...)
Carry on ON THEBUSES
In the same comedy vain as the Carry Ons we love taking a trip down memory lane here at the ON THE BUSES fan club
By 1971 the show was a firm favorite across the nation and was watched globally by audiences of 22 million.
The series was to reflect the lives of the working classes of the time and this was part of the formula for its success. The show ended up being exported to 38 countries around the world and is still being given re-runs on TV to this day. You can watch all 3 movies over the festive season on ITV3
DING DING
Steve
ON THE BUSES
http://www.onthebusesfanclub.com/
Nostalgia Never goes out of fashion
I'm not sure I like them
in the quite the same way you like them Steve but good for you anyway.
I, and I'm not proud of this, watched all three of them, in a row, one Christmas slumped in a red wine stupor barely able to comprehend what i was seeing.
I began to feel like Syd Barrett singing JugBand Blues. "What exactly is a joke?".
What was funny about what that sweaty man just said?
Why are they humiliating that woman with learning difficulties?
Isn't that man just a leering sex pest?
That one looks like Hitler. Why?
It's not so much nostalgia as an introduction to a wide range of psychiatric disorders.
It's watchable in the same way as a tragic accident. You want to look away but you just can't.
It was an ITV sit-com
and their record is hardly illustrious (Curry & Chips, On The Buses, Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language etc).
I actually think these are quite amusing, but theres an awful lot of whats now recognised as 'un-PC' in them
Although, in fairness it was in the 1970s and the attitudes/language portrayed was prevelant at the time, and no-one (in general) thought anything of it.
You could take just about any 1970s sit-com and find some fault with it when examined against todays more knowing, wider society (can I see multi-cultural?)
Strawberry mousse, strawberry mousse!
I think the Carry Ons have stood the test of time because they have so many good comic actors.
I love Peter Butterworth's reactions in this scene from Carry On Up the Khyber - panicking amid the gunfire as everyone else is determined to show a stiff upper lip.
And Jack Douglas' twitching always makes me smile. This is from Carry on Abroad (Watneys Red Barrel and all)
"Have you ever tried to milk a gnat?"
It's easy to forget how successful the Carry Ons were in the pre-video/2-channel TV days - "Carry On Nurse" in 1959 was the 2nd-biggest movie in the UK that year, only beaten by "Ben Hur" (and the first "On The Buses" movie was the biggest hit of it's year bar none, even with a Bond film on release!) In fact, the hospital-set films were always the most successful, hence there being so many of them... "Convenience" is the only Carry On not to make a profit at the box-office, it's assumed because it's anti-union stance put off the series' core working-class audience.
The Carry Ons can be broadly split into 3 "periods" - sitcoms (1958-63), parodies (1963-68), and seaside postcards (1969 onwards.) Like most, it's the mid-period I prefer, and they certainly stand the most repeat viewing, but if I'm in the right mood on the right day, the later innuendo-laden films can have me roaring like a drain.
My own favourite exchange is from one of the later hospital-based ones (Matron?), and also speaks volumes about the time it was made, as it wouldn't work today at all:
Doctor (Terry Scott): Ah, Mrs. Jones, I have some good news for you!
Female patient: Oh, it's Miss Jones, actually...
Doctor: Oh, Miss Jones, I have some bad news for you...
Carry on Dick
"It can't be the woodsman, he hasn't got a mark on his chopper"
Class.
When/which channel is Screaming on?
Apologies if my original post misled
I will be dipping into the pile of Sun promo Carry On DVDs I have picked up from charity shops over the years.
As a Kid
I loved the Carry Ons but as you get older you start to get more of the jokes. The cornier the better for me.
Top 5
Carry On Camping
Carry On Cleo
Carry On Follow that Camel
Carry On Don't Lose Your Head
Carry On Spying
Carry On trivia
The pregnant woman is the mother of Charlotte Hatherley, late of Ash.
Didn't know that...
The only CO-related trivia that comes to mind at the moment is that Richard O'Callaghan (of Bertram Muffett/Lewis Boggs infamy) is the son of Patricia Hayes. Oh, and Anna Karen is a non-speaking guest at the 'Loving' wedding reception bunfight. (Elsewhere in the same film, of course, Mike Grady keeps popping up, oo-er, with his girlfriend in various compromising positions...) Oh, and Margaret Nolan ("I bet she's a good swimmer") and Marianne Stone ("What do you call that collar") were memorable additions to the cast of 'A Hard Day's Night'. Anymore?
Trivia - the final movie
The last movie with the original/classic cast was going to be "Carry On Dallas", in the wake of the "Who shot JR?" brouhaha in 1980. It was to centre around the adventures of the Screwing oil tycoons, with Kenneth Williams as RU Screwing. Having been advised they'd have to change the name of the movie to avoid being sued, and the name of the family to avoid an adult certificate, it was shelved, though it did get to a final script stage.
That looks like a lovely pear....
..."you took the words right out of my mouth" a one-liner given to a later "serious actor" Peter Gilmore.
What's happened to that new Carry On they were making?
Wasn't it meant to have Shaun Williamson and Shane Richie in it? It's all gone rather quiet.
But that's probably a good thing. The old Carry Ons are marvellous, but any update always ends in disaster.
There are a few lesser
There are a few lesser entries ('oooeeerr Mrs') in the series ('Constable' and 'Regardless' are a bit ponderous) but otherwise.....they're brilliant aren't they?
And try finding a better produced film about the French Foreign Legion, National Service or the Wild West!
Remember 'Khyber'?
Sid replying to each of Kenneth's greetings thus:
'And on yours'....'And in yours'....'And up yours'!
My mum worked with Sid James in the theatre and he was exactly the same as his character in the films, always shuffling up to people and imploring them to 'not let on to the wife' about some misdemeanor or other.
Mind you, ten years later on a busy London street, he still recognised my mum and remembered her name.
Has any one seen
the film at the heart of Jonathan Coe's novel 'What a Carve Up"? It starred Sid James, Shirley Eaton and Kenneth Connor. Loved the book and have probably seen the film, but it is lost in the mists of time.
Don't worry
The protagonist of WACU got dragged out well before he got to see the whole film as well.
I forget which film Coe, a serious movie nut, said he had in mind when he wrote the book, but in looking I found this article which he wrote about my own favourite Christmas film (yes, even better than It's a Wonderful Life, which Coe wrongly dismisses as hectoring and hysterical) Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy.
It's a film worth watching for Ricky Fulton's radio station manager alone, who, on hearing a coded message put out on the air by a presenter, ask his secretary to look at his contract. 'Oh, and find out if there's a sanity clause ............ sanity clause.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/06/jonathan-coe-comfort-joy-fors...
Seen it
At the Cinema - God - must have been early eighties. Local Hero had a huge effect on me and so I naturally followed it up with Comfort and Joy. There was an understated magic to Bill Forsyth - and Bill Paterson is always great value.
The film's actually called "What A Carve Up!" too
The novel was named after it.
It hasn't been on telly for yonks, but was one of the BBC's standbys in the days when black & white films were still being shown on BBC1 (Amazon has the DVD, though.)
It's very much a close cousin of the Carry Ons (how could it not be with that cast?) with that old chestnut of a plot, relatives gathered for the reading of a will in an old dark house start getting murdered. Kenneth Connor plays a relative, Sid plays his mate who comes along to see what he might get out of it, and gets to say the title line, followed by that trademark laugh.
DVD
If anyone is really curious HMV have it cheapest http://www.find-dvd.co.uk/dvd/What-A-Carve-Up/1082962.htm
Comfort and Joy
was the one about the Glaswegian ice cream wars?
Would love to see it again.
Thing I remember about it most (apart from Claire Grogan) was the lovely camera work depicting Glasgow in its glory at Twilight.
That's the one
a final carry on
the last surviving old guard (c.1989?)recapture the old magic, thanks to Norbert Smith aka Harry Enfield: