Before I begin, readers will notice the strange leap from Carry On Teacher of the 50s to this far later entry in the Carry On canon. They may also have noticed that I haven’t updated this section of the Vervoid since about 2003 when I did the original trio of Carry On reviews, despite the fact that since then I’ve had three other sections opened elsewhere on the site which have been updated to varying degrees since. I’ll come clean and say this now: I went off the Carry On films a long while ago. To be perfectly honest, I’m not even madly keen on them now. I used to love them but since about 2003 my tastes in comedy have altered several times to the extent that I haven’t really bothered to watch one of my Carry On DVDs in at least a year, probably more than that. These films do, after all, have a particular kind of humour (the crashingly unsubtle kind, though nowhere near as crude as any teen comedy made during the last decade) and… well, I just went off them. This review in itself will likely be a one-off. You see, today (28^th June) I finished my A Level exams and in a state of exhaustion I staggered back home in the roaring heat, having not eaten anything since 10.30am, and grabbed myself some edibles to munch on. I can’t eat unless I’m watching something so I perused my ever expanding DVD collection, which I care after like a particularly impassioned Avon lady cares for her child. I wanted to watch a comedy but didn’t fancy anything made in b&w and equally I didn’t want to watch anything "high-brow"; I just fancied a laugh, y’know? And my eyes alighted on my dust-ridden Carry On collection. "Why not?" I thought. My brain was (and still is) in a jellified state and a Carry On is just something you don’t really think about, just laugh at. But why on Earth did I choose Carry On Girls, probably one of the worst of the series and certainly a film I haven’t held any affection for in the past? I honestly don’t know. My subconscious just said "I haven’t seen it for a while and Bernard Bresslaw was good in it," so I extracted the box from the shelf with waif-like fingers and slipped the disc into my laptop. There. Perfect comfort viewing. And now I’m going to review it because… again, I don’t know why. I think I just feel like doing something a bit different from my more recent schedules. There’s only so much Captain Scarlet you can watch in a short space of time, after all.

Right, so here we are: Carry On Girls. It’s the first of the series’ degradation into genuinely tawdry sex comedies, especially coming after my trilogy of Carry On favourites – At Your Convenience, Matron and Abroad. Charles Hawtrey had of course been knocked out of the running after the previous film due to his alcoholism, which automatically gives me an overly-critical eye of the post-Abroad films as old Charlie boy was always my favourite of the regulars ever since I was a kid. Girls was trying to play to a newer audience, one that was more blasé about the subject of sex than the audience of ten years ago, yet is still obviously trying to keep hold of its regular fans by doing all the old gags; silly noises, transvestism, awful puns, Sid’s chuckle etc. It doesn’t come off as badly as, say, Carry On Emmannuelle but it still doesn’t really gel to any great extent.

The first ten minutes or so are quite good, actually. The film is set in a typical dreary British seaside resort (filmed in Brighton), pouring with rain, which elicits some wry laughs for those of us who’ve ever been to one (i.e. practically everybody in this country). Then there’s a boardroom scene where Kenneth Conner, the Mayor of Fircombe, is heading the local planning committee and conversing with Sid James, June Whitfield, a sleeping Arnold Ridley and some dialogue-less extras about the possibility of upcoming social events to try and get more revenue for the community. Sid gets in some typically Sid-like lines here ("Don’t take down ‘knickers’." "Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it, love?" and "It’s the only indoor amusement we’ve got aside from snogging under the bandstand!" are my favourites) and makes you smile a lot. I will admit actually that I always preferred Sid James when he wasn’t playing the lecherous old so-and-so that he’s renowned for playing in this series, as he’s got fantastic comic timing but the pervier aspects of the "Sid persona" tend to be a tad unsettling to a certain extent. It’s this that made Carry On Camping a fairly uncomfortable viewing experience the last time I saw it, as a good third of it is about Sid cheating on his friendly-enough girlfriend and peeking at girls through holes in the shower-room wall. However, when he’s just being a bit cheeky, rather than an out-and-out perv, he’s great. In fact my favourite Sid James Carry On performance is probably Carry On Matron in which he’s playing the weary character type that he played in the otherwise dreadful Bless This House sitcom, though I must admit that the adulterous aspects of the typical Sid persona do have a lot of (surprising) pathos in At Your Convenience. Now, why on Earth did I used to like these films when I didn’t like the main character trait of the most frequent leading man, you ask? It’s a good question, I’ll grant you that, sunshine. I haven’t got a hope in Hell of answering it, though.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. After some pissing dog scenes ("We don’t need your recommendation, thank you!"), we relocate to the hotel owned by Joan Sims, Sid James’s sort-of girlfriend (again) and the story kind of gets going. The core plot – as if you didn’t already know – is that there’s going to be a beauty contest run by Sid, and June Whitfield and her bunch of feminazis want to make sure it fails. And that’s it. The good old fashioned Carry On A to B plot. It’s worked in the past. The problem is that the jokes and, more importantly, the situations in this one aren’t really enough to keep the film going. That’s not to say that it isn’t funny: there’s still some cracking lines in there, most of them given to Sid, Bernie Bresslaw and Kenneth Conner. Admittedly I can’t really think of any off the top of my head but I know that there were some. But in general it’s all a bit tired. The double entendres are turning into single entendres. How the Hell did they get away with the name Miss Easy Rider? Well, they didn’t really; I think this was the first of the series to get upped a certificate on release. Strangely, for a film about a beauty contest, there’s not really an inordinate amount of leering at the girls – the cameraman seems fixated on Barbara Windor’s backside for the most part, leaving the rest of them draped around the set doing very little. However, there’s also a joke about a donkey using the carpet as a lavatory, complete with disgusting sound effects, which is pretty dire.

To be honest, everything wrong with the film can be summed up by this one picture here. Yes, it’s Robin Askwith or, as I like to call him, "Oh fuck, it’s Robin Askwith." Before making a name for himself by starring in the four Confessions films, the fish-mouthed cockney gobshite wandered into the Carry On Girls studio and appeared in this film with the single purpose of annoying seventeen levels of Hell out of me. Really, why in the name of St Beryl was the fool ever employed? For anything? He’s got no charisma, he looks like a spanner and I can’t imagine any young cinema-goers thinking of him as sexy. Here he plays a simpering arse of a photographer who goes to pieces when Margaret Nolan takes her clothes off. No offence to Miss Nolan – I’m sure if we’d been on the other side of the camera we’d have been highly appreciative of her finer points (lord knows she’s a terrible actress) – but Askwith is just unwholesomely irritating with his "Oh my God!"s and "Oh no!"s and what have you. It’s some breasts and pubic hair, you repugnant prat of an individual! Get over it! I know, it’s the character he’s playing, but I still loathe the guy with a passion. To my complete unsurprise he hardly did anything after the 70s (one of his last films is called Let’s Get Laid). Almost as annoying in this film is "guest star" Jimmy Logan as outrageously camp television personality Cecil Gaybody in a role which the actor in question has stated was his most embarrassing in anything, ever. You can’t fault that. It’s probably not his fault, really, as the character as scripted isn’t wonderful; it’s just that you can easily see Charles Hawtrey reading the lines and making them sparkle like great, big sparkly things, and watching butch sort Jimmy Logan lisping and wrist bending all over the place is groin wrenchingly awful. Apparently the role was originally intended for Kenneth Williams but he was busy doing something else; damn shame as I bet he could have wrought some dignity out of the part.

And, whilst I’m putting the boot in, I’ll rant about my other main complaint with Carry On Girls; the feminism stuff. Earlier I described them as feminazis, an entirely appropriate description. Their plotline is woefully handled thanks to some terrible scripting and casting decisions. To take the former, they just seem hugely unreasonable. Probably comes down to personal opinions but my own is that beauty contests etc. are perfectly all right so long as the girls (or boys) involved don’t feel pressured into taking part; if they’re there because they want to be, then fine. It’s personal choice. If a gal wants to waltz around on a catwalk in a bikini, she should be allowed to. Here the feminist brigade, in denouncing the beauty contest as appallingly sexist in its lording over of the superiority of men (a point further muddled by the fact that one of the judges is a woman and there are clearly a great number of women in the audience), decides to attack everybody involved in it. So their tactics are to assault the models with itching power, sneezing powder, slippery liquid (so that, presumably, the girls can fall over and break their limbs) and then, in a particularly unpleasant bit, set the sprinklers off and lob soil and dirt all over them. Not only are they raving misandrics (which isn’t a prerequisite for a real budding feminist), they’re also a group of self-righteous prudes with overtly fascist leanings. It doesn’t help that they’re also so stereotypically presented; the majority of them are hags well past their prime and who’d never have been picked to take part in a beauty contest at any point in their lives, and of course the second-in-charge is a butch lesbian who dresses as a man. It’s simply an ill considered and badly realised plotline that doesn’t really have much of a place in the Carry On world anyway; the films have never cared about the "ethical" side of things before now. Besides, Valerie Leon appears in her knickers. That’s something to cherish right there. I’ve probably destroyed my entire argument there but, hey, Valerie Leon’s sexy, isn’t she? Strange how they got her to play a mousy type for most of the film. Even stranger that she’s dubbed by June Whitfield throughout. I mean, why?

Still, since we’re moving onto the good stuff, it’s time to say that the majority of the cast are reliably great. Despite my earlier comments on Sid James, he’s top notch here especially as the lechery, perhaps strangely, is kept to a minimum. A good move there as Sid really was looking a tad old and wrinkly by this point and seeing him persistently trying to get his hands on a bevy of young beauties was looking increasingly dodgy as the years went by. Bernard Bresslaw is particularly funny here as the cynical innocent roped into the malarkey by Sid and pulls off what ought to be another tired "man dressed in woman’s clothing – ho ho ho" set piece and makes it warmly comforting. Barbara Windsor is quite good even if I’ve never understood why she was always regarded as the ideal Carry On girl – she’s certainly never come close to turning me on – and displays her usual chemistry with the other regulars. In fact, I love the scene where Peter Butterworth’s pervy old sea major pinches her backside in the lift, whereupon she turns round and starts pinching his, much to his loud consternation; it’s a great turning-the-tables moment which perfectly displays a sense of sexual equality in a far better and, more importantly, funnier way than the entire June Whitfield plotline. Butterworth himself, along with Joan Sims, has very little to do but does whatever’s given rather well. David Lodge and Patsy Rowlands give able support and the latter in particular gets some lovely bits of comic business to do, mainly by looking miserable and bored to tears. Kenneth Conner as the nervous and squirming Mayor of Fircombe probably leaves the biggest impression and gives the funniest performance of the film, the dignified "little man" constantly belittled by circumstance. He gets his trousers torn off twice and both times it’s funny simply because Conner plays it so well.

Also present is Jack Douglas in his first main Carry On role after some fairly nondescript cameos in Matron and Abroad. I know a lot of people regard him as a bit of a spare part but I really rather like him here. I’ve never quite understood the twitching "Alf" thing and in his other appearances it’s irritating, but here, for some reason, it’s very funny. Probably because he makes lots of silly noises and the moment where he leaps up from behind the desk, smacking his head in the process, and cries "I am the greatest!" reduces me to giggles every time. He’s not perfect - his overplayed reaction to Joan Hickson’s "I want you to get my knickers down!" is irksome – but I like him. His performance gives an interesting element of lunacy not usually present in the Carry Ons, coupled with the happy ending in which Sid James escapes a mob in a motorised go-kart.

I don’t think I’ve anything more to say so I’ll leave it there. Overall, Carry On Girls is definitely one of the weaker entries in the series, featuring a tired script, Robin Askwith (arse!!!) and the infuriating feminist plotline. On the other hand it has some great performances in there, it isn’t entirely devoid of laughs and it’s by no means awful. And any film that gets Valerie Leon out of her clothes is all right by me. Cor blimey. Always did fancy her, and that’s coming from a chap who doesn’t usually go for actresses…

Still, I’ve already used the sexy Leon pic, so here’s a photograph of a naked Kenneth Conner. Enjoy.