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Carry On Films

Mark Campbell

Publication: June 2005
Extent: 160 pp
Format: A (178 x 111mm)
Price: 4.99
ISBN: 1904048420
EAN: 9781904048428
13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-904048-42-8
Binding: paperback
Market: film
Rights: World
BIC Code:

  • Carry On films are a much-loved British institution
  • The longest running comedy film series in cinema history
  • Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Charles Hawtrey et al have become iconic figures
  • The 31 films are all available on video and DVD and are shown constantly all over the world
  • Spin-offs include books, TV series and theatre plays, and there is still a huge fan interest

Infamy! Infamy! They’ve All Got It In For Me! Beginning with the feel-good conscription caper Carry On Sergeant (1958) and finishing up with the much-maligned sex farce Carry On Emmannuelle (1978), producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas tossed off a record-breaking thirty films, all with that unique ‘naughty but nice’ seaside postcard-style humour. A team of spot-on comedy performers, headed by Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Connor, provided the great unwashed public with brain-achingly corny gags, ridiculous slapstick antics and seminal scenes of mayhem and speeded-up chicanery that would have brought a smile to the most jaded of palates.

The Carry On comedy partnership of Rogers and Thomas (later combined with the wit of scriptwriter Talbot Rothwell) was responsible for many a classic production. From historicals such as Carry On Cleo (1964) and Carry On...Up The Khyber (1968) - the latter quite possibly the funniest film ever made in Wales - to such contemporary rib-ticklers as Carry On Doctor (1967) and - possibly the most famous entry of all, thanks to Barbara Windsor’s elasticised brassiere - the seminal Carry On Camping (1968). The series may have ended in the gutter with Carry On Behind (1975) and Carry On England (1976), but such was the sheer talent on display throughout those twenty years, we can forgive them this small failing. Any genre was up for ridicule - bored with Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)? Try Carry On...Follow That Camel (1967). Fed up with Hammer horror? Turn off the light and shudder at the spine-chilling Carry On Screaming! (1966). Everyone has a personal favourite Carry On film - look up yours in this concise introduction to the whole, extraordinary phenomenon.

What’s in it? Every film examined in detail, with full cast and crew listing, key scenes and dialogue gems, and an informed critique; brief biographies of the major players, TV shows and theatre plays; appendices that include an exhaustive bibliography and an overview of the best Carry On websites around; all rounded off with a fiendish quiz on all things Carry On.

Mark Campbell is theatre critic for The Kentish Times has written for The Independent, Midweek and Crime Time, and is one of the main contributors to the two-volume British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia. He has produced a Pocket Essential on Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and Carry On Films. He is married with two children and lives in Plumstead, South East London.

For a review copy or further information, please contact Chris Burrows PR
on 0161 445 6635 or email chris-burrows@o2.co.uk

Distribution UK: Turnaround, 3 Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Rd, London N22 6TZ.
Pocket Essentials, PO Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ
Tel/Fax 01582 761264         http://www.pocketessentials.co.uk