Carry On Films

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 has written for various publications, including Midweek, Girl About Town, The Bookseller, The Independent, The Dark Side and Infinity; he was one of the main contributors to the exhaustive two-volume encyclopaedia British Crime Writing in 2009. He has written Pocket Essentials about Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and Carry On Films. He was theatre critic for The Kentish Times for eight years. He lives near the river in Crayford, Kent and still hasn't got around to watching all those box sets.