Carry On Don't Lose Your Head

The 13th Carry On film produced by Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas is set during the French revolution and is based on the tales of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Sid James plays the noble Rodney Ffing, who after finding out what is happening to the aristocracy of Paris, decides to take a stand and to help as many of his chums escape to England as possible. So he surreptitiously becomes the Black Fingernail fighting to save the nobility from Madame Guillotine, much to the annoyance of the revolutionary leader Citizen Camembert (Kenneth Williams) who does everything he can, along with his deputy Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth), to stop him.

Although it does have a weirdly catchy theme song and an excellent score by the stalwart Carry-on composer Eric Rogers, this addition to the series has the same problem as Jack which came out a few years earlier. Quiet simply, it takes a subject that is completely inappropriate for a lighthearted family film and tries to find laughs and comedy where there is none. The only difference with Jack, even though it was a Carry On in name only, was that Jack was very enjoyable and pretty funny. This film isn’t. I only chuckled once about halfway through the film and the rest of the time I was left scratching my head as to how a Carry On with Sid James could be so muddled and misguided.

It’s just unpleasant and even though it may have seen like a good idea at the time to make a film with the Carry On team set in the times of 18th century tyranny, it sadly just comes across as one of the worst films in the entire series.

3/10 – Calum Roberts