Carry On England
Always at the Ready
Many true devotees of the Carry-on series, consider Carry On England to be the last TRUE Carry-on film. The 28th Carry On film produced by Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas is the last film in the long running series which I would consider to be genuinely good, if you take away the compilation film That’s Carry On, (which doesn’t really count [and please don’t mention Carry On Emmannuelle]) and Carry on Columbus never really felt like a Carry-on as it was 20 years later and apart from Jim Dale none of the regular cast were present.
The story-line starts in 1940 when we were struggling to win the Battle of Britain, so the senior army brass decide to form an experimental mixed-sex anti-aircraft battery, overseen by Sergeant-major ‘Tiger’ Bloomer (Windsor Davies), cast as a continuation of his classic role in It ain’t Half Hot Mum. The rest of the cast are fun to watch as well, though besides Kenneth Connor, there are only a couple of familiar faces from the classic films of the series including Joan Sims, Jack Douglas and Peter Butterworth, who have pretty meagre roles in this movie.
The plot of this film is basically a mixture of the Army Game and a unisex version of Dads’ Army, with a lot of slapstick twists and practical jokes. Whilst Carry on England is fun to watch, I had a major problem with this film. There must be a good twenty five minutes where literally nothing happens which feels very odd. When released it was given an AA certificate in the cinema, the equivalent of a 15 today, however when it was launched on VHS in the 1990’s it was reclassified as a PG, which was probably right. Although there were no real stand-out moments in this film, I still enjoyed it.
6/10 – Calum Roberts