Carry On England (1976)
A
major departure from the slap and tickle style of Carry On
comedy, this film met with a woefully poor reaction from the
public and brought the Carry On's to their lowest
level.
 The sexual frustration and innocent banter had been completely
abandoned and in its place was a more open-minded attitude to
sex.
Sadly lacking is a solid team of old favourites, the film had a
script which replaced the non-stop stream of innuendo of the
Rothwell era with a more smutty, arrogant form of comedy.
Only four regulars were recruited to see through this
resurrection of Carry On Sergeant, Kenneth Connor moves
away from his endearing little man persona to a bombastic,
foul-tempered and obsessive military dictator, running his mixed
anti-aircraft battery of British soldiers like a prison camp.
 Peter Butterworth makes the most of his cocky put-down to the
bumbling Connor, contrasted with his own nervous persona when he
is in assistance to the Brigadier.
Butterworth, all
stiff-upper-lipped mockery and cowardly energy when the bombs
start falling, gives a pleasing if ultimately unsatisfactorily
brief cameo.
Joan Sims is even worse off, presented with the throw-away role
of a domineering lovelorn Private with barely ten lines to
deliver.
Indeed, the only member of the Carry On team to remain
in anything like their usual comic characterisation is the much
welcome Jack Douglas, who twitches and jerks around the barracks
in several inspired scenes of eccentric comedy.
A barking mad, sinisterly grinning and ball-crushing Windsor
Davies (pictured above) manages to inject his manic Sgt Major into the sequences,
along with Peter Jones who steps into the madness for his only
major Carry On contribution.
Besieged by a script full of dreadful puns, Peter struggles
with lavatorial humour and a collection of painfully unfunny
comments, single-handedly having to put across the worse selection
of jokes in Carry On history with conviction.
 Peter Jones and Peter Butterworth quickly depart after
enlivening the latter stages of the film, and it's left to the
over excited Jack Douglas and the barrack boys and girls to save
the day.
The desired effect of this showcasing of self-aware poor gags
is undermined by the fact that the genuine jokes within the film
are not much better.
Clearly there are moments to enjoy and a
clutch of the actors are always worth watching, regardless of the
poor material.
However, in comparison to the classic entries this
is too much change, too soon.
A new team could not be recruited overnight, and even though
the odd familiar face is in the background, the chief exponents of
the romantic ideals and comic lines are those youthful characters
who lack the grasp of innuendo timing.
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