Talbot Rothwell’s first Carry On script is a welcome return to form after a couple of duff episodes that halted the reign of screenwriter Norman Hudis. Rothwell’s frothy concoction of a script is based loosely on the stage play Call Me A Cab by Morecambe and Wise writers Dick Hills and Sid Green. Sid James and Hattie Jacques play a couple whose marriage hits the rocks due to Sid’s preference of working as a taxi driver to caring for his wife’s social ambitions. To make matters worse, he owns the Speedy Cabs firm and they live above the fleet’s yard. After yet another anniversary ends in disaster, Hattie decides to set up a rival firm – using her husband’s money which he invests for safe keeping in her bank account but never spends. She calls the company Glam Cabs and employs an all-female, all-gorgeous driving team, including Amanda Barrie as a saucy model who knows her way around both cars and men. Cue a battle of the sexes. In fact, this theme started much earlier in the movie, with Kenneth Conner’s rather good mechanic attempting, poorly, to seduce Liz Fraser’s love-wise charlady. This kind of working place set-up and the corresponding gags wouldn’t be featured again until Carry On at Your Convenience (1971); there's even an over-officious trade union representative. Black and white photography gives the film a quaint nostalgia, as do the already out-of-date-looking Speedy Cabs. Plenty of cheerful amusement although the resolution is longwinded. While Carry On Cabby is plenty cheeky, it isn’t as smutty as later additions and there is an undercurrent of seriousness to the domestic arrangements even if characters and their actions must be nominally silly to serve the plot.
While filming Cabby, Sid James accepted the role of Sid Stone in the BBC comedy-drama Taxi! Stone and Cabby’s Charlie Hawkins are extremely similar.
I’ve waited 52 years to see this western and unfortunately it ended up being a disappointing watch.
William Holden and Ernest Borgnine team up again after their exploits in the wonderful TheWildBunch. Holden’s family are massacred by a bunch of renegade Indians led by two white men, and Holden goes off in search of revenge. He recruits a band of men from the local prison to help him. Taking the plots from ReturnOfTheSeven and TheDirtyDozen, director Daniel Mann fails to bring to this western the same style he did so well with the Bond spoof OurManFlint. The film is in urgent need of WildBunch action and blood letting but all we really get is old fashioned battles with lots of explosions and horse falls. The ending falls flat as a pancake, I suppose it was meant to have some biblical meaning of forgiveness, but up to then it had little substance to say it was going that way. It was nice to see Jorge Martínez de Hoyos from TheMagnificentSeven in a big role, now that was a proper western.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
@CoolHandBond I saw The Revengers when I was a teenager [late night TV] and like you, I kept expecting a sort of Wild Bunch impersonation, but it never happens. A very ordinary western.
Halliwell’s rates this latter day entry into the Carry On series quite highly. In fact, for the opening half, it isn’t too bad, but gradually the good ideas run out as we become familiar with the relationship dynamics between all the various couples who interact around Kenneth Connor’s muddy-looking caravan site. Filming in late March doesn’t lend a spring air to any kind of British movie and there are many ridiculous scenes with girls prancing around in bikinis when the weather is clearly overcast and the temperature hovering around the low centigrade figures. At the climax there is a thunderstorm which floods the camp, an ending that seems almost entirely appropriate.
So, what do we have? In terms of comedy, the usual domestic one-twos and a clutch of jokes which revolve around Elke Sommer’s accent. One thinks Ms Sommer’s role was probably written with Barbara Windsor in mind, but you can’t envisage Babs as a Russian archaeologist, or her tempting Kenny Williams into bed. There is a distinct shine to this uncommon pairing, although the script swings between Kenneth trying to be his usual prissy self and being an unusually earthy know-all. The former wins out, but Ms Sommer ensures she gets her man the earthy way. Bernard Bresslaw and Patsy Rowlands are the best turn, playing a husband and wife both hen-pecked by her mother [Joan Sims]. Ian Lavender and Adrienna Posta make Carry On debuts as a couple hen pecked by their Irish wolfhound. Windsor Davies and Jack Douglas are married men on a fishing trip – fishing for girls, that is. A talking mynah bird provides some amusement. The scenarios are overfamiliar.
The long cast list mostly features actors from television shows. The only other Carry On regular is Peter Butterworth, playing a hopeless handyman. Everything ends well for everybody. The title – along with Regardless the least informative title of the series – is explained towards the end of the movie. This was the first Carry On for thirteen years and twenty films not to be written by Talbot Rothwell and initially it doesn’t seem to hurt, and may even be an improvement on recent efforts, but Dave Freeman’s screenplay runs out of steam. Freeman, who wrote extensively for the sitcom Bless This House, might have fared better had that show’s star Sid James been slated to appear. What he writes instead simply ends up repeating jokes he’s already used, via a series of contrived confusions: in the showers, with the dog, with a stripper, with a tent, with the mynah bird, with a doctor, with Russian accents… it’s all confusion, confusion, confusion and repetition, repetition, repetition and no fun, fun, fun.
Car mechanic Mickey Rooney borrows twenty dollars from the cash register to take out a good time gal played by James Cagney’s sister Jeanne. Intending to repay it a few days later before the register is audited, he is forced into a decision to buy a watch purchased on credit and pawn it so he can repay the money early as the auditing has been brought forward from its usual day. Things start to spiral out of control as the original twenty dollars increases to hundreds and then thousands of dollars and potential murder.
This is a good piece of film noir, a morality tale with some decent performances (especially Peter Lorre as an arcade owner).
Certainly worth watching.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
William Holden stars as Eric Erickson, an American born Swedish oil executive, who is coerced by Allied Intelligence (Office of Strategic Services - OSS) to become a Nazi sympathizer and work with them to build an oil refinery in Sweden.
After winning their trust, Erickson makes repeated visits to Germany to inspect their synthetic oil plants and provides detailed information about these facilities to the Allies, which is later used in bombing campaigns against them. He is aided in his espionage operations by Marianne Möllendorf (Lilli Palmer), a fellow spy with whom he develops a romantic relationship.
Though initially reluctant, Erickson sees the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and fully commits to the mission on moral grounds.
Based on the novel written by Alexander Klein on the real-life exploits of Eric Erickson, 'The Counterfeit Traitor' is a tense espionage thriller with excellent acting, beautiful locations and a great story.
Comments
She's great in the films and displays some very solid comedic chops.
CARRY ON CABBY (1963)
Talbot Rothwell’s first Carry On script is a welcome return to form after a couple of duff episodes that halted the reign of screenwriter Norman Hudis. Rothwell’s frothy concoction of a script is based loosely on the stage play Call Me A Cab by Morecambe and Wise writers Dick Hills and Sid Green. Sid James and Hattie Jacques play a couple whose marriage hits the rocks due to Sid’s preference of working as a taxi driver to caring for his wife’s social ambitions. To make matters worse, he owns the Speedy Cabs firm and they live above the fleet’s yard. After yet another anniversary ends in disaster, Hattie decides to set up a rival firm – using her husband’s money which he invests for safe keeping in her bank account but never spends. She calls the company Glam Cabs and employs an all-female, all-gorgeous driving team, including Amanda Barrie as a saucy model who knows her way around both cars and men. Cue a battle of the sexes. In fact, this theme started much earlier in the movie, with Kenneth Conner’s rather good mechanic attempting, poorly, to seduce Liz Fraser’s love-wise charlady. This kind of working place set-up and the corresponding gags wouldn’t be featured again until Carry On at Your Convenience (1971); there's even an over-officious trade union representative. Black and white photography gives the film a quaint nostalgia, as do the already out-of-date-looking Speedy Cabs. Plenty of cheerful amusement although the resolution is longwinded. While Carry On Cabby is plenty cheeky, it isn’t as smutty as later additions and there is an undercurrent of seriousness to the domestic arrangements even if characters and their actions must be nominally silly to serve the plot.
While filming Cabby, Sid James accepted the role of Sid Stone in the BBC comedy-drama Taxi! Stone and Cabby’s Charlie Hawkins are extremely similar.
THE REVENGERS (1972)
I’ve waited 52 years to see this western and unfortunately it ended up being a disappointing watch.
William Holden and Ernest Borgnine team up again after their exploits in the wonderful The Wild Bunch. Holden’s family are massacred by a bunch of renegade Indians led by two white men, and Holden goes off in search of revenge. He recruits a band of men from the local prison to help him. Taking the plots from Return Of The Seven and The Dirty Dozen, director Daniel Mann fails to bring to this western the same style he did so well with the Bond spoof Our Man Flint. The film is in urgent need of Wild Bunch action and blood letting but all we really get is old fashioned battles with lots of explosions and horse falls. The ending falls flat as a pancake, I suppose it was meant to have some biblical meaning of forgiveness, but up to then it had little substance to say it was going that way. It was nice to see Jorge Martínez de Hoyos from The Magnificent Seven in a big role, now that was a proper western.
@CoolHandBond I saw The Revengers when I was a teenager [late night TV] and like you, I kept expecting a sort of Wild Bunch impersonation, but it never happens. A very ordinary western.
Never seen that one, and now never will. Thanks for that.
Chris, having a great reading your "Carry On " reviews, please keep them ... er, coming.
And as if by magic .....
CARRY ON BEHIND (1975)
Halliwell’s rates this latter day entry into the Carry On series quite highly. In fact, for the opening half, it isn’t too bad, but gradually the good ideas run out as we become familiar with the relationship dynamics between all the various couples who interact around Kenneth Connor’s muddy-looking caravan site. Filming in late March doesn’t lend a spring air to any kind of British movie and there are many ridiculous scenes with girls prancing around in bikinis when the weather is clearly overcast and the temperature hovering around the low centigrade figures. At the climax there is a thunderstorm which floods the camp, an ending that seems almost entirely appropriate.
So, what do we have? In terms of comedy, the usual domestic one-twos and a clutch of jokes which revolve around Elke Sommer’s accent. One thinks Ms Sommer’s role was probably written with Barbara Windsor in mind, but you can’t envisage Babs as a Russian archaeologist, or her tempting Kenny Williams into bed. There is a distinct shine to this uncommon pairing, although the script swings between Kenneth trying to be his usual prissy self and being an unusually earthy know-all. The former wins out, but Ms Sommer ensures she gets her man the earthy way. Bernard Bresslaw and Patsy Rowlands are the best turn, playing a husband and wife both hen-pecked by her mother [Joan Sims]. Ian Lavender and Adrienna Posta make Carry On debuts as a couple hen pecked by their Irish wolfhound. Windsor Davies and Jack Douglas are married men on a fishing trip – fishing for girls, that is. A talking mynah bird provides some amusement. The scenarios are overfamiliar.
The long cast list mostly features actors from television shows. The only other Carry On regular is Peter Butterworth, playing a hopeless handyman. Everything ends well for everybody. The title – along with Regardless the least informative title of the series – is explained towards the end of the movie. This was the first Carry On for thirteen years and twenty films not to be written by Talbot Rothwell and initially it doesn’t seem to hurt, and may even be an improvement on recent efforts, but Dave Freeman’s screenplay runs out of steam. Freeman, who wrote extensively for the sitcom Bless This House, might have fared better had that show’s star Sid James been slated to appear. What he writes instead simply ends up repeating jokes he’s already used, via a series of contrived confusions: in the showers, with the dog, with a stripper, with a tent, with the mynah bird, with a doctor, with Russian accents… it’s all confusion, confusion, confusion and repetition, repetition, repetition and no fun, fun, fun.
Everybody tries, but it’s not enough.
QUICKSAND (1950)
Car mechanic Mickey Rooney borrows twenty dollars from the cash register to take out a good time gal played by James Cagney’s sister Jeanne. Intending to repay it a few days later before the register is audited, he is forced into a decision to buy a watch purchased on credit and pawn it so he can repay the money early as the auditing has been brought forward from its usual day. Things start to spiral out of control as the original twenty dollars increases to hundreds and then thousands of dollars and potential murder.
This is a good piece of film noir, a morality tale with some decent performances (especially Peter Lorre as an arcade owner).
Certainly worth watching.
THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962)
William Holden stars as Eric Erickson, an American born Swedish oil executive, who is coerced by Allied Intelligence (Office of Strategic Services - OSS) to become a Nazi sympathizer and work with them to build an oil refinery in Sweden.
After winning their trust, Erickson makes repeated visits to Germany to inspect their synthetic oil plants and provides detailed information about these facilities to the Allies, which is later used in bombing campaigns against them. He is aided in his espionage operations by Marianne Möllendorf (Lilli Palmer), a fellow spy with whom he develops a romantic relationship.
Though initially reluctant, Erickson sees the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and fully commits to the mission on moral grounds.
Based on the novel written by Alexander Klein on the real-life exploits of Eric Erickson, 'The Counterfeit Traitor' is a tense espionage thriller with excellent acting, beautiful locations and a great story.
A hidden gem.