Carry On Jack (1964)

In spite of the welcome return of Kenneth Williams, this is my least favourite film in the series so far. The only other member of the core "Carry On" team present is Charles Hawtrey but that would not be a problem if the script were better. There are some good laughs in the first 20 minutes but, after that, all it produced was an occasional smile. It's surprisingly boring. It doesn't really feel like a "Carry On" film. Bernard Cribbins, Juliet Mills and Cecil Parker were all good but even good actors trying their best can't save a comedy with a bad script. However, Donald Houston, who is good in other films, is horribly over the top and his scenes are fairly painful. On the bright side, this is the eighth film in the series and it's the first one that I didn't like. Every other film series that I have watched with eight or more films produced at least one dud before that!

The Carry On comedy team takes on all those sagas of the British Navy from the Napoleonic Era with Carry On Jack. The title comes from what they used to call British sailors, Jack Tars.Midshipman Albert Poopdecker played by Bernard Cribbins is little thrown out of sea school just to make room and given his first assignment on the HMS Venus a frigate ship of the line. But on his way there Cribbins is waylaid in a cat house where one of the girls played by Juliet Mills steals his uniform and credentials. To make matters worse a press gang comes along and takes Cribbins and Charles Hawtrey.The HMS Venus has a Regency fop for a captain in Kenneth Williams and a first officer in Donald Houston who'd like to take his place. And Juliet Mills on board playing a midshipman named Albert Poopdecker. Her breasts are just super spectacular man boobs if she'd let the crew see them and confirm their beliefs.In the end after surviving a mutiny, a capture by pirates and saving the United Kingdom from invasion, Hawtrey, Cribbins, Mills, and Williams, are national heroes.But it's how they do it that provides loads of laughs in this Carry On classic.

Watched this for the first time since I was 5 or 6 last night and it pre-dates Carry On's golden age and is a bit boring to be honest, okay I was watching it at midnight, but I dozed through the third quarter and considering I was wide awake and laughing out loud through an episode of the IT crowd at 1am the movie has to take some of the blame! The film struggles because most the carry on team are missing! Bernard Cribbins is hog tied by a bad script with few laughs. Not even the usually watchable Keneth Williams can spark much interest. In fact the best moments come from Jim Dale's cameo right at the start of the movie. His hilariously OTT west-country accent and plain charisma steal the movie. No wonder he became the leading man a few years later! Coming from Plymouth I did enjoy the opening scenes. there is a great line about Plymouthians later in the film. Jim Dale does a generic west country accent rather than a proper Plymouthian "Janner" accent which would've been amazing, but he's still the best thing in the movie.To summarise, awful script, few laughs, few carry on stars, too long. Sadly, you can watch the first 15 minutes and then turn it off safe in the knowledge that you've seen the best bits and its going down hill from here... I've given it 2/10 rather than 1/10 for Jim Dale's cameo.If you are looking for Carry On movies at their hilarious best then, try Carry on Sergeant, Cowboy, Cleo, Up the Kyber and Screaming. Pure British comedy gold, Don't let this turkey colour your judgement of a wonderful comedy institution.

This title – intended as a spoof on the troubled MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962) – emerges as the odd one out in the "Carry On" series: not only do we only find just three regular performers here (Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Jim Dale), but there's little typical material; taken on its merits, however, it isn't bad at all and not quite the dud described on the series' official website! Incidentally, the irregular actors are the ones who score best – particularly Bernard Cribbins as an unlikely but likable hero (his character is named Poop-Decker!) and Donald Houston, intense as the villain of the piece; on the feminine side, there's the surprise casting of Juliet Mills (as a floozie who passes off as a midshipman – she sets out in search of her lost love, who turns out to be a pirate leader!). As I said, the "Carry On" stalwarts rather play second-fiddle here (especially Dale, who only gets an inconsequential bit early on), though Williams and Hawtrey manage to assert themselves during the film's latter half (when Houston and cohort Percy Herbert instigate a mutiny and our heroes are cast off at sea).While there are obviously a number of laughs scattered throughout, the general tone is atypically serious: Williams – playing the cowardly skipper of the "Venus", he's given the unsurprisingly ironic name of Captain Fearless – even loses a leg and, consequently, gets twice the "desk job" he so craved for. Also in the cast is Cecil Parker as the long-suffering Admiral who sets the naïve, bumbling Cribbins off on a naval career and reappears at the end to decorate him and his companions (Houston has blackmailed Spanish Governor Patrick Cargill into yielding his entire fleet and is taking it victoriously back to England, when it's unwittingly destroyed by Cribbins & Co. – the ship's loaded cannons go off during a deck-fire, with the deed being taken for a successful attempt on their part to repel the oncoming Spanish invasion!).