Carry On Girls (1973)

Carry On Girls conjures up the ultimate in wet and windy, bored and mindless seaside communities, Fircombe.

The ever-enterprising Sidney Fiddler (Sid James) dreams up the entertainment-boosting and business-attracting idea of a beauty contest and epitomises the feel-good innuendo and down-to-earth humour of the series.

The film establishes two camps, with Sid’s glorious celebration of innuendo vs Augusta Prodworthy’s (June Whitfield) downtrodden troop of campaigners against “the sexual gratification of a lot of drooling men!”

Sid’s problems start with two curvaceous Hells Angels, Miss Easy Rider and Miss Dawn Brakes. Also in attendance are Peter Potter (Bernard Bresslaw), Britain’s first drag beauty queen, the Admiral (Peter Butterworth), the hotel’s resident frustrated sex maniac and Frederick Bumble (Kenneth Connor), the master of incompetent authority.

There’s an air of staleness about some of the sequences as if all had done this so many times that the fun and games were getting a bit wearing.

Indeed, everybody is showing their age and poor old Sid, still guffawing at every gag and chatting up the contestants, looks clearly older.

By now, Talbot Rothwell was running out of new ways to coyly refer to sex and the nudge, nudge sense of humour was beginning to wane at the box office.

Still, it’s an essential entry in the series.

Sidney Fiddler
Sidney James
Connie Philpotts 
Joan Sims
Mayor Frederick Bumble 
Kenneth Connor
Hope Springs 
Barbara Windsor
Peter Potter 
Bernard Bresslaw
Augusta Prodworthy 
June Whitfield
Admiral 
Peter Butterworth
William 
Jack Douglas
Mildred Bumble 
Patsy Rowlands
Mrs Dukes 
Joan Hickson
Paula Perkins 
Valerie Leon
Dawn Breaks 
Margaret Nolan
Debra 
Sally Geeson
Miss Bangor 
Angela Grant
Ida Downs 
Wendy Richard
Larry Prodworthy
Robin Askwith

Director
Gerald Thomas

Video