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
