Carry On Camping

Dir: Gerald Thomas

1969

****

Carry On Camping was the seventeenth Carry On film of the series and was by far the most popular, indeed, it was the most successful film at the British Box office in 1969 with people reportedly queuing around the block to get into the cinemas. The previous year’s Carry On Up The Khyber was a large production, particularly for a Carry On film. The studio wanted director and producer team Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers to tighten their belts somewhat, and even though they spent more money than intended, this was one of the cheapest Carry On films made but one of the most profitable. This was the franchise at its peak, slap bang in the middle of its twenty year reign. Pretty much the whole team are present, including Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Hattie Jacques, Peter Butterworth, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw and Terry Scott, as well as Dilys Laye in her fourth and final Carry On performance and the brilliant Betty Marsden who stared in her second and last. Jim Dale was set to star but had to pull out at the last minute. For me, the most notable actor missing was the great Kenneth Connor, who missed out on many of the franchises best films after leaving the series from 1964 – 1970. It’s funny how the Carry On franchise went from a series of epics to a simple comedy about camping in the British countryside, as much as we Brits liked a good old big production epic, we also like a film we can relate to, and there has always been something rather wonderful and ridiculous about sleeping outside in one of the planets poorest climates. Audiences saw a lot of themselves in the characters and that is why they loved the series, but with Carry On Camping, a much larger audience could relate and laugh along. Not everyone had been in the army, not everyone had spent time in a hospital, but most people holidayed in the UK back then and most people could understand just how silly, miserable and wonderful it could be. I’m not sure Gerald Thomas and Peter Rogers ever really understood their audience, it’s easy now with hindsight but the fact they went back to the hospital yet again after Camping tells me they really didn’t know what to do. I think by this point it was all about the money, they had a cast of professionals who could be great in anything – many of them were – but they didn’t look after them and that is one of the reasons the series went into decline. I digress, Carry On Camping is one where they got it absolutely right, Sid James, who had had the script sent to his Torquay base during his 1968 summer season in Wedding Fever at the Torquay Pavillion, wrote to Peter Rogers with glowing anticipation on 2nd September 1968. "Many thanks for the script. Very funny! I drove Val (his wife, Valerie James) potty laughing aloud. That doesn't often happen when one reads! There are some wonderful moments. So clean too???" It is one of the rare films of the franchise where everybody gets their equal share of screen time and good lines, although I do prefer Joan Sims’ ‘over the top’ characters. There is an element of a middle class/working class cross over too, where all the campers get together to get rid of the ‘damn hippies’ in the field next door, which appealed to both classes during the late 60s but the poor reaction to 1971’s Carry On At Your Convenience – that makes fun of the working class unions – suggests that it was just a spot of serendipitous luck. One could suggest that it was the promise of bare bosoms that lead to the popularity of the film, Thomas and Rogers probably thought so, as the films became more and more soft-core as the series continued. The film has since become something of an unofficial British classic and big part of the UK’s comedy heritage. I have no idea how well it translates around the world or if the younger generation know anything about it but if you grew up in the 70s/80s/90s this is a seminal part of your childhood whether you liked it or not.