Carry On... Up the Khyber

Dir: Gerald Thomas

1968

****

Carry On... Up the Khyber, the sixteenth in the Carry On series, is regarded my most to be one of the franchise’s best. It had the Carry On core of actors including Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth, as well as Terry Scott (who returned to the series after a brief appearance in Carry On Sergeant), Angela Douglas in her fourth and final Carry On performance and the great Roy Castle, who replaced Jim Dale when he suddenly became unavailable. After sending up pretty much every genre you could think of, Carry On... Up the Khyber turned its eye towards the Kiplingesque style drama as film and television about life in the British Raj were quite popular at the time. It also meant they could use the line ‘Up the Khyber’ in the title – Khyber being cockney rhyming slang for Khyber Pass – arse. They were worried about the title but they went with it and got away with it, as they so very often did. It was one of 1968’s most popular films in the UK box office and one scene in particular is now considered a British comedy classic. Sid James plays Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond, the Queen Victoria’s Governor in the British province of Khalabar, near the Khyber Pass. It has been said that when Princess Margaret visited the set, she was horrified by a letter that Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond writes to the Queen that began with ‘Dear Vicky..’. The province is defended by the feared 3^rd Foot and Mouth Regiment, nicknamed ‘The Devils in Skirts’, famous for wearing nothing under their kilts. When Private Widdle (played by Charles Hawtrey) is found wearing underpants under his kilt, the warlord Bungdit Din (played by Bernard Bresslaw) takes the information to the Khasi of Khalabar (played by Kenneth Williams) who uses it to incite an anti-British rebellion, under the idea that the British are weak. It’s the best of British nonsense, full of puns and innuendo. Everyone is brilliant but Bernard Bresslaw is the film’s big surprise, bringing a performance that could have easily come from one of the classics the film sends up. The location (a valley in Wales) was also congratulated by experts as looking extremely authentic, with many who spent time there commenting that it looked just like the real Khyber Pass. The series had many hits and many misses, I think Carry On... Up the Khyber was a huge hit because they clearly spent money on it, filmed on location (sort of), had lots of fun and the cast were allowed to ad-lib more than they were used to. I also like it for one particular line. As the Burpa cannons fire on the Residency, Bernard Bresslaw’s Bernard Bungdit Din jokes "that'll teach them to ban turbans on the buses" as a reference to the recently resolved strikes by Sikh bus drivers in Wolverhampton and Manchester about the right to wear a turban instead of a cap as part of the uniform. It was playful and supportive at the same time. However, the film is best remembered for the scene whereby Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond decides to completely ignore the impending invasion, in the hope it will go away by itself. He sits down to a formal dinner with his wife and officers and everyone is ordered to ignore the bombs and gunfire and eat up as if nothing is happening. As the ceiling comes down around the group (and into their food and wine) the wonderful Joan Sims (who plays Lady Ruff-Diamond) states "Oh dear! I seem to have got a little plastered". This was an ad-libed line that director Gerald Thomas decided to leave in. The reaction and laughter from the rest of the cast was genuine and it is a golden piece of British comedy history.