The Carry On Collection (2002)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Starring Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Leslie Phillips, Barbara Windsor, Amanda Barrie, and Bob Monkhouse

Features:

• Thirteen films and a retrospective on seven discs
  

Released by: Anchor Bay
Rating: NR, probably suitable in the PG-13 range
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Pass, unless you thought Benny Hill was the pinnacle of British comedy.

The Carry On series of films spanned twenty-one years and produced thirty full-length theatrical releases. No other film franchise can claim that kind of productivity over such a short span. Even the Bond films, arguably the longest-running franchise still going, only claims twenty films and has now hit four decades of production. The films in this particular comedy series are all fairly similar in many ways, being a low-brow comedy spoof of some other genre of films, sort of like the last two decades of Leslie Nielsen's career. Films range from Keystone cops-type nonsense to a send-up of Hammer horror films to Bond flicks to American Westerns, featuring the same core cast of post-war British comedians, each playing essentially the same character in each film except for the name. There's Old Lecherous Guy, Ambiguously Gay British Prissy Guy, Dumb Blonde with Enormous Breasts, and Scary Battleaxe Woman, just to name a few.

What this means, essentially, is that if you've seen one film, you've seen 'em all. And none of them are really all that earth-shatteringly funny. They average a couple good gags per installment, but that hardly seems like a decent investment of one's time. It probably doesn't help that I thought Benny Hill was annoyingly stupid, as the Carry On bunch are to Benny Hill what Benny Hill was to Monty Python. This is not, for the uninitiated, an analogy that casts much of a positive light on either Benny or the Carry On gang. If you've surpassed the point where references to breasts make you giggle, or where a creepy old man staring at some nineteen-year-old's ass as she bends over is knee-slapping good fun, then you've moved beyond Carry On. Thank the gods.

The fact that there was sufficient demand for a collection like this is staggering to me, but there you have it. Film quality is mediocre (but probably as good as the original prints would allow for in transfer), sound is decent (though frequently fuzzy and muffled in the earlier films), there are no features to speak of barring a retrospective. The retrospective, hosted by a pair of the actors still playing the same characters, serves to pretty much hit all the funniest bits of the entire film franchise in just about an hour. Were this retrospective available on its own DVD for a reasonable price, it would be worth having, especially to fans of British comedy. As it stands, however, the only way to get the funny bits is to get half-a-dozen discs full of unfunny or boring bits of widely varying video quality. Feh.

If you dig Benny Hill, you'll dig Carry On. If you don't, you won't. It really is just that simple. If you like British comedy, but tend to lean more towards Monty Python, keep leaning. This kind of crap is what spawned Python as a reaction in the first place.