Rating: C-
Dir: Gerald Thomas
Star: Sidney James, Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques
And, now, the end is near… This is the final Carry On for a slew of those involved, on both sides of the camera. In front, it was the last hurrah for three of the four leads, in James, Windsor and Jacques, and perhaps more importantly, also marked the final time Talbot Rothwell wrote the script. He apparently had a breakdown due to overwork, and considering this was his twentieth in the franchise, he can hardly be blamed for suffering from burn-out. It definitely feels as if it’s going through the motions: I’m hard pushed to think of a single occasion where I actually laughed out loud. The fun characters can only go so far.
It feels like something of a re-tread of Don’t Lose Your Head, both in the 18th-century setting, and in the basic set-up, of William’s character attempting to catch James’s criminal. It takes place in 1750, with James playing notorious footpad, Big Dick Turpin. While Turpin was indeed a famous highwayman, he had in reality been executed eleven years earlier. I guess in this version, he escapes the gallows and adopts the identity of the pious Reverend Flasher, minister to the village of Upper Dencher. It allows him to ply his trade by night, along with sidekicks Harriett (Windsor) and Tom (Peter Butterworth). This dual-persona, religious man and thief, reminds me of the Doctor Syn character, previously used in the Hammer film Captain Clegg, where Peter Cushing played the role.
Seeking to capture Turpin are the newly-established Bow Street Runners (who genuinely were created just the previous year), and in particular, Captain Desmond Fancey (Williams) and Sergeant Jock Strapp (Jack Douglas). They discover that Turpin can be identified by a distinguishing mark on his penis – yes, that’s the level at which we are operating here – but actually capturing the highwayman is considerably trickier. It doesn’t help that Fancey keeps confiding in their mission to the Reverend, so he’s basically one step ahead of them for the entire movie. The problem is, the film seems more interested in the plot than actually bothering to be funny. Obvious lines like Fancey asking Harriett, “Where can we find Dick?” is what passes for peak comedy here.
You can’t fault the actors, who try to do the best with what their given. In particular, Windsor proves game for anything with her top first flying open, and then being given a costume that leaves little to the imagination (top). It’s easy to understand why she all but gave up the business, until an unexpected renaissance in the nineties, appearing as Peggy Mitchell in 1,691 episodes of Eastenders. In comparison to Don’t Lose Your Head, where the dialogue and humourous situations positively fizz off the page, this is by the numbers stuff, and certainly not a fitting send-off for the trio who had anchored many of the franchise’s most memorable entries. If this may not quite have been the last stop on the line, you can certainly see it from here.