Carry On Collection [7 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

One of the most popular comedy film series in British history, the Carry On series, has twelve film collected on this seven-disc set from Anchor Bay. The movies in this set include Carry On Sergeant, Carry On Nurse, Carry On Teacher, Carry On Constable, Carry On Regardless, Carry On Cruising, Carry On Cabby, Carry On Jack, Carry On Spying, Carry On Cleo, Carry On Cowboy, and Carry On Screaming. In addition to the films, a documentary titled That's Carry On provides background information about the faces that made the series so popular. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 7
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Black and White, Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Features:
  • • [None specified]

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Gerald Thomas, Ralph Thomas

• Producer:

  Peter Rogers, Nat Cohen, Stuart Levy

• Screenwriter:

  Talbot Rothwell

• Play Author:

  William Shakespeare

• Screenwriter:

  Patrick Cargill

• Play Author:

  Patrick Cargill

• Screenwriter:

  Norman Hudis

• Play Author:

  Jack Beale

• Screenwriter:

  John Antrobus

• Book Author:

  R.F. Delderfield

• Screen Story:

  Eric Barker

• Cinematographer:

  Alan Hume, Reginald Wyer, Peter Hennessy, Edward Scaife

• Composer (Music Score):

  Eric Rogers

• Songwriter:

  Alex Alstone

• Composer (Music Score):

  Geoffrey Parsons

• Songwriter:

  Geoffrey Parsons, Eric Rogers

• Composer (Music Score):

  Bruce Montgomery, Douglas Gamley

• Editor:

  Archie Ludski, Rod Keys, John Shirley, Peter Boita

• Art Director:

  Jack Stephens, Alexander Vetchinsky, Bert Davey, Lionel Couch, Carmen Dillon

• Set Designer:

  Helen Thomas, Josie MacAvin, Terence Morgan II, Vernon Dixon

• Costume Designer:

  Joan Ellacott, Laurel Staffell, Yvonne Caffin

• Makeup:

  Geoffrey Rodway, Alexander Vetchinsky, George Blackler

• Short Story Author:

  Sidney Green, Richard Hills

REVIEWS:

• Gerald Thomas' Carry on Spying (1964) was one of the earliest big-screen satires of the James Bond movies, appearing in the same year as Goldfinger. Otherwise, it isn't significantly better than the rest of the Carry On series, except in two small but important respects. First, there are moments in the movie where Thomas gets into some very clever parodies of the thriller genre: In the credit sequence, as the enemy agent disguised as a milkman enters the top secret laboratory, there's a wonderful extended tracking shot as the camera follows him down the corridors that is as good as the conventions of the standard spy film; and in the first scene on the streets of Vienna at night, we suddenly hear zither music and see an old bearded man wandering down the street selling his wares, as Bernard Cribbens' fingers pop out through a manhole cover and lift it off. That brings us to the other element that distinguishes this from the other Carry On movies, the presence of Bernard Cribbens. He's funny just sitting there reacting with the tiniest flick of an eye-lid to Kenneth Williams' antics, and his every expression is worth taking in. Otherwise, there are the usual Carry On gags, tailored for the espionage subject matter, most of them as old as the hoariest vaudeville and music hall routines, and a few nods to the Bond films. Thanks to its being a James Bond parody, there are also probably a few more jokes about Barbara Windsor's anatomy than is typical in a movie this early in the series, but otherwise there's nothing different here from the other early '60s titles in the Carry On movies. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• Gerald Thomas's Carry On Sergeant was shot and released, ironically enough, in the very year that John E. Blakeley died -- Blakeley, a movie producer from Lancashire whose career in pictures went back to the 1930's, had specialized in movies built around music hall humor and music hall comedians, aimed specifically at northern British audiences; the most fondly remembered of his pictures were his wartime service comedies, including Somewhere In England, Somewhere In Camp, and Somewhere On Leave, which achieved slightly wider popularity in England. Carry On Sergeant was essentially a successor to those movies, with higher production values and better actors working around the comedic personalities -- it was a hit with middle-class British audiences and even saw release in America. Their first time out with this kind of vehicle, Thomas and producers Peter Rogers, Nat Cohen, and Stuart Levy felt that putting established dramatic actor William Hartnell -- enjoying stardom in a series of military roles at the time -- in among the comic performers was the best way to go, but once the series got rolling they realized that the more funny men (and women) the better, and the slapstick humor became the "Carry On" movies' focus and raison d'etre. In this instance, Hartnell, along with Shirley Eaton -- six years from emerging internationally as a "Bond girl" in Goldfinger -- as the eager wife of a National Serviceman called up on his wedding day, fit nicely in between the comic hijinks and sight gags, and Hartnell, in particular, lends Carry On Sergeant a touch of class that most of the later entries in the series not only didn't have but consciously avoided. Otherwise, the gags, apart from a few double-entendre jokes that are mostly comprehensible to British audiences, are among the oldest and most reliable in the field of comedy, going back well past, say, the Abbott & Costello comedy Buck Privates, probably to at least the middle of the nineteenth century in many cases -- and they're still funny, and nothing more so than the scene of gangly Charles Hawtrey getting his beyonet jammed in the practice dummy. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi