I Watch Films: Carry On Spying

 

Carry On Spying

A British government laboratory is infiltrated by a milkman and a top-secret formula is stolen by STENCH (Society for The Extinction of Non-Conforming Humans*). Short on agents they send Desmond Simpkins (Red Admiral, Kenneth Williams) and his three trainees, Daphne Honeybutt (Brown Cow, Barbara Windsor), Charlie Bind (Yellow Peril, Charles Hawtrey) and Harold Crump (Bluebottle, Bernard Cribbens).

They head to Vienna and then Algiers spoofing various spy films of the time and blocking the competent agent Carstairs (Jim Dale in various disguises). Dale and Cribbens cross-dress and Williams and Cribbens black up. There’s some good send ups, several funny scenes and slapstick and some interminable bad bits that drag the film down.

Watch This: A brisk, fun send-up of early 60s spy films; still early Carry On with satire and parody to the fore
Don’t Watch This: It’s Carry On; Barbara Windsor being busty and Kenneth Williams going “oo” at tortured double entendres are considered very good jokes

 

* SPOILERS for Carry On Spying; Dr Crow, the head of STENCH is explicitly non-binary, and this is treated with more respect by the film than the nation of Algeria. The non-conforming extinction apparently does not include the gender binary.