“I don’t recognise you with your trousers on.”
The Carry On films were made over a period of almost three decades. The Carry On team was composed of a core of the greatest comic talent in Britain, and while the films also included new talent, Carry On fans always knew they could count on seeing some of their old favourites. Carry On films are bawdy, loaded with cliches and sexual innuendo, and so if that sort of comedy appeals to you, you are guaranteed to enjoy yourself.
Carry On Girls is film number 25 in the series. Sid Fiddler (Sid James) suggests that the small coastal town of Fircombe should host a beauty pageant to boost tourism. The pliable mayor Frederick Bumble (Kenneth Connor) goes along with the scheme. Councilor Augusta Prodworthy (June Whitfield), an acid-tongued, ardent woman’s libber is outraged by the idea, and she organises teams of local women to protest and sabotage the event.
Sid decides that the beauty pageant must be promoted by fair means or foul, so he and Peter Potter (Bernard Bresslaw) organise a series of publicity stunts aimed at grabbing the front page. Sid is aided and abetted by Miss Easy Rider, Hope Springs (Barbara Windsor) while Sid’s fed-up fiancee hotelier, Connie Philpotts (Joan Sims) is scandalised by the antics of the beauty pageant crowd.
The teaming of Sid James and Barbara Windsor will delight Carry On fans. They make a great team. Sid is his usual rascally persona, and Windsor is cheeky and scantily clad. The film is replete with hilarious characters–there’s an elderly woman who’s consumed with the idea that every man on the planet is after her underwear, and there’s an admiral (Peter Butterworth) who uses his telescope to get close-ups of the contestants. The humour is steady, and the film’s conclusion is riotous. There’s nothing like a little nostalgia to improve the spirits, so if you want a good laugh, and enjoy bawdy British humour, then Carry On films are for you.
