Carry On Films

Carry On Films

The Carry On films are a sequence of 31 low-budget British comedy motion pictures produced between 1958 and 1992. The films' humour was in the British comic tradition of the music hall and seaside postcards. Producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas drew on a regular group of actors, the Carry On team, that included Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Peter Butterworth, Hattie Jacques, Bernard Bresslaw, Barbara Windsor and Jim Dale.

The stock-in-trade of Carry On film's humour was innuendo and the gentle mockery of British institutions and customs, such as the National Health Service (Nurse, Doctor, Again Doctor, Matron), the monarchy (Henry), the Empire (Up the Khyber), the military (Carry On Sergeant, England) and the trade unions (At Your Convenience). Others were a parody of other films including Cleopatra (Cleo), Hammer horror films (Screaming) and James Bond (Spying). Although the films were very often panned by critics, they proved very popular with audiences.

The Carry On series contains the largest number of films of any British series, and next to the James Bond films, it is the second longest continually-running UK film series (with a fourteen-year hiatus between 1978 and 1992). From 1958 to 1966 Anglo Amalgamated Film Distributors Ltd produced 12 films, with Rank Organisation making the remaining 19 between 1967 and 1992. All the films were made at Pinewood Studios.

The series began with Carry On Sergeant (1958) and finally ended with Carry On Columbus (1992). Producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas made all 31 films, usually on time and to a strict budget, and often employed the same crew. Between 1958 and 1992, the series employed seven writers, most often Norman Hudis (1958–1962) and Talbot Rothwell (1963–1974). In between the films, Rogers and Thomas produced Four Christmas specials in 1969, 1970, 1972 and 1973, a thirteen episode television series in 1975 and various West End stage shows which later toured the regions.