This is one I remember seeing as a kid and being most amused. Horror and comedy together? That was cool. Watched it again the other night and it seemed distinctly lacklustre. Yes, horror and comedy can work together (An American Werewolf In London, for instance), but there are too many faults here and the movie suffers for it. For one thing the dialog this time around conspicuously lacked inspiration. Not only were the jokes a bit lame, but they were stretched too thinly to cover the screenplay. Neither Sid James nor Barbara Windsor appeared in this one, so in come Harry H. Corbett and Fenella Fielding. Fielding made an acceptable saucy comic vamp(ire) but Corbett's occasionally overdone mugging is a distraction. Elsewhere, Charles Hawtree may well have had a four-square liquid lunch before filming his little cameo as a lavatory attendant, while Kenneth Williams pretty much phones it in, set on 'loud, campy delivery' and turned up to 10. The actors do what they can, but their characters aren't as finely drawn as many previous 'Carry On' efforts, and the energetic-but-hollow result looks a bit 'tryhard'. Unfortunate, because the movie had a higher budget and a better 'look' than the 'Carry On' norm, and the central concept was sound. It's not actually all bad, just that it's so undernourished script-wise. Considering the frequency at which entries in this film series were cranked out (this was the twelfth 'Carry On' in eight years) and that '..Screaming!' was the first of two to be produced in 1966, it's probable that the movie marked an incidence of creative fatigue.
Review of Carry on Screaming!
