ianlouisiana Review of Carry on Regardless

Carry on Regardless (1961)

it is not the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning.

[7/10 · 25 February 2012]

"I was looking for someone to make a fourth at bridge",an exasperated Eric Pohlman splutters to Sid James after Kenneth Connor has performed a death - defying leap a la Richard Hannay from a speeding train crossing the Forth Bridge.This is just one of a series of misunderstandings that force Sid's "Helping Hands Ltd"to the verge of extinction,only to be rescued at the last minute by their own serendipitous incompetence whilst working for the sublime Stanley Unwin whose career was brief but ecstatic for the former schoolmaster. Apart from a distinctly unfunny Patrick Cargill in a pre Leslie Phillips Leslie Phillips role,"Carry on Regardless" is inoffensive to all but the most po - faced amongst us.There is lots of good old British cheek of course,but it's innocent enough and nicely played. Like Dorian Gray,the series grew more raddled as time progressed,but fifty years ago when the censor's pencil hanged Damoclese - like over the theatre and the cinema,it was much more of an achievement to slip in a few iffy gags into a "Carry On" than it later became to show full frontal nudity then rape and buggery on stage and screen - to no good purpose in my opinion. Not one of the most typical "Carry On"s,"Regardless" finds the genre approaching the crossroads at which point it got progressively better or progressively worst according to individual taste.It is not the beginning of the but it is the end of the beginning.