Carry On Girls

Sid James - Sidney Fiddler
Joan Sims - Connie Philpotts
Barbara Windsor - Miss Hope Springs
Kenneth Connor - Frederick Bumble
Bernard Bresslaw - Peter Potter
Peter Butterworth - Admiral
June Whitfield - Councillor Augusta Prodworthy
Jack Douglas - William
Patsy Rowlands - Mildred Bumble
Joan Hickson - Mrs. Dukes
David Lodge - Police Inspector
Valerie Leon - Paula Perkins
Robin Askwith - Larry

Carry On Girls conjures up the ultimate in wet and windy, bored and mindless seaside communities, Furcombe. The ever-enterprising Sidney Fiddler (Sid James) dreams up the entertainment boosting and business attracting idea of a beauty contest and epitomizes the feel-good innuendo and down-to-earth humour of the series. The film establishes two camps, with Sid's glorious celebration of innuendo versus Augusta Prodworthy’s (June Whitfield) downtrodden troop of campaigners against `the sexual gratification of a lot of drooling men!'. Sid’s problems start with two curvaceous Hells Angels, Miss Easy Rider and Miss Dawn Brakes. Also in attendance are Peter Potter (Bernard Bresslaw), Britain's first drag beauty queen, the Admiral (Peter Butterworth), the hotel's resident frustrated sex maniac and Frederick Bumble (Kenneth Connor), the master of incompetent authority.

There's an air of staleness about some of the sequences, as if all had done this so many times that the fun and games were getting a bit wearing. Indeed, everybody is showing their age and poor old Sid, still guffawing at every gag and chatting up the contestants, looks clearly older. By now Talbot Rothwell was running out of new ways to coyly refer to sex and the nudge, nudge sense of humour was beginning to wane at the box-office. Still, it's an essential entry in the series.
Review© Robert Ross: Carry On Companion.