Film review no.10 - Carry On Screaming! (1966)

Carry On Screaming! - 1966

Rating - PG

Director - Gerald Thomas

Written by - Talbot Rothwell

Starring - Harry H. Corbett, Jim Dale, Kenneth Williams, Fenella Fielding

Run time - 97 minutes

Carry On Screaming! is a 1966 horror spoof comedy film which is the 12th in the series of 31 Carry On films (1958-1992). The film is a parody of many horror films made by the Hammer production studios in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s but still has the classic elements of Carry On thrown in.

The film is set in the 1910s and starts in Hocombe Woods where couple Doris Mann (Angela  Douglas) and Albert Potter (Dale) are courting in the woods. When Albert is searching for peepers, Doris is snatched away by a hairy monster! Albert reports to the police station immediately when detective Sidney Bung (Corbett) is called in on the case with his assistant detective Slobotham (Peter Butterworth) as there had been several women reported missing across several months. Together in the woods, they discover the Bide-a-Wee rest home, who are shown in by the butler Sockett (Bernard Bresslaw), who then informs the lady of the house Valeria (Fielding) to wake her brother Dr. Orlando Watt (Williams) by electrical charge (like the story of Frankenstein) as he has been dead for 15 years. They later discover the residents of Bide-a-Wee rest home are the villains as their revived werewolf-like monsters go through the woods to steal women which they take back to the house and mold into shop window mannequins (where Dr. Watt uses his recurring catchphrase “Frying Tonight!”). This leads to the detectives searching for the culprit through a series of good gags and hidden innuendos.

This is one of my favourite Carry On movies because of its diverseness to the rest of the series. Of course, this was in the prime of the film series and would be a few years before the films became reliant on practically misogynistic jokes about women and more and more tedious plots. But, this for me is a great example of Carry On with some superb appearances from regulars Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Jim Dale, and, my favourite, Kenneth Williams in one of his 25 appearances in these movies.

Score - 8/10