I watched CARRY ON CAMPING for the first time last night and I absolutely loved it. In fact, what's not to love about it? Pretty much all of the gang is here, the jokes and gags come thick and fast, and most of them are very funny indeed. It's the classic seaside postcard movie, saucy and yet innocent at the same time, a sunny, nostalgic film that makes you pine for the comedies of yesteryear.The plot is simplicity in itself - Sid and Bernie (played by favourites Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw) go on a camping holiday with their frumpy girlfriends and soon get involved in various shenanigans involving other members of the campsite. Charles Hawtrey bags a major supporting role, Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques have plenty of chemistry, and Terry Scott and Betty Marsden have a good double act too. Add in plenty of nubile young women (headed by Barbara Windsor in her most-remembered role) and you have a classic in the making.There's plenty here to enjoy, and even the slightly lacklustre ending doesn't let it down. There's THAT infamous exercise scene that everyone remembers, of course, but I think my favourite moments involve the much-loved (by ME, anyway!) Peter Butterworth playing the campsite owner, Mr Fiddler: "A pound!". Great delivery, and a highlight in a film full of 'em.

Much has been said about the Carry Ons, and they do vary greatly in quality, but this film is probably the archetypal Carry On. Its the last of the series before they got too sex obsessed and bawdy (not that this one is full of innocence).The plot, such as it is, is the usual un-pc froth, but the point of this is that its fun. And what sets this one above the others is that pretty much the whole gang is here, in their prime, and on cracking form.Probably the best Carry On with which to introduce someone to the series.

This is the "pur sang"of "Carry on",the benchmark against which all other examples of the genre must be compared and found wanting.Here is everything that the self - appointed comedy fascists who want to tell us what we can and can't laugh at detest. Nearly every taboo they have tried to impose is gleefully smashed in very short order.This movie is proof that freedom of expression in art has been brutally repressed,presumably in the name of progress.Since the demise of "'allo,'allo" on TV nothing as remotely as funny as the most average "Carry on" has been allowed on our screens at home,presumably on the grounds that we might laugh at it and cause the end of civilisation as the Highgate Mafia imagine it.The scene in the tent with Miss Brown and Meesrs Scott and Hawtrey is brilliantly done - Laurel and Hardy would have been proud to have made it. Wonderful comedy actors are given a brilliantly funny script.That's all there is to it.It will make you laugh immoderately - I guarantee it. "Carry on Camping" - even the title is a little bit whoops dearie -was not considered to be anything particularly special at the time it was released,yes it was funny,but in an era of funny films it sort of got lost in the mix;Carry on fans loved it of course,but it had a relatively short shelf life and it needed the invention of the VCR to resurrect it and eventually lift it to its proper place at the top of the pantheon of British movie comedy. Be happy that,up to now,the intellectuals have not "discovered" the "Carry on" canon and "explained" the hell out of it.to us peasants. Fearfully I can envisage the day when the "Post - Modern - Ironic" brigade decide that Sid James is the new Jacques Tati,i.e. not actually funny.Until then let's happily accept that Sid,Hattie,Babs,Hawtrey and the others were the finest movie comics in British cinema and man the barricades against the intellectualisation of the last bastion of working - class humour.

This is perhaps the quintessential "Carry On" film, which also means that it's terribly dated when viewed today! That said, it's quite funny scene by scene – even if the plot itself is alarmingly thin and disjointed.In fact, it follows three separate narrative threads during the first half which then come together: one involving Sid James and Bernard Bresslaw and their girlfriends, sisters Joan Sims and Dilys Laye; another with bickering couple Terry Scott and Betty Marsden, who pick up annoying drifter Charles Hawtrey along the way; and the members of a finishing school (including perky Barbara Windsor) and led by the series' all-too-typically reserved authority figures – namely Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques. With this film, the bawdiness which has since become synonymous with the series really took off – beginning with the very opening sequence, which finds James et al in a cinema showing a documentary about a nudist campsite!; a scene in which James and Bresslaw spy on the women's baths through a hole in the wall was subsequently much imitated.Many of the film's best moments highlight Terry Scott – exaggerating his afternoon activity when asked by the wife how it was, knowing full well she isn't lending him the slightest attention; his encounter with a bull in a field; at the end, when he takes stock of the situation in his tent and forcibly throws out Hawtrey. Popular British starlet Valerie Leon, who appeared in a number of "Carry Ons", has a bit here as a salesgirl. By the way, CARRY ON CAMPING was trimmed by the BBFC on its original release; ironically, it ended up being the highest grossing film of the year in the U.K.!