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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 77865" data-attributes="member: 23">I had a Ted Ray double-bill at the weekend with Carry On Teacher and the brilliant Please Turn Over. The Carry Ons would certainly have been very different had Ray continued in the series as originally planned before studio politics saw him ungraciously removed. I'd have thought that he would have taken on most of the Sid James roles, but James's cheeky Cockney persona is so very different from Ray's avuncular staidness it's quite difficult to get my head round. One can only imagine that the writing would have become quite different for the characters since Rothwell in particular wrote each role with the actor in mind.Either way, Ray is very likeable in his one official Carry On outing. He has the requisite authority but is also quite reigned in. He's the anchor around whom the other, more eccentric actors fly in this instalment. In fact his role here feels very similar to that of Kenneth Horne in his radio shows. It would have been interesting to see him do at least a couple more.While I knew Richard O'Sullivan was in this one as a child actor, I had convinced myself that Dennis Waterman, too, was in this one. I was rather surprised at my level of disappointment on being reminded this is not the case. The majority of the kids in the film are notable for their lack of precociousness. At least one of the girls, unfortunately, appears to have had elocution lessons, but there's nothing jarringly syrupy or twee about them.Compared with the two films preceding it, Teacher feels somehow very workaday and small. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it's because the setting is one I've had more experience with. Or perhaps it's Hudis's formula becoming evident.There are some great lines here. Joan Sims is involved in my two personal favourites, both of which seem rather daring for the late '50s.One of them comes from Joan blowing her whistle which makes no sound. Looking inside she furiously ejaculates "they've taken the pea".The second exchange is after Joan's tiny gym shorts rip when she bends over (is this the first Carry On wardrobe malfunction?), something she bemoans repeatedly in the staff room. Asked to shut up about her shorts, Joan wails "You haven't seen the hole in them", to which blatantly gay Charles Hawtrey does one of his trademark horrified stage jolts and retorts "I've no wish to".The latter example in particular seems as filthy as anything the Carry Ons were able to get past the censors over the next decade and a half. At least to my smutty mind.I'd watched Please Turn Over quite recently (within the last year), but was glad to enjoy it in a chronological context here, made as it was between Teacher and Constable. Which would explain why Ray is in the lead role once again.With a cast including Ray, Joan Sims, Dilys Laye, Joan Hickson, Leslie Phillips, Victor Maddern, Marianne Stone and Charles Hawtrey in a guest appearance. It's written by Norman Hudis; produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas. This is a Carry On in all but name.If this were part of the canon I could imagine it being called Carry On Up Peyton Place. Not that the Carry Ons would have been likely to so blatantly acknowledge their source material at this point. But there's no getting away from the fact that the plot of the film is remarkably similar to aspects of Peyton Place, (the plot is especially similar to Return To Peyton Place though it's worth noting that Metallious's sequel only came out shortly before Please Turn Over was released and the film version would be a year or two away). The central character, a teenage writer whose book is based on those in her small town is pure Allison MacKenzie, and her omniscient narration very similar to that in the 1957 film.The big difference here is that the events in the book in Please Turn Over come from the fertile imagination of a young girl who perceives those around her as being boring. I really love the way the film shifts between quirky reality and the even quirkier fantasy. It's like two Carry Ons in one and gives an opportunity for the actors to have fun playing their character and a hugely distorted version of the same character. Character actresses Joan Sims and Dilys Laye in particular shine here. Sims plays the "reality" of her moaning char lady with a fag hanging permanently from her mouth and the fictionalised version of the same character as a glamorous French maid. Laye starts out as a mousy secretary then portrays the "book" version of the same character as a gold-digging vamp.It would be interesting to know the reason why some of these films got the Carry On prefix and some not. I'd wondered if in this case it was because the film was based on a play, but then I remembered that so was Carry On Nurse. I'll have to dip into some of the books and see if the reason is mentioned. I have a feeling the reason is given in Peter Rogers's Mr. Carry On book, but I suspect it's probably as simple as the fact that there had already been two Carry Ons released during 1959 and Constable would be released just two months after PTO. I'm sure there would have been concern about oversaturation of the titles.</blockquote>

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