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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 85951" data-attributes="member: 23">My worlds are crossing over. On Friday night I watched Cleo with Amanda Barrie's audio commentary. Yesterday I watched Up The Khyber and Camping. Last night Amanda Barrie and Julian Holloway played a married couple pretending to be unmarried in an episode of Pardon The Expression. Khyber and Camping are about as well-known as any of the films, I should think.  They aired regularly on TV when I was young and I certainly know them backwards as a result. Though I'm not sure how well either film would go down today, what with Khyber's decapitations and Camping's mammaries. A number of contributors to the audio commentaries for the Anglo-Amalgamated films have commented that they prefer the innocence and storytelling of the earlier episodes. I also watched Angela Douglas's Cowboy commentary yesterday and she commented that she'd probably have refused to do a later film in the series. Camping is the first post-Angela film, and the opening Paradise Camp cinema sequence - with multiple tit shots - really does feel like the series' loss of innocence. The sauce has been steadily getting thicker and thicker, but it really struck me yesterday how suddenly the tone changed again in Camping. More specifically, the characters' motives and attitudes were quite different. Early Carry Ons had the crumpet mad Leslie Phillips characters, but it was balanced with Kenny Connor falling for Joan Sims. Later on we had Cribbins and Mills or Dale and Douglas who fell in love over the course of the film. Even Up The Khyber ended with Roy Castle's character betrothed to Angela Douglas. With Camping, the vast majority of the characters just want to get laid. Miss Haggard throws herself at Doctor Soaper. Soaper pervily spies on the schoolgirls in his charge through a hole in the shower wall and letches after Babs as she walks. Schoolgirl Babs makes out with boys to the sound of a rasping brass score and flirts with wizened fiftysomething Sid. Sid and Bernie don't care if they get their legs over with their girlfriends or Babs and Fanny, just so long as they do. Married Peter Potter's fantasies about being seduced by one of the schoolgirls is made reality. Julian Holloway is more than up for it and isn't shy about letting the girls know. About the only characters who don't get it are Muggins and Fiddler (though even Hawtrey's Muggins started the film in a compromising position with Valerie Leon and seems quite keen on Peter's wife). The closest we get to innocence are Bernie and Anthea, but Bern plans a liaison with Fanny while shy Anthea - left alone with Joan - confesses her own horniness. Love and marriage are old hat here. The sexism that the series is criticised for is more evident in Camping than in any other Carry On to date. The most powerful aphrodisiac is now cheating - so long as it's the men who do it. Still dripping from his encounter with a teenage girl, Peter orders his frigid wife Harriet inside the tent in order to give her one.  She becomes his obedient servant, accepting all his suggestions from that point on with great servility. Joan and Anthea blow the lid off Sid and Bernie's attempts to bed the two schoolgirls and instantly become very willing to go all the way so the boys will like them more. And the boys decide they'll do. Confident women are only welcome here if they're comely and make themselves available to the men. It's a far cry from films like Teacher, Constable, Cabby or Cowboy where the women are capable and take charge of their own destinies.The plot is wafer thin, but it doesn't actually feel it thanks to the quick pace and the buzz created by the chemistry of the cast. Betty Marsden, in her most significant Carry On role, is a nice addition to the team. Believe it or not, I hadn't twigged until someone pointed it out last night that her character is named Harry Potter! It's a shame she couldn't have done more, but in this world the women's roles are - to put it kindly - more defined than the mens and perhaps that would have been one more than Rothwell would know what to do with. Bernard Bresslaw's character acting shines through. I can't think of two more contrasting back-to-back roles than Bungdit Din and Bernie Lugg.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?