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I caught the second half of this on TV over Christmas and had to track down a copy to see how it all began.

"...Carve Up" is an odd and fairly unique clash of different styles of film: the cheap, crass, misfiring humour of the Carry On films but set in an older, classic Ealing-style story, with a creepy atmosphere more like The Cat and The Canary, The Ghost of St. Michaels, or The Old Dark House, which the Carry-On films never even bothered to try to capture.

More's the pity, since this film feels almost like a signpost to a more interesting and better quality future for those movies, which never came about.

Kenneth Connor is a little grating, and Sid James plays Sid James. Shirley Eaton is pretty and refined but gives a stilted performance. The rest of the supporting cast are quality, though, and mark it out above average. It's much too patchy to be a great film, or even a really good one, but it is a likeable one.

Novel proof reader Ernie is reading horror novels late one night when he has interrupted by a mysterious man claiming to be the lawyer representing Ernie's late uncle who has recently passed on. Ernie and his friend Sid travel up to his uncle's creepy mansion in Yorkshire to attend the reading of the will with the rest of the unhinged family. However a murder occurs within the group and anyone could be the suspect. Ernie and Sid try to avoid joining the body count while working out who is behind the killings.

The leads here made me think this would be a Carry On style film a la `Carry on screaming'. However it is more of a gentle spoof than a festival of innuendo and excess. The plot is the story `The Ghoul' rewritten for laughs, and it contains every horror cliché that exists! From the thunderstorm, the power cut right down to the inclusion of Donald Pleasance in the cast! Of course it's never going to be a great film, rather it's clichéd and played for gentle laughs without completely making fun of the material. Instead the story is the same but the characters are made fun of and exaggerated for humour.

The two leads are also given reign to make fun and operate outside of the clichés in the story. In fact Sid draws attention to them well and it helped me laugh along with him basically giving a nudge and a wink. James is always strong in the type of role where he gets to play himself and Kenneth Connor does well as the timid jumpy side of the duo.

Overall it isn't hilarious rather gently amusing. The plot is all cliché – but then that's the point. Sid James and Kenneth Connor deliver convincingly and do well where other performers may have struggled to be relaxed and enjoyable.

I often wonder if movies like this had the audiences of the time rolling in the aisles or did folk react in much the same way most people today would, with a certain cynical boredom? Personally, I'm a fan of all sorts of humour, and that includes the light silliness of movies like this. Few people, probably nobody in fact, will get belly-laughs from this film, but my girlfriend and I, and her sister, watched it together smiling and chuckling all the way through. We were entertained and we'd watch it again.

Part of the appeal, of course, for a thirty-something like me is that strange nostalgia for a time you never experienced and certainly never was. Even though it's an unrealistic spooky murder mystery, you'd still quite like to be there with the characters, enjoying this curiously innocent world where people die in a remarkable bloodless fashion.

There's a good cast, full of recognisable faces - there's fun to had from finally realising that you're looking at a very young Michael Gough and playing a butler long before Alfred in the first four Batman movies.

It's ultimately absurd, but it's a well-put-together little film, with a great cast, an atmospheric set and a light but entertaining plot, perfect for lazy Sunday afternoon viewing.

I've finally managed to get my hands on a copy of this movie, after searching websites, video stores, and many a failed bid on eBay. And although it's a while since I last watched it, this movie is as good, if not better, than I remember.

Sid James gets the best lines, and delivers them with the consummate ease of a true professional. Kenneth Connor is a bit like his roles in the early Carry On's - but he was very good in them. Throw in a wonderfully sinister Donald Pleasance, the typically statuesque and beautiful Shirley Eaton, and a host of other suitable strange and quirky characters, all locked in a creepy mansion where the guests begin dropping like flies one by one. It all adds up to a marvelous romp - not so much scary as very creepy, very suspenseful, and very, very funny.

With leads like Sid James and Kenneth Connor No Place Like Homicide could easily be classified as a Carry On film. It really isn't though because Carry On films were strictly comedy and this one does have a bit of a story to it albeit just one to display the characters.

Connor and James are best friends and roommates, Connor a proofreader for a publishing company and James is a bookmaker which a profession of a slightly higher social standing in the UK than on this side of the pond. In any event in that plot gimmick from a Zillion films on both sides of the pond Connor is an heir and he and the other heirs have to spend a long night in a creepy mansion to inherit his late uncle's estate.

Of course a lot of the night is spent by Connor with the lovely Shirley Eaton who's another heir. Another heir is Dennis Price with a rakish Terry-Thomas mustache which makes me think Terry-Thomas had been slated to be in this. Michael Gough is a sinister butler and Donald Pleasance a sinister lawyer.

Nothing sinister about Connor who's wondering if the inheritance is really worth it and James who's wondering how he got into this mess. The usual kind of gags are present here though nothing terribly original.

British pop star Adam Faith shows up at the end without billing and unless you knew the British music scene of 1961 it's not a gag you will get.

The cast looks like the're having fun and I think you will to.