Carry on Dick

This film is perhaps the last truly amusing one from the carry on stable. With Sid James in the title role as Dick Turpin the usual jokes are bound to surface "Have you seen dick" etc, etc.

However this Carry on is the last one to use all your favourites ie; Williams, Jaques, James etc.

A good movie for a sunday afternoon.

This film appears to be heavily influenced by Carry on Don't Lose Your Head, as it is similar in a number of aspects but with slight tweaks. To me, at least, it appears that Sid James was beginning to lose his touch here. He died two years later, this was his final role in the Carry Ons and he isn't as convincing here as he usually was in previous instalments. Kenneth Williams is fine but is given barely anything to do. Joan Sims is good in her role though. Bernard Bresslaw also gives a solid performance though he's underused. The script is pretty weak and there's a surprisingly high amount of jokes about, well, the title gives you a clue. There's some good individual gags here and there but it's mostly rather unfunny with weak dialogue. I think it could have been better than what it was but it's watchable at least.

Carry on Dick is a hugely amusing entry in the series, it boasts a classic cast, they were somehow missing something beyond this one, maybe Sid James. James is fabulous, so funny, it is essentially the same character he plays in Don't lose your head, and the two films perhaps blur, but this one still boasts big laughs. The team had certainly pushed the boundaries, this is more smutty then usual, jokes galore about diddlers and bid Dick. It's still mind by today's standards though.

Laughs galore, Sid and Kenneth Williams are hilarious, the timing and delivery impeccable as always. Williams and Jack Douglas make a fine duo, it's the facial expressions from the former that get the laughs. Barbara Windsor is excellent in this film, but it's the interaction with Sid James that I find fascinating, you can see the real life closeness that existed between the pair very strongly.

Whenever I watch this one I always think how underused Patsy Rowlands was, too often only having minor roles, but wonderfully talented. Hattie Jacques is underused here, the delivery is fine, but her part was poor.

Great production values, fabulous costumes and a funny and in keeping score. Kenneth William's wig is a character in its own right.

It's a must for Carry on fans.

CARRY ON DICK is one of the last in the long-running series and indeed the last proper CARRY ON film to feature the likes of Sid James, Barbara Windsor, and many others of the core team. It's also a last gasp for their historical romps (the previous of which was CARRY ON HENRY), and it's as low brow and crude as the title would suggest.

It's a shame to see that the scripts by this stage had become so puerile because the cast were clearly still game for a laugh and you get a feeling of wasted talent. James is as irresistible as ever, playing a DOCTOR SYN-style figure masquerading as a clergyman by day and acting the highwayman by night, and there are fairly substantial roles for Bernard Bresslaw and an on-form Barbara Windsor. Sad then that about halfway through you realise the script is a complete rip-off of the earlier CARRY ON DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD, only inferior in every respect.

It's been said that writer Talbot Rothwell had a breakdown while authoring the script for CARRY ON DICK, which would understandably be his last film for the franchise, and his paucity of imagination is more than evident. There are tired phallic jokes galore, along with one raunchy scene following another. Only a few moments offer genuine laughs, but it's nevertheless a treat to see the pros going through the old routines one last time.

To be honest, I struggled with this a bit. It all centres on "Capt. Fancey" (Kenneth Williams) on the hunt for the legendary highwayman "Dick Turpin" - aka "Big Dick". Sadly, that's about the level of the rather crass and banal humour that pervades the rest of this pretty mediocre costume drama. The more "Carry On" films I watch, the more I do realise just how much Joan Sims contributed and here she shines as "Madame Desirée", but the rest of the cast seem content to take us down a rather childishly written path of stereotypes and slapstick and through a story that is a poor relation of "Doctor Syn" (1937). This franchise is reaching it's end now, the originality and playful humour of those made ten years ago has been replaced by an almost bawdy form of in-your-face comedy that really isn't anyone's finest work. Sorry, but I thought that this was quite poor.