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3 months ago

Carry On Spying

a review by CinemaSerf

The world is at the mercy of "STENCH" - a criminal entity set up to rid the world of something or other. Scraping the bottom of his agency barrel, the chief of MI6 must depend on the hapless "Simkins" (Kenneth Williams) to retrieve the situation and so together with his triplet of inexperienced trainees, they have to thwart the evil intentions of the menacing "Dr. Crow" (think of a larger version of Rosa Klebb). As you'd expect, the rest of this parodies just about everything from the "Man from U.N.C.L.E." to "007" via "The Third Man" - we even have some zithering! Along the way, a bit of romance blossoms as "Crump" (Bernard Cribbins) falls head over heels for "Honeybutt" (a first outing for Barbara Windsor) - she has a photographic memory too! Finally, a denouement in Vienna is going to test the mettle of the team as the formula for "Hydroformulin" is about to fall into the wrong hands! It's all fairly standard "Carry On" fayre this and I thought it was refreshing not to have the phnaa phnaa humour of Sid James for a change. It's far too long, and the jokes recycle themselves once too often, but everyone has a go and look like they are having fun, so that helps too. Not the best of the franchise, but the writing is OK and it passes the time fine if forgettably.