Carry On Spying (4½ Stars)

This is the ninth film in the Carry On series, made in 1964. Click here for a list of all 29 films. Maybe I'll rewatch them all in order one day, but it won't be soon. Not this year, probably not next year either.

"Carry On Spying" is memorable for two reasons. It was the last film in the series to be made in black and white, and it's also the first film in which Barbara Windsor appears.

The film is primarily a parody of James Bond, although it does have hints of other films, such as "Casablanca" and "The Third Man". Kenneth Williams stars as a British secret service agent who has to retrieve a formula stolen by Dr. Crow, the head of the Society for the Total Extinction of Non-Conforming Humans (STENCH). The adventure takes him and his companions to Vienna, Algiers and back to London.

In my opinion this is the funniest of the Carry On films. I admit that it's dated. None of the Carry On films have aged well. Their humour seems so archaic. Today I found myself not just laughing at the jokes, I was laughing at the way the jokes were supposed to be funny.

---

I need to get my house and my DVD collection better organised. In my old house, where I lived until April this year, I had all my films in bookcases and easily accessible boxes. When I moved I had to leave two of my bookcases behind. I didn't have enough room for them in my new house. I had to store lots of my DVDs in boxes, and I made sensible choices, putting the ones in the boxes that I didn't think I would want to watch soon. My choices weren't perfect though. I decided to watch "Carry On Spying" last night, and I discovered to my horror that my Carry On films weren't in my bookcases. I had to search through the boxes in my storage compartment. As was to be expected, the Carry On films were in the bottom box at the back. That was frustrating, but I found it in the end.