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Carry On Cowboy

This western-set mid-period may have Kenneth Williams’ favourite of the series, but it’s a pretty tame affair, with only Charles Hawtrey as an Indian chief pulling his weight (so to speak). Oh, and Peter Butterworth’s great, but then he always is. The rest are OK, but they seem to be having more fun playing at westerns than we are watching, to be frank. Still, there’s also Jon Pertwee, Angela ‘Digby’ Douglas accompanied by Eric Rogers on the piano, and Richard O’Brien. Richard O’Brien?

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Richardpd

    May 19, 2022 at 10:32 pm

    This is one of the better colour Ons that somehow I’ve kept missing when it’s been on TV!

    Sid James also enjoyed working on it, & did his own riding.

  2. Sidney Balmoral James

    May 19, 2022 at 11:06 pm

    I don’t think Richard O’Brien can be said to really be in this, as he is one of the stuntmen – he is also one of the cowboys which invade Casino Royale at the end I believe. This is one of the more polished Carry Ons in terms of a plot (albeit nicked from The Paleface), but it’s not massively funny, so interrupting a pretty good run of the peak Carry Ons, from Cleo to Camping. Cleo and Khyber stand up particularly well today, as good as any post-war comedy film produced in Britain. Arguably the rot set in when the concepts and scripts declined – apart from Carry On Henry, the 70s films are really in search of a good concept. In other circumstances, Carry on Dick could have been another good historical one, but it feels like a tired retread of Don’t Lose Your Head (i.e. Williams and Butterworth hunt down Sid James in disguise).

  3. Richardpd

    May 20, 2022 at 10:41 pm

    Another bit of trivia is that this is the only Carry On film to have over-run it’s production schedule, but only by one day.

    Camel was a weak one in that run, with a camel that couldn’t walk on sand & Phil Silvers only bothering to learn his lines when Kenneth Williams chided him for using idiot boards.

    Convenience is mostly good, though the working relations scenes can grate a bit, & actually caused it to be the first Carry On to lose money at the box office. The day trip out is a hoot though.

  4. Glenn Aylett

    May 21, 2022 at 2:39 pm

    I always wonder how much they paid Phil Silvers to appear in Camel and if it did much in America, as the franchise failed badly over there.

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