With my latest double-bill, an unwritten rule of the Carry Ons - that the period films look much better than the contemporary ones - has been turned on its head.
Up The Jungle feels very much like an extended TV episode. It has budget written all over it and threatens to feel quite claustrophobic without actually suffocating one. There's no real location work to speak of, apart from a couple of establishing shots (sans cast), some grainy stock footage and a final shot of a Windsor street. Those aside, this is a film that showcases the great indoors.
That said, a couple of the Pinewood sets are quite impressive - particularly the fountain/waterhole set. And it occurred to me that the production values could be argued to accurately reflect the Tarzan serials the film is spoofing (even if true, I suspect it's far from deliberate, but it helped my enjoyment).
The cast are enjoyable, with Kenneth Williams and Hattie's absences offset by the return of Frankie Howerd and - after a gap of six years and eight films - Kenneth Connor. Howerd "ooh"s, "aaah"s and "well now"s as though his life depended on it, all to the good of the film. One time juvenile lead Connor mugs and gurns his way into older character territory that would be his speciality from here on. Jacki Piper starts the Ugly Duckling transformation trend in the series that would be picked up by in
Loving and
Girls by Imogen Hassall and Valerie Leon respectively. Leon, by the way, looks bloody amazing in
Up The Jungle, wearing a strategically slashed potato sack that shows her curves in all their glory. She may be playing the object of male fantasy, but there's a sense that she's holding all the aces here.
The plot has gone the same way as location work. It's just not there. It feels rather like a series of sketches with terrible punchlines, albeit very funny ones thanks to the enthusiasm and chemistry of the cast. The spirit of the whole film is perhaps embodied by the dinner scene in which Joan Sims is violated by a snake and enjoys it. It's crude, vulgar, as subtle as Beethoven's 5th and - thanks to the artists performing it - far funny than it has a right to be.
Loving doesn't go too far from home. All of its filming locations are in the centre of Windsor and consequently on a couple of stops there I've visited pretty much all the locations within an hour on foot (they'll be familiar, too, from other films. Perhaps most notably the Wedded Bliss office which is in the same place as
Regardless's Helping Hands HQ and Nookey's private clinic in
Again Doctor). But it uses the locations well. The characters are seen outdoors regularly and so the audience has more room to breathe. It makes such a difference to the entire tone of the film.
Loving is a cheap, efficiently made British film, but back-to-back with the studio-bound antics
Up The Jungle it feels vibrant, colourful and spacious.
I hadn't really thought of it this way before, but more than any of the other previous films, the structure of
Loving most closely resembles that of
Camping. Both are blatantly about people trying to get their ends away and both are a series of loosely connected - almost disparate - stories. For all the bluster about
Loving being the raciest entry to date to take it into the new decade, I actually find it less in your face than some previous entries. There's plenty of skimpy underwear, cleavage and innuendo, but less nudity than
Camping or
Again Doctor (I suspect Barbara Windsor's absence is partly responsible). As with
Camping, the strands all finally coming together in the last act serve to remind the audience how little interaction some of the actors have had throughout but somehow it doesn't matter. The film ends with a literal bun fight as the cast fling strategically placed cream pies at each other. Sometimes they fling each other into the pies for a bit of variety. The pan out at the end to show the entire main cast amid the scene of complete disorder always makes me think of
Dynasty's Moldavia Massacre.
After a small part in
Again Doctor, Patsy Rowlands does her own Ugly Duckling transformation here to throw herself at employer Kenneth Williams. Indeed, women are coming at him from every direction and a scene in which he fends off Hattie, Patsy and Joan Sims is like a burlesque reenactment of the scene in
Cowboy with Jim Dale's character in a similar position. The sight of a horrified Hattie Jacques walking in to find Joan Sims lying on the floor and peering out from between Kenneth Williams's ankles having torn his trousers off is a reminder that the series has incrementally put subtlety and any kind of reality aside to get the biggest short-term laugh. It is funny, certainly. But it's in a completely different dimension to Kenneth's romance of Jill Ireland back in
Nurse.
Jacki Piper and Richard O'Callaghan are a sweet couple and this film showcases them best. O'Callaghan wisely chooses not to play his facial expressions to those in the cheap seats à la Jim Dale. He plays it almost entirely straight. Indeed, whenever I watch this film still I find myself wondering if O'Callaghan is even acting at all: so naturally naïve does he seem as he wanders around dazedly watching the saucy antics around him as though wandered onto the set accidentally and is desperately trying to find his way off. His polite British reserve gives a great contrast to the cartoony stuff and watching this time I found myself wishing he'd done more. Piper is charming. Rare is the actress who can sprawl on a rug wearing just half a bra and the briefest of briefs and still come across as wholesome and likeable. She is, of course, the spiritual successor to Angela Douglas and a very welcome addition.
I'm currently watching
Pardon The Expression in which Julian Holloway has a recurring role as a likeable cleaner. The contrast between that role and his seedy, Bristol-obsessed photographer in
Loving tells me he's an actor I've greatly underestimated over the years.
Last night I also viewed
Carry On Again Christmas. TV Carry Ons can be quite painful at times. Having decided to watch the
Carry On Laughing series for the second time when I get to 1975, I'm having second thoughts.
