Medieval Mayhem! - Ironclad (2011) & Black Death (2010) - SPOILER ALERT

Oh look, I watched some films that were made within the past 5 years...that doesn't happen much!.

So, having watched Lindybeige's videos, where he takes a look at these films and critiques them for their appalling historical accuracy (The phrase "Useless floppy apron" had me pissing myself laughing for a considerable amount of time), I decided to watch these films myself, seeing as how i am not adverse to a bit of good old blood and guts action.

Ironclad

So, the opening blurb tells us that in the year 1215, King John I signed the Magna Carta, which is generally thought of as being a good thing, however almost immediately afterwards, Pope Innocent III declared the document null and void and ordered King John to reclaim his country from the rule of the Barons, thus sparking the "First Barons War".
The film itself deals with a heavily fictionalised and somewhat anachronistic version of the siege of Rochester castle, which did actually happen, although the film would have us believe that a mere 20 defenders held off a horde of over a thousand "Danish mercenaries" (the film basically depicts them as being Vikings, even though by 1215 there were no Vikings, but at least it doesn't go down the route of having them with big horns on their helmets), and makes out that King Johns forces had access to some substance similar to napalm to use in their attempted assaults...oh, and for some reason, the river Medway seems to have the power to appear and disappear at will, or at least, at the convenience of the films director.

So to start with, the title of the film seems to have been chosen in order to evoke mental images of fearless knights fighting the good fight etc etc, however throughout the film, only the main "good guy" character, the Templar "Thomas Marshall" is the only one to don a suit of armour, and even then its not until over half way through the film, and even then its just a helmet and quilted overcoat he puts on anyway, which he then wears for all of about 2 minutes as he rides his horse out of the castles stable towards the keep (a distance of about 50 feet) whilst swinging a flail/morning star type mace at the horde of not-vikings who have managed to get in through the gates, seemingly to little effect (they gang up on him and pull him off his horse in the end, because charging a single horse into a mob of blood crazed enemies is a bit stupid, and if this weren't a film, he would have been unhorsed and killed within seconds of hitting the mob).

Another familiar trope common to this sort of film is the "religious person breaking their vows" trope, which the chaste Thomas Marshall manages to do about two-thirds of the way in by having the sexy intercourse with the lady of the manor, the inevitability of which had been set up right from the moment they walked in through the castle gates.

One major bit of "artistic licence" in the film is the slow torture and death of William D'Aubigny (Played by Brian Cox) on orders of the King towards the end of the film, which is a right bugger being as that  the real life D'Aubigny survived the siege and died in 1236 after playing a big part in the second battle of Lincoln after King Johns death and the subsequent crowning of his son Henry III in 1216...a mere year after the time in which this film is set (I presume that after having his hands and feet cut off, then having his corpse fired from a trebuchet and splattering on the castle walls, he "got better").

So, is Ironclad a good film?, well, as a medieval sword swinging blood splatterfest goes, I'd have to say yes, despite it being riddled with historical inaccuracies, ridiculous plot developments, its a good example of one of those films you can put on and expect to get some level of entertainment out of without being bogged down with a ton of "talky" bits getting in the way of drawn out scenes of people getting limbs chopped off by improbably large swords and axes, and the inevitable blood splatter that follows.
As a film giving an accurate depiction of a recorded historical event and the world it took place in, then I'd have to say no.

Black Death

It is the year 1348 and the Black Death is sweeping the British isles, well, except that it isn't, and didn't reach full on epidemic levels until about 2 years later, but, despite this glaring historical error, that doesn't stop the heroic knight "Ulric" (Sean Bean) from going to a monastery and demanding that the Abbott (David Warner) furnish him with a guide so they can find a village that rumour has it has not been afflicted by the plague....er, ok.

Enter Brother Osmund, a novice/monk/friar (the film cant make its mind up exactly what he is, as he is referred to as being all three, even though this would both be impossible and somewhat stupid), who is a bit naughty in the fact that he has a secret girlfriend who he earlier sent to find this village so she would be safe from the plague...Ulric turning up gives him an excuse to leave the monastery and meet up with his bit on the side for sexy times etc etc, so he volunteers because apparently thats where he comes from and knows the way quite well, or something.

Nah, as it turns out, Ulric and his band of unkempt, smelly mercenaries are really looking for the village because apparently it contains a necromancer who is bringing the dead back to life, and God might not like that so they are going to hunt down and kill the necromancer because fuck you that's why.
In order to complete their mission, they have brought along a torturer and his highly anachronistic "iron maiden" like torture contraption, which is conveniently attached to a rickety looking wagon, so they can capture the necromancer and deliver him to the local bishop..I presume that will occur after they have killed him and he has then brought himself back to life or something...er, yeah.

So they travel across the countryside, via a forest which consists of nothing more than some very nice modern looking conifer trees which grow in perfectly straight lines, and have a few sword fights along the way before they finally find the village they were looking for...which turns out to be a haven for pagan heathens who don't believe in God.
Also along the way, Osmund finds out that his secret girlfriend seems to have been killed by the forest bandits, he blames himself and gets all dead guilty and shit, innit.



Ulric and his remaining men enter the village and are welcomed with open arms by the villages head man, "Hob", aka "The Lord Percy Percy", aka "Captain Darling", however despite being offered sanctuary and washing facilities (you know the villagers must be evil because they break the cliche of daring to wash both themselves and their clothing whilst living in medieval times) Ulric warns his men that evil is afoot so they must be on their guard.

So, the "necromancer" turns out to be a woman who is a skilled herbalist, and just uses the trappings of ritual and witchcraft to keep the yokels in awe of her super powers, plus also it helps that the village is miles away from anywhere else so the plague hasn't shown up there because they don't generally mix with outsiders.
Its at this point that the standard "religious person breaking their vows" cliche is used to get Osmund to not only kill his secret girlfriend (as it turns out, she wasn't killed in the forest, she just got beaten up a bit and the villagers found her and nursed her back to health, then the witch used her to try and get Osmund to come over to their side) , but to also turn him into an angry vengeance fueled killing machine.

Only Osmund and Ulrics right hand man Wolfstan manage to survive the inevitable bloodbath that occurs (once again, Sean Bean ends up getting killed in a film, surprise surprise) , Osmund returns home to the monastery, where Wolfstan, in voice over, states that although he never saw Osmund again, he heard stories that he had set himself up as something akin to a witch hunter and spent the remainde rof his days hunting down the woman who had bewitched him, killing lots of other women who had some resemblance to her in the process, but this was a good thing as he did it all in the name of God...oh, and God punished the evil pagan heathens by bringing the plague to the village, which promptly killed off anyone who was still living there (just before he dies, it is revealed that Ulric is suffering from the plague, thus bringing the disease there)

Yeahhhhhhh...again, this film is little more than an excuse to have people getting body parts cut off by big swords and axes, but, unlike Ironclad, it doesn't pretend to depict real events, or be a dramatic adaptation of events of historical note.
Also unlike Ironclad, the story is a rather poorly written  mish mash of plot holes sandwiched in between fighting and torture scenes, which ends on a rather dark note of having the young hero of the piece become Darth Vader and set about revenging himself on women via the excuse of being a witch hunter.

Good film?...no, not even as a bit of mindless flighting and bloodsplatter entertainment.

Insert Lots of Coins! - Robocop (Data East 1988)

A bit of a personal milestone here..This piece of coin swallowing awesomeness has the distinction of being the first coin-op game I ever completed....it probably cost me over a hundred quid like but my 9 year old self was proper chuffed because no one else I know of ever managed it before the advent of emulation...

This game first showed up in the pub my mum helped run in late 1988, a full year after the equally awesome film came out, where it looked like this..

There were a couple of different versions of this knocking about, including a 2 player version, but for the most part, this game was a single player affair.

The gameplay was ridiculously simple, you, playing as Robocop, had to move from left to right through various stages in old Detroit, shooting and punching the various thugs, pugs, punks, rapists (recreating the famous scene from the film where Robo shoots a rapist in the pods), burglars, murderers, bank robbers, chainsaw weilding assholes etc you came across, before then squaring off against en end of level boss, which more often than not would be some gangsters and a vehicle, or an ED-209 of some description, which progressively got tougher and had more weapons as the game went on, but all of which would settle into a nice predictable pattern so you could plan your attacks accordingly.

Now, while this was a pretty much run of the mill shooter, similar in gameplay to Contra/Probotector, insofar as you only had one life to get things done, you did have a health bar, which you could refill by picking up jars of baby food that appear occasionally throughout levels, and by successfully completing the shooting galley bonus rounds, so you didn't always have to worry about getting hit occasionally, in fact, some parts of the game, its unavoidable, especially on the last level in the OCP building where you are confronted with a horde of machine gun and grenade wielding thugs, laser turrets, mortar firing robots, laser barriers and spikes that rise out of the floor (yeah, you remember that bit from the film, right?).
Thankfully though, Robo can pick up different weapons. you start the game with your basic pistol, but soon enough, youll find a 3-way spread gun, a "double shot" pistol that can penetrate through multiple enemies, and finally, the cobra assault cannon, which can penetrate through enemies, has a small area of effect, and can cause serious damage to heavilly armoured foes..state of the art bang bang!..problem is with these upgrade, they only have a limited amount of ammuntion, so you have to be really careful when you decide to hit that fire button.

Throughout play, there are also multiple instances of digitized voice effects from the film, Robo says things like "Your move creep!", "Drop it!" and "Thank you for your co-operation!", all while the Robocop theme plays in the background...ace!

So, to a 9 year old boy,t his game was the epitomy of awesomeness, and the only thing that made it a pain in the ass was having to beg for 10ps to shovel into its hungry coin slot, because this game required a shitload of 10p pieces in order to advance, simply because when the screen starts getting busy, and you havent learned the bad guys patterns, you die a lot, esp after the difficulty curve seriously ramps up once you have gotten past the first 2 levels.

Does this game stand the test of time?, well, yes, its still fun to play, although now its a little unrewarding being as, and i know this might sound weird, you don't get the self satisfaction from knowing that you only had 1 credit and managed to get really far (although that said, even with emulation, I can now complete this game without dying at all).
This game also got ported to various home consoles and computers, but none of them could match the gameplay of the original arcade outing, in fact, it has to be said that this game is pretty much the only example of a good Robocop game in existence, being as pretty much all Robocop games that followed it were crap.

So yeah, the Coin-op Robocop is still a good game, even today.

Insert Lots of Coins! - G.I Joe (Konami 1992)

Another coin-op I recall fondly from my youth is Konamis "arcade exclusive" G.I Joe Game...

Yeah, this one was memorable for two reasons...

1. I only ever played it once, shovelling about £3 into it.
2. My £3 ran out just before the final boss...and I didn't have any more change to continue...AAARRGGHHH!

The machine itself looked like this...

 Yeah, like most Konami arcade games, it was intended to be a multiplayer jobby, and as is the usual thing with multiplayer intended games...they were FUCKING HARD!

So, the basic plot is that those terrorist bastards over at C.O.B.R.A are up to something suitably evil, cos that their thing obviously, I mean, terrorists would be a bit crap if all they did was write strongly worded letters to their MP wouldnt they?.

Enter Action Force...er, sorry, G.I. Joe, World Police (Fuck Yeah!), who send their 4 top operatives to machine gun down as many Cobra Vipers, B.A.Ts, HISS Tanks and all manner of things represented in 3 3/4" action figures and playsets (sold seperately).
You get to pick from Duke, Snake Eyes (yep, snake eyes for me, both back then and in the emulator replay i just completed) Scarlett and Road Block, who you then use to run forwards through hordes of bad guys, flying lead, missiles, lasers and obstacles, always heading towards the end level boss.

Now, the game play itself is a simple "Run & Gun/Rail shooter" type affair, with the perspective being 3rd person, its sort of like a cross between Space Harrier and CABAL (if you've ever heard of either of them).Your joystick controls both the movement of your crosshairs and where your dude is standing at the bottom of the screen, you'll need to keep jinking left and right to avoid the bullets and stuff zooming towards you.

You start the game with a basic semi auto rifle of some description, and 3 explosive rockets. Now, this is one of my major complaints about this game...your "gun finger" soon gets tired from repeatedly bashing the "shoot" button..so, moral of the story....PUT A FUCKING AUTOFIRE FUNCTION IN THERE... no seriously, with the amount of business that goes on in this game, you need it right from the beginning, and not when you pick up the "Rapid fire" power up...which you lose the second you take a hit...GRRRRRR!
The rocket launcher is a pretty basic "screen clearance" tool, you can pick up extra ammo for it now and then, so its not too bad.

Your guy is also liable to trip over obstacles if you don't smash them, and can also take a hit from running into a bad guy that you failed to shoot, this usually happens when you're trying to dodge the dozens of bullets, grenades etc zooming towards you..pain in the arse and its dead obvious in some places that it was intended for you to lose a life there so you'd shovel more money in.

The visuals though are proper slick, and the game even has some short animated sequences, although these are original bits of animation, and not lifted from any G.I Joe cartoon i'm aware of.


At the end of each stage, your dudes will be attacked by one of the Cobra boss guys, so i hope you saved up those rockets and have a rapid fire cos without them you're gonna be dying a lot. Each one of the bosses is a recognisable character, theres Xamot & Tomax, followed by Metalhead, then The Baroness, then Major Bludd, then Destro and finally, Cobra Commander himself, making for 6 levels of adrenaline pumping and uber patriotic machine gunning action.

My only real gripe with this game is the weapons, as in theres not much by way of variety, just your basic rifle and a rocket launcher, would it have killed them to chuck some other bits in there just for shits and giggles?.

Overall - 7/10

Insert Lots of Coins - Growl (Taito 1990)

Ahhh, the early 90s, when all of a sudden, saving the earth and shit became popular for the first time since the 70s..and what better way to promote saving the earth than by with a violent video game!...fuck yeah!

Wait a minute..is that Indiana Jones?...no, course its not...never mind...
So yeah, the game was originally released as a coin-op arcade game in Japan under the name of "Runark".....Run Ark?...Lost ark?...Indiana Jones as one of the playable characters...nah, i'm imagining things...

It made its way westward and was rechristened "Growl"....probably because people would get the distinct feeling that it was an Indiana Jones game, and therefore Stephen Speilberg would probably want paying...but as we all know it definitely isnt, oh no, nah, never, gawd bless ya no...

So yeah, I, like most people, encountered this one day in my mis spent youth, and shovelled a hell of a lot of 10p's into it....why?, well, because its a fucking hard game thats why, it has "Noob trap" written all over it!.

The gameplay is similar to other brawler type games of the time, like Double Dragon for example.
You shovel in your money, then you can choose from one of four characters, but everyone always seemed to choose they guy who definitely isn't Indiana Jones.

The storyline is simple, one day at what we are informed is the early 20th century, a "Park Ranger" is sipping on a nice glass of something in a bar, when a bunch of evil and quite heavily armed poachers bust in and blow the place up, from then on you move from level to level punching the fuck out of anyone that happens to look at you in a funny way, and eventually kicking the shit out of an end level boss in order to release one of the many endangered animals that those sneaky bastards have managed to trap while you were sitting in the pub.
Like Double Dragon, your basic attacks are punches, kicks, flying kicks and a sort of shoulder barge thing which is of questionable use. The difference between this and Double Dragon is that the screen gets busy..and I mean BUSY, at any one time you will more than likely have at least a dozen badass muthafuckas trying to break their foot off in your ass, and most of them take quite a bit of a pummeling before they eventually change occupations.
You can pick up weapons along the way, ranging from pipes,knives, rocks, pistols, assault rifles (dafuq?, is supposed to be like, the 1930s, why the fuck can you pick up an M-16?) , rocket launchers (aww come on!) grenades, barrels, explosive barrels, a bullwhip.....a bullwhip?...*sigh*.

The end level bosses are usually some sort of big, burly bastard who takes a ridiculous amount of damage to kill off, and if you aren't holding a ranged weapon (you'll never have a gun, because their ammo runs out reyt quick it does, you're best off trying to keep hold of the bullwhip..seriously, its the best weapon in the game), expect to get killed a lot as your guy rains punches down on them, all while taking damage.

One interesting, and somewhat funny, feature is the ability to kick someone while they're down. Basically, sometimes you will beat someone up to the point at which they fall to their knees, at that point if you move in close, you can knee them in the face, rabbit punch them, or even grab them by the collar and slam them around a bit before throwing them off to the side, where they make a handy improvised weapon if you have shitloads of assholes trying to administer a kicking in your direction.

The game lasts for a mere 6 levels, but trust me, if you're playing this game in an arcade, to get that far you'll probably have spent at least a tenner, and that's why they invented emulators.

The final boss is seriously weird, I wont spoil it but if you ever happen to play this game and get to him, you'll be having a serious "WTAF?" moment.

A curious thing about this game, which probably explains its difficulty, was that most examples of the cabinets that show up are 4 player set ups. Now, while most games would adjust the difficulty depending on how many players are currently shovelling money in, this game doesn't...because fuck you that's why!.

In 1991, the game was ported to the Sega Mega Drive, losing the real voice bits, most of the cartoony graphics, and the need to shovel in money in the process....the port was shite, but at least they replaced the M-16...with an AK-47..oh, and they made it single player only...yeah..thems were good times...

The game was also included in the Taito Legends collection, released for the PS2 and XboX, however this version, while being a more or less faithful port of the arcade version, removed all the blood and/or gore that appeared in the original....no longer did the level bosses splatter everywhere when they blew themselves up after being defeated by not Indiana Jones....shame.

Anyways, the game wasn't terribly well received at the time of release, primarily because it was designed to make you burn through money quick, regardless of how l337 your skills were, and secondly because of its flimsy plot and fairly bland action, that we had all seen before done much better by such games as Final Fight and Double Dragon.

Overall - 5/10

Comedy Spotlight - Carry On....

The "Carry On.." series comprised of 31 feature films, a TV series and a number of stage productions that were immensely popular in the UK starting from the late 1950s up until the late 1970s.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, who has lived in the UK since the beginning of the 1960s will have seen at least one of the Carry On films. In more recent years the films seem to have become a staple of bank holiday and weekend schedule fillers for the ITV network, although the BBC has shown some of them at some point.

Once regarded as the epitome of home grown British comedy offerings, recent years have seen the Carry On films being regarded somewhat unfavourably amongst critics, although it must be said that most of the complaints about the films seem to stem from criticism of the franchises later entries, which mainly favoured jokes based on bodily functions, sexual innuendo and objectification of women, as well as some elements of absurdest humour.

I, like most people of my age, first discovered the Carry on films via television, as the final film in the original series "Carry On Emmanuel" was released in 1978, a full two years before I was born, and the attempted reboot in the form of "Carry On Columbus" was released when I was 12, and being as it had a 15 Certificate, I was not able to watch it until it was released on video.

I have to say that my opinion of these films has changed somewhat over the years. When I was younger, I found the films to be somewhat hilarious due to their cheeky and titillating nature, however as I have gotten older, their constant repeats on TV has hammered home the fact that the films are a relic of a bygone age, and now many of the jokes in them are extremely dated,  and with many of the films bordering on being little more than poorly written soft core porn films.

For what they are, they represent a series of cheaply produced comedy films hailing from an era where cinema was still a strong entertainment medium and required film studios to come up with large amounts of commercial output for profit. As Television began to overshadow cinema, the quality of production on the films was noticeably much lower, and the films format changed in order to continue attracting adult audiences, with varying degrees of success.

Most of the films' humour comes from them pretty much being a feature length "sitcom" style format, characters are introduced, along with their foibles, fun is poked at them, stuff happens, there is a happy ending.
Some films produced in the mid 60s also attempted to parody popular film styles of the day, Carry On Spying lampooned the numerous spy films of the 60s, while Carry On Cleo mocked big budget historical epics, however they never really strayed from the tried and tested "sitcom" format.
The films also drew heavily from the vaudeville theatre circuit, and featured many stock characters familiar to theatre audiences such as the nagging wife and her henpecked husband, the dirty old man, the naive young promiscuous woman etc.

The films themselves can be broadly categorised into four "eras"...

1958- early 1963 - The "Family Entertainment" Era.
Films made in this era - Sergeant, Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Regardless, Cruising, Cabby




In the 1950s, television had yet to supplant radio and cinema as the preferred entertainment medium of the masses. So, as it stood, on a night time or on weekends, whole families would make their way to cinemas expecting to receive several hours of entertainment for the cost of only a few shillings. This, coupled with the decline of the theatre, meant that film companies were struggling firstly to produce material to fulfill audience expectations, and secondly to make material that would reap a reasonable return on their investments.
The 1950s saw an explosion of the so called "B-movie" genre, which more often than not would end up being a cheaply produced bit of filler produced in order to provide an afternoons entertainment to mainly working class families. As these films were cheaply made, they more often than not featured very simple and unchallenging plot lines on subjects that the audience could relate to. Westerns, sci-fi, war films and dramas were all made that fit in this category, however it wasn't until 1958 that producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas who had already worked together extensively on other films, teamed up to produce the first film in the Carry on series, "Carry On Sergeant". This first film set the format for nearly all the films that followed, as it cast B-list (ie, cheap) comedy performers into roles and made use of their talents by having them act in material that was relatable, in this case, young men doing national service and all the pitfalls and problems that came along with doing the two year mandatory military service required by the state at the time.
It also set the standard for writing for the remainder of the series, in which the producers assembled a large team of gag writers and required them to quickly churn out scripts that could be made on a modest budget and be entertaining without being too corny. Using this format, it enabled at least two films to be written and shot in a year, ensuring that audiences would have something to watch and the producers would be able to quickly sell their films to distributors.
The film was a great success and was soon followed up with Carry On Nurse, which was themed around the goings off behind closed doors in a hospital. Again, this film was successful as it managed to balance light entertainment style comedy with a romance story.
The successes kept coming in the form of  "Teacher" and "Constable", however the next film in the franchise, "Regardless", marked a change in the format.
"Carry On Regardless" departed from the usual sitcom style in favour of a series of related sketch comedy set pieces, centering on people who worked for an employment agency. The film itself ended up being successful, although as it didn't follow anything resembling a set plot line, much of it ended up on the cutting room floor for timing reasons.
The next film in the series "Cruising", was the first film to be made in colour, and returned to the traditional sitcom format, following the misadventures of two young women who go on a Mediterranean cruise looking for a change in lifestyle and also looking for love.
The final film in this era was "Carry On Cabby", which returned to being filmed in black and white, as the previous film had many cost over runs due to the expensive colour film it used. "Cabby" was a simple story about the owner of a taxi firm who neglects his wife and then ends up having to compete with a rival taxi firm who enjoys much success due to the fact that it only employs attractive women as drivers. It was at this point that the "light entertainment" style humour began taking a back seat to more adult oriented humour....

Late 1963 - early 1966 - The "Parody" Era.


Films made in this era - Jack, Spying, Cleo, Cowboy, Screaming

The final five films made in co-operation with Anglo-Amalgamated distribution ltd saw the carry on team depart from their usual send ups of every day life, and instead turn to lampooning popular film types of the era. "Jack" was a parody of period adventure films, "Spying" lampooned the various cold war spy thrillers of the 60s, "Cleo" had a pop at historical epics, "Cowboy" took on the Western genre and finally "Screaming" was an OTT pop at the various gothic horror films that were being pumped out by companies such as Hammer.
It was round about this time that the series' humour started to become much more "bawdy" in nature, becoming very reliant upon double entendres, innuendo and visual gags , losing a lot of its wit in favour of knob/fart jokes and thinly veilled sexual puns, that said, the films still remained popular in the UK, particularly amongst the working classes who had yet to purchase a television set.

Late 1966 - 1968 - The "Middling" Era.

Films made in this era - Dont lose your head, Follow that Camel, Doctor, Up the Khyber

 1966 saw a few changes, first and foremost, Anglo-Amalgamated decided that they no longer wished to pay towards the production or distribution of the Carry on films, mainly due to financial problems but also due to falling cinema audience numbers, but even more so because the new chairman of the board at Anglo-Amalgamated, Nat Cohen, disliked the Carry On films with a passion, and ordered them to be dropped.
With more and more family entertainment coming courtesy of the now much more affordable Television set, cinema began to fall out of favour amongst the film series core audience, so a rethink in format was required.
Having enjoyed some success with switching to a more adult oriented gag format, it was decided that the Carry On films would be aimed squarely at teenage/young adult audiences, thus allowing for more dirty jokes, sexual innuendo and so on.
As Anglo-Amalgamated had stopped distributing the films, a deal was struck with the rank organisation, which aimed to increase viewing figures by going for international distribution, however this came with a price. The first two films in the series dropped the "Carry On..." moniker altogether, as it as felt it would not mean anything to American audiences, plus it was also a moniker associated with Anglo-Amalgamated, who were one of Ranks biggest competitors.
"Follow that Camel" aimed to increase American viewers by including actor Phil Silvers in the cast, and he replaced a role intended for Sid James, who at the time was recovering from a heart attack.
"Don't lose your head" and "Follow that Camel" failed to engage American audiences, who simply didn't get the pun and innuendo laden humour, and they also performed rather poorly at the British box office, as people simply didn't know they were carry on films.
The next film in the series, "Doctor" saw the reinstatement of the "Carry On.." title, but was intended by Peter Rogers to be the last film made in the series. Unfortunately for him though, the film was a runaway success, so less than a year later, the cast was brought back in "Up The Khyber", which again was a runaway success.
By this time though, the films were starting to become laden with not only innuendo, double entendres and other lowbrow humour, they were also starting to show more and more semi-nudity, usually in the form of a scantily clad Barbera Windsor....things began to go downhill...


1969 - 1978 - The "Adult Comedy" Era

Films made in this era - Camping, Again Doctor, Up the Jungle, Loving, Henry, At your Convenience, Matron, Abroad, Girls, Dick, Behind, England, Thats Carry On!, Emmanuelle

The beginning of the 70s saw the film series hitting its lowest ebb.
On the one hand, the films were still enjoying a moderate amount of success at the box office, however on the other, critics of the carry on films had begun to notice the lower quality of the material, and the shoestring budgets the films were being made on.
The first film of this era "Camping", is probably the best known of the entire film series, not because it was a laugh a minute comedy fest, but simply because it was in this film that contains the infamous scene in which Barbera Windsors bra flies off, briefly exposing her breasts, other than that, the film is a simple low quality comedy about two men who are desperately trying to get their girlfriends to engage in sexual intercourse with them, but failing due to the girlfriends mothers. Sid James plays Sid Boggle, a role obviously intended for a much younger man. also, the film, which was supposed to show people on a camping holiday, was shot in winter, so most of the time the field that doubled as the camp site was swimming with mud and rainwater, and it was freezing cold...the cast weren't too impressed.
The films went on, producing more tired old gags, mostly revolving around sexually frustrated men in some fashion, however with the making of "At your Convienence", the "Carry On.." team dropped a massive bollock.
The mid 70s saw the beginnings of a few changes in British society. First and foremost, trade unions began to become an increasingly powerful force amongst the working classes, so, when "At your Convenience" decided to portray trade union members as lazy and dimwitted, the films core audience was none too impressed, leading to calls to boycott the film.
The producers quickly churned out "Matron" as a way of trying to gloss over the hideous insult they had just laid at the doorstep of their core viewership, returning to poking fun at the middle classes and the NHS, "Carry On Abroad" saw them poking fun at silly foreign people and ex-pats, who by the 70s had begin to flock to live overseas to escape the rapidly declining social conditions in the UK.
Another bollock was dropped when the film "Carry on Girls" mocked the concept of beauty pageants, but instead ended up insulting feminists and equal rights campaigners by basically being an excuse to have a film which spends most of its time having old and ugly men ogling scantily clad young women.

In 1972, it was decided to see if the concept of the films could be transferred to television, mainly as a way of breathing life back into the franchise but also as a way of getting some viewers back who had deserted the cinema. The series, entitled "Carry On Laughing" ran for 12 half hour episodes and starred many of the Carry On.. regulars in some form or another. Each episode would be in a different setting and would attempt to make fun of whatever time period or setting it was in, however due to the strict censorship requirements of TV, the crude gags were scaled back in favour of slapstick and carefully crafted double entendres...it wasn't a success, especially when held up against other sitcoms of the time, all of which had been specially crafted for TV by experienced writers used to working in the genre.

1974 saw the departure of many of the gag writers who had been with the series since the beginning, one of whom, Talbot Rothwell, actually suffered a nervous breakdown as the pressure to write more and more gags got too much for him.
1975s entry in the series "Behind" attempted to recapture some of the popularity of "Camping" by having the film based around a holiday camp type theme, again, it ended up being a dismal failure.


"Carry on England" followed in 1976, and pretty much abandoned the concept of "comedy" in favour of being little more than a soft core porn film, with numerous scenes of gratuitous female nudity throughout and with a young Patrick Mower playing a role intended for the recently deceased Sid James. The film was based on an unfilmed script left over from "Carry on Laughing" and featured hardly any of the usual Carry On regulars.

"That's Carry On!.." came along in 1977 and ended up being the final nail in the coffin for the Carry On.. series, as it was little more than a feature length clip show, with links done by Babs and Kenneth Williams, with all the jokes in those bits revolving around Kenneths urgent need to urinate, which he finally manages at the end of the film by pissing up a door.
Peter Rogers finally called it a day and decided that was enough and it was time to put the series to rest...but then one year later, a private investment company offered him £349,000 to make a film capitalising on the success of soft core comedy porn films such as the "Confessions of..." series, the end product of this venture being the truly awful "Carry on Emmanuelle", which manages to fail spectacularly as a comedy film by not being in any way funny, and fails as a soft core porn film as, oddly, there is no nudity on screen whatsoever, instead, the film rehashes numerous old double entendres and crude puns and reduces all of the Carry On regulars to being B characters, although it could be argued that this was a good thing being as that by now, most of those still featuring in the Carry On.. films were all somewhat old.

"Emmanuelle" was the last film in the series, although "Carry on Columbus" came along in 1992 and featured many alternative comedians as well as some who had appeared in the original films. The film wasn't terribly well received and since then numerous attempts to reboot the Carry On.. series have all ended in failure.

The Carry On.. series as a whole offers a window into the changes that occurred in British society over the course of nearly 30 years, but whereas they started off as being quite well written genuinely funny comedies, they soon devolved into little more than offensive smut.

Comedy Spotlights - Dave Allen

Dave Allen (Real name David Tynan O'Mahony) was an Irish comedian who enjoyed much career success throughout the 1960s and 1970s, before seeing a re-emergence during the early 1990s.

I first encountered Dave Allen during his careers second wind in the early 90s, when ITV aired a show named simply "The Dave Allen Show".
Immediately his comedy style struck a chord with me, as opposed to the alternative comedians of the time whose comedy mostly seemed to revolve around juvenile fart gags, slapstick and explaining how bad they were at relationships, Dave would sit and tell clever and engaging anecdotes about everyday occurances, all while calmly smoking a cigarette and sipping from a glass of what everyone assumed was whisky (most of the time, it was actually ginger ale).

In many ways his style was similar to another favourite of mine, Bob Monkhouse, insofar as that his stories were witty and were not prone to flights of fantasy or absurdity,  but at the same time they, like the comedy stylings of Monkhouse and Billy Connolly, were based on ordinary, every day observations.

It was only in later years, starting with the BBCs airing of "The Unique Dave Allen", that I learned something of this mans career, which stretched back to well before I was born, and was still as funny now as it had been back in the days when Dave was the BBCs number 1 comedy draw, and, somewhat different to the stuff I was used to from 1990s BBC comedy, which centred mainly on quick sketch style comedy such as "The Fast show" and "Harry Enfield & Chums".


Allen began his television career with an appearance on "New Faces" in 1959, which quickly saw him being snapped up to host pop music programs, due to his good looks, quick wit and his sense of dress. Prior to this, Dave had been a regular on the club scene and for a time worked at Butlins where he fleshed out his own style.
His big break did not come courtesy of the BBC however, instead, his first exposure to full time TV comedy came courtesy of Australian television, where while on tour there in 1963 he accepted a request to be the front man for a live American style chat show, his exposure and popularity soared as the show, titled "Tonight with Dave Allen" proved to be a big hit.
6 months into the gig however, he earned a ban from Australian TV when during an interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, he repeatedly ignored the producers signal to wind up the chat for a commercial break, eventually shouting at the producer to "go off and masturbate somewhere".
This of course wasnt well received by TV executives and the show was pulled form the schedules, however after a few weeks, the ban was quietly repealed as Daves popularity amongst viewers showed that they weren't really bothered about him swearing on television.

He returned to the UK in 1964, and after working almost continuously on the stage and making occasional TV appearances, he eventually secured a place on the Val Doonican show, which led to him getting his own show, which had a similar format to his Australian TV outing, in 1967.

The BBC came calling in 1968 and saw Dave begin the first major and continuously successful part of his career in Britain in the form of "The Dave Allen Show". In a change to his usual routine, the program saw him begin the format which would remain virtually unchanged for the rest of his career, as the Dave Allen show was a mix of sketch comedy sandwiched in with his familiar story telling, here the sketches would always relate to the monologue bits in some fashion.

For this portion of his career, his monologues would usually comprise of material relating to his life and upbringing as a catholic in Ireland, more often than not poking fun at the rituals and dogma of the catholic church, but also on its bizarre effects on peoples lives. Dave, who identified as an Atheist for most of his life, attracted much anger from christian viewers, who regarded his material to be offensive and blasphemous, doubly so during the sketch comedy elements where he would often dress as various religious figures such as priests and even on occasion as the pope himself, and would perform ridiculous and farcical routines mocking the church and all its trappings.
Much of Allens material from the late 60s through to the late 70s was based around religion in some form, not always Catholicism either, he also mocked Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Protestants mercilessly, prompting round after round of complaints to the BBC, who staunchly defended him, mainly because they received very high viewing figures off the back of his shows.
Religion was not his only source material though, he would also point out the absurdities of politics, including many jabs at controversial subjects such as apartheid, he would comment on the battle of the sexes, the concept of marriage and having children, on peoples working lives and sexual problems, he would comment on social inequality, social taboos and idiosyncrasies relating to stereotypes.
As many have pointed out, and many comedians that emerged during the 1980s have admitted, Dave Allen inspired many of the 1980s "Alternative" comedians insofar as he, unlike many of the popular "Club circuit" comedians of the time, such as Bernard Manning etc, eschewed racist, sexist and just downright offensive material.

During the 1980s, Dave began to fade from the spotlight, being seen as somewhat of a relic of a bygone age when people such as Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, Lenny Henry etc were all beginning to be popular amongst the youth audience, however Dave still continued to work for the BBC on a semi regular basis, producing comedy shows such as a series simply titled "Dave Allen", but also he began to act in more serious roles, namely in the works of playwright Alan Bennett.
Dave finally fell out with the BBC when in 1990, the 10pm airing of one of his shows on BBC 1 attracted a hitherto unheard of number of complaints from viewers about the amount of offensive language featured in the show, mostly his liberal use of the word "fuck". Dave laughed the complaints off, however the BBC, who had stood with him throughout the myriad complaints about his material over the years, had changed somewhat during the late 1980s, becoming far more politically correct and concerned about not causing offence in any way to any of their viewers (this policy has led to the BBC making some of the most bizarre choices over the years). Thus, they chastised the man who had brought in many viewers and been behind a lot of the most successful comedy shows the BBC had produced up to that point. The incident was even brought up in parliament and MPs debated over the use of swear words on television and whether there should be tighter censorship rulings.
Dave left the BBC in disgust later that year, going into semi-retirement, returning to screens briefly in 1993 to front a series for ITV which was similar to his usual monologue/sketch comedy, however after this his appearances on television become sporadic, however it did mark a change in his material, which became more observational based comedy, concentrating on social commentary about how the world was changing and how he was finding things becoming increasingly difficult as he got older.
He eventually returned to the BBC in 1996 for a 6 episode series titled "The Unique Dave Allen" in which he spoke about his life and career in comedy whilst linking to sketches and routines from his earlier work with the BBC, although he ruled out a full time return to TV as by this time, he was in his 60s and had had enough of the atmosphere in TV land.
He made various one off appearances in TV specials and on chat shows throughout the remainder of the 1990s and in the early noughties, as well as making a few live stage appearances, but by this time, many people had never heard of him and, mainly due to Daves dislike of "repeats", had never seen any of his earlier material, so he was seen as something of a strange curiosity in the comedy world.

Dave Allen died peacefully in his sleep in 2005, leaving behind his wife of 18 months, 3 children from his first marriage, and, 3 months after his death, his wife gave birth to his third child.

Fillum Review - hounddog (2007)

Ooh, a little bit different sort of fillum this time round, as there are no sci-fi trappings, machine guns, explosions, supernatural creatures or anything like that at all.

No, this time round we have a nice, gentle tale of a young girl living in 1950s rural America.

Well, "Gentle" is a bit of a misnomer really..why?, well, read on.

Dakota Fanning plays "Lewellen", a 12 year old girl who lives with her devoutly religious grandmother somewhere in the deep south. Although Lewellens father lives in the same town, his alcohol problem and womanising nature make him an unsuitable parent, and her mother died, so she would be an unsuitable parent as well.
Lewellen has a passion for the music of Elvis Presley, and spends a lot of the time singing his songs whilst copying his dancing, much to the ire of her grandmother who views rock and roll music as satanic in nature.


So, this film sounds pretty run of the mill stuff, however the film holds a reyt nasty surprise in store for those watching it and enjoying the genteel "yesteryear" atmosphere that permeates the films first half.

About half way through, it is announced that Elvis himself will be playing a date in Lewellens local town as part of a national tour, she is determined to go and see him, even though she cant afford a ticket. Her friend, Buddy, whom she has known for years, says he has managed to get a ticket for her, and leads her to a remote barn to retrieve it. Inside the barn waits "Woodens boy", a teenager who recently took over as the towns milk man. Buddy says that Woodens boy has a ticket for Elvis that he is willing to give to Lewellen, however in return he expects her to repeat a scene from earlier in the film where she did her Elvis dance in his presence...except this time round, she will be doing it naked.
In her naivety (she sees nudity more as a humiliation rather than a titillation), Lewellen agrees and strips before doing her Elvis dance...then, as Buddy looks on in horror, Woodens boy violently rapes Lewellen.


Yes...a 12 year old girl is raped on screen while her friend of the same age looks on.

the film was savaged by critics because of this one single scene, as they said that it was intensely disturbing that Dakota Fanning, who at the time of filming was 14 years old, took part in a scene which had implied nudity and culminated in a serious sexual assault on her person by a much older man. Fanning herself said simply "Its not really hapenning" and "its a movie, its called acting"", and the director skillfully avoided any sexually titillating and/or paedophiliac material by simply showing Fannings facial reaction as the horror of what was happening to her was realised.
The film does in fact feature quite a bit of nudity, both male and female, however it manages to make use of some very skillful camera angles, close ups and a few conveniently placed objects to ensure that at no point are any tits, fannies, arses or willies ever in view.

That said, even all this still shocked many, and this film led to the governor of North Carolina (where the film was made) passing a law which required all film makers to submit their shooting scripts to the local authority before filming begins there, so they could ensure that all scenes shot in the state were "tasteful" and/or "unoffensive".


Nevertheless, "hounddog" (sic) is quite an entertaining film, giving a well written window into the life of a child living in rural America in the 1950s, and, despite the nasty surprise waiting for viewers (which I have now spoilt, lol) the story goes on to a nice conclusion.

Worth a watch this be.