Operation Bullshine

Probably more sexist than your average carry on film but if you are over 50 you should be able to enjoy this comedy without counselling.

The title of this review should clearly state my overall opinion of this film.

Within the first 5 minutes: the inaccuracies, blatant sexual bias and pure lack of respect for the women who served in the armed forces during WW2 was astounding.

As the male population decreased through injury or death - a new shield had to come to the fore.

Women worked in factories - clothes factories, weapons factories and munitions factories, raised much need funds, worked as farm hands for little or no pay, as labourers and fore(men) on road and rail projects, as nurses, as doctors and a whole myriad of other positions - formerly the sole purview of men - with all the inherent dangers but with so much less recognition.

Factories of any kind were targets for bombing - as were rail yards and most transport infrastructure. Munitions factories were not only a target - but the handling of highly volatile and unstable explosives could and did lead to catastrophic accidents.

This portrayal of women as mere 'decoration' is little short of a slap to the face, to those women who served this country in its time of deepest need - despite its last 5 minute "we're all together in this" ending.

Many would say that I'm over-reacting and that this film is "of it's time" - a puerile phrase that means nothing - but consider this... my mother has been deaf from age 16, the result of an explosion in the munitions factory she worked in and which also killed both her sisters.

This wartime army comedy was clearly made to cash in on the success of Carry On Sergeant.The clue being in the trailer on the DVD,which uses the words Carry On.Despite being made in colour this seems to have been made on a smaller budget than the Carry Ons.Most of the film is patently studio bound.There is a reasonable cast struggling to get laughs out of a mind and script.The one exception to this is ABPCs answer to Diana For a,Carole Lesley.Sadly she clearly has no talent for comedy and is wearing a fifties glossy hairdo.Her career ended in the sixties and she committed suicide when she was only 38.Dora Bryan shows her how to give a perfect comedy performance.

From the starting credits of images of women in their underwear I knew this wasn't going to be a homage to the girls who served in WW2. Nearly all the women were shown to be sex crazed man eaters who stopped to apply lipstick when the base was being attacked rather than manning their posts. It is dated and full of cliché after cliché. Give it a miss.

The soundtrack blares out 'Girls in Arms' and you suspect this was the original title of the film, from the same people who'd made the nautical farce GIRLS AT SEA shortly before. Certainly 'Operation Bull' is only an incident toward the end of the picture.

Naunton Wayne is the exasperated Major Pym, in charge of a World War Two anti-aircraft unit with women in the majority. They can get little right, with some competing for the affections of ladies' man Lieutenant Brown - Donald Sinden in the days before he acquired that extraordinary accent. When his wife Betty - the adorable Barbara Murray - is somehow posted to the unit, mistaken identities, misunderstandings and compromising situations are the inevitable result.

This is a likable mixture of farce and time-honoured comical army routines. Dora Bryan loses her skirt on parade, while Peter Jones is a weapons enthusiast with an unintelligible Stanley Unwin-type patter. Some years later, Jones also featured in the crude and mirthless CARRY ON ENGLAND, which had a similar theme and identical ending. Best moments though are the scenes between Brown and Betty, their relationship complicated by man-hungry Carole Lesley.