Operation Bullshine

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.

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.

During WWII, women join an ack-ack battery in the countryside and cause discombobulation between the male soldiers.

Despite its decent cast, viewed today this is a very sexist comedy indeed that seems men are merely drooling idiots around women or assume that women are not fit to be in the army and merely a distraction. Add to that sadly the film contains very few laughs.

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.

For its time (1959, film censorship was still quite strong), "Operation Bullshine" is a fairly piquant comedy; it certainly anticipates the bolder sex farces of the 1960s, and even contains some discreet almost-nudity. The Technicolor cinematography is colorful, and the new Region 2 DVD transfer is quite pleasing to the eye. Unfortunately, the film does not have enough big laughs; only a sequence near the end, where all the men and women of the unit must prepare in record time for an upcoming inspection, has a real comic rhythm. There is not much story, either; the film is basically a series of episodes. Painless but not very memorable. ** out of 4.