Carry on Emmannuelle

I have to say 'Carry On Behind' ranks as the last great 'Carry On' film; after that, they really do go downhill. But this one, I can't even think of many words to describe it. It's so bad that it's almost unwatchable.

Thomas and Rogers must have been disappointed with the final outcome. They were so used to brilliance, and so were the cast. What they made was a cheap, desperate attempt to suit a change in society.

I'm scarred by the look on Joan Sims's face as she tries to deliver her lines. When I read that Beryl Reid was in it, I was really excited to see it. A fabulous comedy actress-what a shame this was her first and last.

The worst film of all time? It's truly embarrassing, and it's just crude, but not even funny crude. I can't believe I got to the end. Hated it.

1/10.

Love 'em or loath 'em, a certain indefineable Englishness could always be distilled from the Carry Ons, even the ones set in Ancient Rome or The Wild West. They started out in black and white, stable mates to Norman Wisdom and assorted Ealing comedies and wound down two decades later when the permissive society has made their nudging winking humour obsolete. Through the years, the same actors kept resurfacing parodies of silly suburban Englishness: the leathery lecher Sid James, the squeaky blonde Babs Windsor along with demure Charlie Hawtrey, bulgy eyed Kenneth Williams, repressed matron Hattie Jacques and sharp faced nag Joan Sims. It was the repetition and safeness we cherished, the over the top boooiings! and deliberately crass innuendos, Babs' bra flying off amid stretching exercises and hitting a horror-struck Williams in the face: "Oooh! Matron! take them away!" Far from being 'sex comedies', the Carry Ons are also childishly innocent. None of the villains e.g. Bernard Bresslaw as Bunghit Din in 'Up the Kyber' are genuinely bad. Sid's ear is forever being grabbed by Sims before he can do anything with Babs. All of these elements are absent from Emmanuelle and the result is painful and repulsive. Rogers' dire payment of his actors meant they had little choice but to return time and time again to Rothwell's scripts. By 1978, Sid James was dead, Charles Hawtrey sacked and Jacques (along with Windsor Davies and Terry Scott) committed to better-paying BBC sitcoms. Barbara Windsor reportedly walked out on this one and it's puzzling that her close friend Williams didn't do likewise as he'd already been burnt by the wretched 'Hound of the Baskervilles.' Peter Butterworth, Joan Sims and Kenneth Connor chip in but you know a movie is in trouble when Benny Hill's straight man (Henry McGee) is brought along to make up the numbers. Attempting to capitalise on the success of the French 'Emmanuelle' movies, the old pre-feminist and pre-pill approach to sex is junked in favour of a movie where the elderly Williams is shown copulating with Suzanne Danielle. In her role as Emmanuelle Prevert (pervert get it...? Swiftian wit,we think) Danielle attempts to find satisfaction after Williams was castrated in a nude hand-gliding incident by bedding innumerable men, while a rubbish 'disco' number plays. Meanwhile, shy mother's boy Theodore falls for Danielle and the servants recall their own lamentably unsexy brushes with the permissive society. By the time of this movie's release, the Carry Ons were already dinosaurs and the 1974 effort 'Carry on Dick' was when the series should have been wound up. Other comedies of the time 'Confessions of a...' or 'Percy' have not dated well, but the sea side bawdiness of the 1960s Carry Ons will just about make them watchable on a Sunday afternoon. Not this effort, interesting only as a cruddy little snapshot of post-sixties, pre-Aids views on sex. With Emmanuelle, the Carry Ons died although the stake had to be sharpened one last time in 1992 when the even worse 'Carry on Columbus' rose from the coffin.

As the 'last' carry on it is often cited as the worst of the series (Along with the awful Carry on England). There's plenty of really bad d*** jokes, theres a couple of (very) soft porn scenes and some peeping toms. On the plus side there is a rather nifty pop tune 'love crazy' sounding very 70's. Kenneth Williams puts in a good performance even though it is an embarrassing movie (Credibility wise) however the rest of the remaining (whats left of the) carry on crew don't do much. I actually enjoyed this as a 'so bad its fairly good!' movie, plus any movie that sends up the 70's porn movie genre deserves a quick look!

The permissive society of the seventies led to a growing number of erotic films in both Britain and France. The two countries, however, often had very different approaches to erotica. The characteristic British erotic film of the period was the 'sex comedy', typified by the later 'Carry On' films as well as the 'Confessions' series, 'Percy' and cinematic versions of stage farces such as 'Don't Just Lie There, Say Something' and 'No Sex Please, We're British'. These films all started from the premise that sex is something intrinsically comic, and attempted to get laughs from innuendo, doubles ententes and smutty, sniggering humour about breasts, bottoms, penises and bodily functions.

The typical French erotic film of the period- characterised by the 'Emmanuelle' series- took quite the opposite approach. The 'Emmanuelle' films approach their subject with an almost reverential seriousness, and are filled not only with sex scenes but also with much tedious sermonising about the Meaning of Life (which generally means having as much sex as possible). Whereas the British made sex seem ridiculous, the French came close to making it seem boring.

'Carry On Emmannuelle' would therefore seem to represent an intriguing fusion of two quite different approaches to the erotic film. The 'Carry On' films were by no means uniformly bad. They were generally at their best in the fifties and sixties when they concentrated on exploiting a vein of humour which was later to be mined to great effect by Mel Brooks- the deliberate parody of an established film or television genre. Thus 'Carry On Cowboy' parodied the western, 'Carry On Cleo' the sword-and-sandal epic (especially 'Cleopatra' itself) and 'Carry On Constable' British TV cop shows such as 'Dixon of Dock Green'.

The 'Emmanuelle' films might be thought to offer plenty of targets to the parodist or satirist, with their misty, soft-focus photography, their stilted dialogue and their pretentious philosophising. 'Carry On Emmannuelle' does not, however, attempt to guy the affectations of its original models, but is made as a fairly standard piece of British sex comedy- the main difference between this and earlier 'Carry Ons' is that smutty innuendo has largely been replaced by direct sexual references. The only links to the original films are the name of the heroine (deliberately misspelled- apparently for copyright reasons), the fact that she is married to an older man who works for the French diplomatic service (in London rather than in Bangkok) and the fact that she is continually unfaithful to him. The actress who plays Emmannuelle, Suzanne Danielle, another long-legged, curly-haired brunette, has a passing resemblance to Sylvia Kristel, although she is more voluptuous and lacks the Dutch girl's delicate features. Emmannuelle's husband M. Prevert (a fairly common French surname meaning 'green meadow', but probably chosen in this instance because of its closeness to the English word 'pervert') is impotent, so she enjoys herself with any other man she can find, including a gallery of VIPs, an entire football team, various embassy servants and an Australian body-builder. (Unlike her namesake one-n Emmanuelle, who takes as many female lovers as male ones, two-n Emmannuelle seems to be exclusively heterosexual).

The film does not, however, generate any humour from Emmannuelle's frantic sexual couplings. It simply assumes that the fact that she seduces so many men is a hugely amusing joke in itself. The film's theme tune 'Love Crazy' (apart from being intensely irritating) is not appropriately named. Emmannuelle may be sex-crazy, but that is not the same thing. Love is not an emotion featured anywhere in this film. The script's attempts at wit are feeble in the extreme- a running joke about the butler Lyons, whose name Emmannuelle consistently mispronounces as 'Loins', is as about as good as it gets. There is the typical 'Carry On' assumption that any sexual or lavatorial reference is automatically good for a laugh. All genuine humour seems to have been surgically removed.

This is a good example of one of the most miserable types of film, the failed comedy. A wretched serious drama can at least provide inadvertent humour of the 'so-bad-it's-funny' kind. A wretched comedy cannot. 'Carry On Emmannuelle' is so bad it's unfunny. When she walked out on this film, Barbara Windsor showed a greater discernment than I thought she possessed. The producers of the 'Carry On' films seem to have agreed that it was a failure, because it persuaded them to wind up the series and we were spared more offerings of this nature in the eighties. The failure of the attempted revival 'Carry On Columbus' (another rat-wretched 'comedy') in the early nineties shows what a wise decision that was. 2/10.

Some years ago I saw Carry On England, and was appalled. It was utterly unfunny, execrable, sleazy drivel. (You guessed it – I didn't like it!) It also bore no relation at all to the previous Carry On films.

I had assumed that England was the last of the original series, and was surprised to see Carry On Emmannuelle recently listed in the TV schedules. Given the unadulterated rubbish that was the previous film, I had intended to give Emmannuelle a miss – but decided to record it just to take a look.

When I came to watch the film, I did so with my finger poised over the Erase button. But I was pleasantly surprised; the Erase button remained untouched. No, it's not a great film, or even very good, but it is OK. It is quite funny overall, and occasionally very funny indeed.

I also found the film to be extremely sexy. This is quite an achievement for a silly comedy, and is entirely due to Suzanne Danielle in the title role. She is simply stunning, with a magnificent body. But more than this, she plays the part with a charming innocence – hard to achieve when her character is engaged in promiscuous sexual acts (and frequently disrobed) throughout the movie. On the strength of her performance here (aged just 21) it is hard to understand why her career never really took off. Perhaps her appearance in this silly film marked her, or possibly her heart wasn't really in it (she left acting permanently when she married in 1988). Whatever, in this film she shines – she IS the film, and I found her more attractive, appealing and sexy than Sylvia Kristel ever was in the real Emmanuelle.

Some members of the old Carry On cast appear in this film, but only Kenneth Williams has a significant role. The others are really just part of the scenery. This is appropriate, since the film really has no place in the Carry On series. The original films (Carry On England excepted) were funny, joyful affairs. Innuendo and double entendres were famously rife, but were mild and included in an innocent, fun manner. There was never any overt sex or nudity on show. Emmannuelle, in marked contrast, is a film that is entirely centred on sex. Both sex and nudity are blatant and frequent. The nudity is mild, the sex never graphic (and more implied than depicted) but this film is nevertheless VERY different from previous offerings in the series. Innuendo has become statement of fact, double entendres are now bald sexual comments, and the script is far less clever.

Carry On Emmannuelle was obviously an attempt to update the series, a response to the changing mores of the movie (and real) world. It can realistically be characterised as a soft-porn comedy. As such, I feel that an enormous amount has been lost and nothing gained. The old films were clever, and they were fun. Not great contributions to the world of cinema, but hugely enjoyable. They have become a part of British life, discovered anew by succeeding generations, and of fond remembrance to adults who found them as children and enjoy dipping into them again occasionally when they appear on television. Carry On Emmannuelle will never achieve this status.

It's a pity. If the producers had made a film in the old mould perhaps the series could have continued. Or perhaps not. Possibly the original films were products of their time, and by 1978 their time had passed. Perhaps audiences enjoyed the re-runs of the old films on television, but wouldn't have paid to go to the cinema to see a new film in the same genre. Still, I would like to have seen the attempt made. As it is, the series ended with Emmannuelle. It had to. The film just wasn't good enough to garner a new audience, and was so far removed from the earlier films that the old audience were never going to transfer to the new film.

Carry On Emmannuelle is best viewed entirely apart from the previous films. There really is no connection to the series other than the reappearance of some of the same actors. Next to the old films, it is lost in a fog of disappointment and shock at what became of the series. However, judged as an entirely separate film I can say that I quite enjoyed it. It is far from outstanfding, but I found it more enjoyable than the average film. Eighty eight minutes were spent quite happily, and never dragged.

I fully understand why others might hold a very different opinion. The film is far less than the originals, and many who happily watch those films with their family will be appalled at the sexual content and nudity. If mild nudity and sexual content offend you, I recommend that you avoid the film entirely. Otherwise, why not take a look for yourself? (If nothing else, if you are male you will certainly enjoy Suzanne Danielle!)

If you do watch this film, please be sure to cast thoughts of other Carry On films from your mind and enjoy this silly but entertaining film on its own merits. Like me, you may quite enjoy the blend of mild sexual content and comedy on offer.

Rating - 6.5 / 10