Carry on Behind (1975) - film review

The renowned archaeologist Professor Roland Crump arrives at a British caravan site to excavate the remains of a Roman settlement.  He is accompanied by Professor Anna Vooshka, whose unfamiliarity with the English language will lead to many a misunderstanding as they set about uncovering the secrets of the past.  Butcher Fred Ramsden and his buddy Ernie have a different kind of uncovering in mind when they turn up in their caravan.  Their wives think they are on a fishing holiday, and indeed they are, although what they hope to catch are not mackerel but pretty young things with a liking for the older man.  The other holidaymakers include a young couple with an errant wolfhound and an older couple accompanied by their nagging mother-in-law and a Mynah bird that swears like a trooper.  None of the above knows that the camp site is built on an old Roman mine which could collapse at any moment...

The first of the really bad Carry Ons, Carry on Behind visibly suffers from the loss of the series’ stalwart writer, Talbot Rothwell, and the popular regulars.  Jim Dale had long departed to embrace a more diverse career in film and theatre, Charles Hawtrey had been dropped a few years earlier, Sid James was busy with theatre commitments, and Hattie Jacques and Barbara Windsor were likewise unavailable.  Windor Davies, the star of the popular BBC television sitcom It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, is a poor replacement for Sid James, and producer Peter Rogers’s decision to hire German film star Elke Sommer as the film’s glamorous lead was perhaps not the wisest move.  The fact that Ms Sommer was paid far more than the other Carry On stars did little to endear her to the rest of the cast and she is so obviously the film’s weakest point, saddled with tired language mis-interpretation gags of the "We shall be soon having it off" variety.      

With Talbot Rothwell out of the frame, the task of writing this Carry On fell to Dave Freeman, a prolific screenwriter who had scripted Gerald Thomas’s Bless This House (1972) a few years earlier.  Freeman was considered a safe pair of hands – he had written for the Carry On Christmas specials for television and the spin-off series Carry On Laughing – but his own two Carry On films – Carry On Behind and Carry On Columbus – are regarded as two of the weakest entries in the series. 

This is the first Carry On in which the ensemble cast fails to gel and consequently feels like a badly constructed compilation movie.  This is partly because we miss the old regulars, but mainly because the screenplay is such a mess.  There are one or two good gags and a very poignant scene with Joan Sims and Peter Butterworth (which almost merits a BAFTA), but it is clear that Carry on Behind is just a shoddy rehash of Carry On Camping (1969).  The harmless innuendo of that earlier film is replaced with coarser humour and overt sexual references that make this much less suitable for a family audience.  By this stage, the Carry On films were desperately trying to keep up with other British sex comedies, but as can be seen here they were just falling behind and beginning to scrape the bottom. Surely the Carry Ons couldn’t get any worse than this...?

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