Carry on Cowboy (1966) - film review

Stodge City is a peaceful, law-abiding Midwest town, or at least it was until the Rumpo Kid showed up and began raising Hell.  Once the Kid has disposed of the sheriff, the town descends into lawlessness, and soon the looting and shooting gets completely out of hand.  Some, such as saloon owner Belle Armitage and the town’s coffin maker, welcome the change, finding it good for business.  One man who does not approve is the doddery Judge Burke, who sends a cable to the Commission for Internal Affairs in Washington, pleading for a new sheriff to be sent as soon as possible.  Coincidentally, Marshall P. Knutt, a sanitary engineer from England, finds himself in the Commissioner’s office just as Burke’s cable is received.  Mistaking Knutt for a real marshal, the Commissioner sends him to Stodge City, confident that he will do a good job of cleaning up the town.  Having learned that a new marshal is on his way, the Rumpo Kid decides to ambush him before he reaches the town, enlisting a tribe of easily corruptible Indians led by Chief Big Heap.  Fortunately, Knutt shares his stagecoach with sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who is heading to Stodge City to kill the man who shot her father, the recently deceased sheriff.  With Annie’s help, Knutt reaches his destination unscathed, but is panic-stricken when he realises that he has been mistaken for a lawman.  How can he, a mere drainage engineer, armed only with a set of sink plungers, take on the likes of the Rumpo Kid and restore order to Stodge City?  Is he a tougher Knutt than he seems?

For their eleventh offering of bawdy knockabout comedy, the Carry On team apply their talent for merciless mimicry to one of cinema’s most popular genres, the classic western.  Whilst it may lack the sophistication of the other Carry On spoofs, Carry On Cowboy successfully parodies a genre which, with its abundance of caricatures and clichés, is probably more ripe for sending up than any other.  Alas, the innuendo count continues its inexorable rise (ahem), although the jokes are still of the saucy postcard kind rather than the tasteless vulgarity of the latter Carry Ons. "My, but you got a big one!" says Joanie in admiration, to which Sid proudly quips: "I’m from Texas, ma’am. We all got big ones down there."  Vintage stuff, of a kind.

Not surprisingly, the budget didn’t stretch to a location shoot on the prairies and mountains of Arizona, but why bother going so far afield when Chobham Common in Surrey is such an obvious stand in?  Once again, the production team achieve marvels with their shoestring budget and Carry On Cowboy often does look like it was filmed on the set of a Hollywood western.  The biggest problem that beset director Gerald Thomas was getting something that even approximated to a Midwest accent out of his cast members.  Clearly, sustaining an American accent across the length of a feature film was not a skill that any member of the Carry On team could honestly put on his or her C.V.  Not that it matters.

Two much-loved Carry On stalwarts make their debut here – Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth, although we should note that Bresslaw’s feet had previously appeared in Carry On Nurse, standing in for Terence Longdon’s (which were unavailable at the time).  Future Doctor Who and Worzel Gummidge Jon Pertwee makes one of his cameo appearances, hilarious as the myopic, half-deaf sheriff.  As ever, it is the Carry On kings, Sid James and Kenneth Williams, who give most value, turning scripted nougats into comedy gold, aided and abetted by Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims and Jim Dale.  Definitely not the best in the series, but Carry On Cowboy still manages to deliver a fair quota of laughs and is, despite the dodgy accents and slight surfeit of double entendre, a respectable spoof of an enduring genre.  It is, however, nowhere near as rip-roaringly funny as the Goodies’ Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms...

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