Don’t Lose Your Head (1966) - film review

In the early 1790s, a bloody tide of revolution sweeps across France.  Supporters of the old order, the châteauneuf-swigging aristocrats, are losing their heads by the cartload, thanks to a new nifty little device called the guillotine (the world’s first disposable razor).  The man charged with eradicating France’s hated nobility is Citizen Camembert, Robespierre’s chief of secret police, and his faithful stooge, Citizen Bidet.  The heads fall, the crowds roar and Camembert can look forward to a comfortable retirement.  Meanwhile, across the channel in England, life goes on as usual.  Sir Rodney Ffing and his friend Lord Darcy Pue have grown tired of their genteel life and, hearing about what is happening in France, they decide to embark on a great adventure.  Adopting various disguises, they make a habit of snatching the condemned aristos from the scaffold and smuggling them to the safety of good old England.  On each occasion, they leave behind a calling card depicting a pair of fingers, one with a black fingernail.  Understandably, Citizen Robespierre is none too pleased by this development and warns Camembert that if he botches the execution of the Duke de Pommfrit his will be the next head on the block.   Not only does the mysterious ‘Black Fingernail’ succeed in rescuing Pommfrit from right under his very nose, but Camembert assists in the beheading of his own executioner.   As he beats a hasty retreat to England, Sir Rodney evades capture with the help of a beautiful young French girl, Jacqueline.  The dastardly Camembert takes Jacqueline prisoner and devises a foolproof plan to use her as bait to catch the Black Fingernail...

The egalities and fraternities may have fallen by the wayside, but the Carry On team clearly couldn’t resist taking more than a few liberties with the French Revolution in this hilarious spoof of Baroness Orczy’s novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.  Don’t Lose Your Head was the first Carry On film to be made after the switch of distributor, from Anglo Amalgamated to the Rank Organisation.  Rank weren’t keen on the Carry On prefix and so it was dropped for this and the next film in the series, Follow that Camel (1967), but was hastily reinstated when these films fared poorly at the box office compared with previous Carry Ons.  

What is most striking about Don’t Lose Your Head is how lavish it looks, with its expansive and detailed sets, ornate costumes and appealing cinematography.  Visually, it compares well with the big budget period dramas of the time, even though, like most of the Carry Ons of this era, it was shot in just six weeks on a shoestring budget of £150,000 (Thunderball, the most recent Bond movie, had cost more than ten times that amount).   At this stage, the Carry On production team, which included some exceptionally talented designers and technicians, had made low budget filmmaking into an art.  The team had the good fortune to shoot much of the film on location at two stately homes, Cliveden House and Waddesdon Manor, (both within a stone’s throw of Pinewood Studios, where the Carry Ons were filmed), which upped the production values immensely.  

As well as being one of the most visually impressive of the Carry Ons, Don’t Lose Your Head offers a torrent of gags (from the ribald pen of Talbot Rothwell), served up with their usual mix of aplomb and eccentricity by the Carry On regulars.   Kenneth Williams and Peter Butterworth steal the show with their magnificent double act, with Charles Hawtrey and Jim Dale lending support in the visual gags department.  Meanwhile, Sid James’s impression of a Regency fop has to be seen to be believed (and even then it takes some believing) and, for once, Joan Sims gets to play the glamour girl, looking stunning in her period costume.  Dany Robin, a well-known French actress at the time, is the guest artiste, taking the part that would otherwise have gone to Angela Douglas.  (Not long after appearing in this film, Robin would marry Sid James’s agent, Michael Sullivan, and give up acting altogether.)  Playing the fearsome fun-loving psychopath Robespierre is Peter Gilmore, the future star of the long-running BBC television series The Onedin Line.   Jacqueline Pearce, later to be known as Servalan in the cult BBC TV series Blake’s Seven, appears in one brief scene.  As ever, there’s absolutely no shortage of talent on either side of the camera in this Carry On extravaganza.

In common with many of the Carry Ons, the standing of Don’t Lose Your Head has improved greatly since the film was first released.  With its exceptional production values, delightfully over-the-top performances and barrage of gags, it is one of the classier and more enjoyable entries in the series.  It is to be noted for the extended swordfight sequence at the end of the film, which is one of the longest of its kind in any British film (and certainly one of the funniest).

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This is one of the funniest Carry On films ever, a very clever spoof of The Scarlet Pimpernel and the French Revolution.  Sid James is on fine form as the Fingernail and Sir Rodney Ffing, Kenneth Williams is perfect as the mincing Citizen Camembert, Peter Butterworth, Charles Hawtrey and Joan Sims are all superb and there is a wonderful appearance from Dany Robin. One of the best.
Callum Barrington 

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