Follow That Camel (1967) - film review

Having disgraced himself during a game of cricket, Bertram Oliphant West (known to his friends as Bo) bids farewell to his sweetheart, Lady Jane Ponsonby, and enlists in the French Foreign Legion.  Accompanied by Simpson, his faithful manservant, Bo arrives at the garrison at Sidi Bel Abbes, which is ruled with an iron fist by Commandant Burger and his adjutant Capitaine Le Pice.  Nocker, the training sergeant, makes life Hell for the new recruits, until they let slip that they saw him amusing himself in the backroom of Madam Zigzig, the owner of a local café-cum-brothel.  Sheik Abdul Abulbul, the fearsome leader of the Touaregs, abducts Bo, Nocker and Simpson and takes them to his desert camp.  Here, the legionnaires learn that the Sheik intends to launch an all-out attack on the Legion fort of Zuassantneuf.  Bo can hardly believe his eyes when he sees his beloved Lady Jane in Sheik Abdul’s harem.  She had followed him from England to tell him that he is no longer in disgrace, only to end up being captured by the Sheik.  Sergeant Nocker manages to slip away and get back to the garrison at Sidi Bel Abbes.  Learning what the miserable Touaregs are planning, the Commandant rounds up a small relief force and marches on to Fort Zuassantneuf, picking up Bo and Simpson on the way.  They arrive too late.  The garrison has been wiped out.  Sheik Abdul is not the kind of man who leaves a job half done...

When Sid James was unavailable to appear in the fourteenth Carry On film, a spirited send-up of P.C. Wren’s classic novel Beau Geste, producer Peter Rogers seized the opportunity to cast a major American star in his place, hoping to boost the popularity of the Carry Ons in the lucrative American market.  Phil Silvers was an obvious choice, since his television series (in which he played the immortal Sergeant Bilko) was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Despite Silvers receiving top billing, Follow That Camel failed to have any real impact on the box office receipts, either in the UK or in the US.  Like the Carry On that immediately preceded it, Don’t Lose Your Head (1966), this film was notably less successful than the previous Carry Ons, owing to the bizarre decision taken by the distributors, Rank, to drop the Carry On prefix in the title.  When Rank reinstated the prefix for the subsequent films, the audience numbers showed a massive increase, an illustration of the power of branding.

Phil Silver’s presence in this Carry On was resented by the rest of the cast, particularly as he was paid considerably more than they were.  (Pay was always a bone of contention with the Carry On regulars, many of whom never saw an increase in their earnings across the films they worked on.  None of the cast were offered residuals of any kind, despite several appeals to the producer to offer them a small share in the colossal revenues that the films have garnered since they were made.)  Kenneth Williams was particularly antagonistic towards the film’s star, and ridiculed his short term memory loss problem.  Silvers’s memory was by this stage so bad that he had to read virtually all of his lines from cue cards, held just to the side of the camera.  This antagonised the Carry On regulars enormously, since they were expected to have committed their lines to memory and give a perfect performance in just one or two takes.

Whilst these backstage tensions are not noticeable on screen, the film is a somewhat less jolly affair than previous Carry Ons.  The jokes are there in abundance but the warmth and playfulness that audiences had grown to expect from the Carry Ons is less apparent, and this is largely down to Silver’s presence, which eclipses some of the contributions from the other actors.  Fortunately, some of the regulars still manage to shine.  Kenneth Williams is hilarious as an Erich von Stroheim-style German officer, going well and truly over-the-top and loving every minute of it.  Jim Dale and Peter Butterworth make a terrific double act, the latter being particularly memorable for his outrageous drag number.  The best of the bunch is Bernard Bresslaw, who does a nice wide-eyed, deep throated impression of Anthony Quinn as the sabre rattling Bedouin leader Sheikh Abdul, a complete contrast to the gentle giant the actor would play in other films, such as Carry On Camping (1969).  If Joan Sims and Angela Douglas have less of an impact it is probably because their parts were, as was often the case, underwritten.

Whilst it may not be the funniest of the Carry Ons, Follow That Camel does have production values that are way above the norm.  Camber Sands in East Sussex is a convincing stand-in for the Sahara Desert, thanks mainly to Alan Hume’s imaginative cinematography, which mimics David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) brilliantly. (Who would think the location scenes were shot on a tiny English beach in a freezing cold February?).  The authentic recreations of the garrison town and the desert fort look as though a million dollars had been spent, rather than the tuppence ha’penny that was probably what they cost.  Follow That Camel may not be the most memorable or popular of the Carry Ons, but, visually, it is one of the most impressive, and it still offers plenty of belt-bursting laughs.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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