Day 19/19 - Carry on Cleo (1964)

According to Wikipedia, the Carry On comedy series is the longest running British film series, producing 31 films from 1958 through 1992. The humor of the series follows the tradition of the Music Hall skits and “seaside postcards.” I used to enjoy the Carry On series in the 1960s while in college and then later when television would carry them.

The entire series was produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas, always on a strict budget and employing the same crew and “the Carry On Team” of actors.

Carry On Cleo (1964) parodies the 1963 Taylor/Burton Cleopatra.  In one of her first scenes, Cleopatra is seen in her bath wearing a terry-towel cotton bathing cap similar to a bizarre one Taylor wore in her film. Another costume is obviously based on one of her film costumes. At another point, for example, when Cleopatra is brought bundled in a rug, Caesar unrolls her into a table covered with fruit and she ends up with grapes draped on her costume for the rest of the scene. Later, a Soothsayer looks in a fire to show what will transpire (Cleopatra Taylor does a similar scene to see the death of Caesar).

Some commentators says that the lavish sets and costumes were left over from the Taylor/Burton production, but I think they mean the earlier aborted attempt to film Cleopatra in Britain when Taylor was to star Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd. A note on IMDB says that “some interior sets in this film were from the play Caligula, and had been supplied by Victor Maddern, who bought them for £155 when the play closed and loaned them for the film for £800. 

The cast of this film stars Sidney James (Mark Antony), Kenneth Williams (Julius Caesar), Joan Sims (Calpurnia), Kenneth Connor (Hengist Pod), Jim Dale (Horsa), Charles Hawtrey (Seneca), and Amanda Barrie (Cleopatra) whose specialty as her large Orphan Annie eyes.

The film begins with two primitive Britons captured by Romans and taken to Rome as slaves. Briton jokes include Hengist’s having invented a square wheel which won’t roll backwards and his mother-in-law having been eaten by a brontosauros (even though this is supposed to by 44 BC). 

Mark Antony is sent to Egypt where he kills Cleopatra's brother and agrees to kill Caesar.

When the slaves arrive in Rome, they escape from the slave market and end up at the House of the Vestal Virgins. Horsa fights a group of soldiers and knocks them out; Caesar mistakes Hengist for the hero and appoints him as head of his guards.

Mark Antony convinces Caesar to go to Egypt to settle make a treaty with Cleopatra, in the meantime intending to kill Caesar. They all (except Calpurnia) end up at Cleopatra’s palace where the Britons get their freedom and return to happy marriages in Briton, Caesar returns to Rome and is killed in the Senate, and Cleo and Tony end up in the milk bath together.

The film is light and fairly funny and as parody makes no attempt at historical accuracy. 

The acting is not very memorable. Amanda Barrie plays a wide-eyed vacuous beauty. Tony if one of the bumbling generals, Caesar is a fey, his wife is a harridan, and Hawtrey’s Seneca (Caesar’s father-in-law) often reminds me of John Hurt.

Carry On Cleo (1964) ** (available on DVD)