Ernie's Uncle Gabriel has just died but to claim his inheritance he must spend the night in the ancestral family home with the rest of his rather eccentric relatives. Ernie's imagination has been affected by his constant immersion in cheap horror novels but his wildest fears turn out to be justified when the guests begin to drop dead.
Made in 1960, Carry On Constable is one of the earliest Carry On comic romps, arriving before they'd carved out their bawdy niche in British cinema. In fact, this Gerald-Thomas-directed effort isn't dissimilar to most of the mainstream Brit-com of its era. A flu epidemic has forced a police station to take on a brace of callow recruits: Kenneth Connor, a superstitious bag of nerves; Leslie Phillips, playing his usual rapscallion self; the ludicrously effete Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams. The "plot" is a sequence of thoroughly creaky gags at the expense of this bumbling quartet. The staple characters hadn't settled into their "classic" personae yet. Here, Sid James is an exasperated sergeant, not the sort of crinkly rogue he played in later years, Kenneth Williams is dry, detached and supercilious, while Hattie Jacques is no matron but a sympathetic sergeant, whose every walk-on is not yet accompanied by the portly strains of tubas and bassoons. The comedy here is, frankly, dismal--banana skins are slipped upon and officers' legs urinated upon bydogs, all to a rueful soundtrack of wah-wah trumpets. The main appeal of this movie is as a period slice of damp, pre-Beatles London in glorious black and white.On the DVD: Although picture and sound are adequate (though poorly dubbed in places), there are no extras at all, a shame for the hardcore Carry On aficionados to whom this release would surely, perhaps exclusively, appeal. --David Stubbs
The Carry On which caused a national sensation when a daffodil replaced a thermometer - you know where! The Carry On team have picked up their stethoscopes and bed pans for a strong dose of hospital humour. Hattie Jacques is the infamous matron doing battle with the patients in the second series of the world famous Carry On series.
The marketing department of a pharmaceutical company decide to enlist a dentist to endorse its brand of toothpaste despite the fact that they would be struck off for doing so. They hire two post-graduates who sign the contracts without even reading them first. Declaring the toothpaste rubbish the graduates decide to make a better tooth-cleaner worthy of being struck-off!
The first of the Carry On movies, 1958's Sergeant is rather different from its successors, much more a film of its time (the latter days of National Service) and rather less a bawdy picture postcard. Sergeant Grimshaw (William Hartnell long before Doctor Who) is about to retire and hopes that he can get his last platoon into shape as Champion Platoon of its intake. Unfortunately, the new recruits include the clumsy Golightly (Charles Hawtrey), the barrack-room lawyer Bailey (Kenneth Williams) and the hypochondriac Horace Strong (Kenneth Connor). Love interest is provided by Bob Monkhouse and Shirley Eaton--newlyweds separated by the call-up and reunited by her taking a job in the canteen--and by the pursuit of Horace by Dora Bryan's Nora. The film relies heavily on a mixture of slapstick and paradoxical revelations of character complexity--the obnoxious Bailey nonetheless takes the trouble to coach the incorrigibly dense Herbert (Norman Rossington); the series' later obsession with low comedy only really emerges in the scenes between Horace and the medic Captain Clark (Hattie Jacques). The platoon's eventual coming together as other than total incompetents is predictable, but likable.On the DVD: The DVD has no frills whatever except for a widescreen picture and chapter selections; it has been cleaned up however so that we get a remarkably crisp mono picture and mono sound, which brings out the quality of the military-band score by Bruce Montgomery, who was also the writer Edmund Crispin. --Roz Kaveney
Grave Of The Vampire (Dir. John Hayes 1974): In a dark deserted graveyard populated almost exclusively by rotting corpses lies a 400 year old creature more undead than alive. It's been some time since he last fed and now he's hungry again... but this time he wants something more than blood! Disturbed by an amorous couple he ventures from the grave to bequeath his horrific legacy killing the boyfriend and planting the seed for his son and heir - a half-breed doomed to live in purgatory. Years later understanding his true nature the half-human vampire seeks to wreak his vengeance against his blood-sucking father culminating in a bloodthirsty and apocalyptic confrontation that goes straight for the jugular! Flesh Eating Mothers (Dir. James Aviles Martin 1989): On the rampage through small town America comes a new threat to national security... evil vicious mindless zombies mums with the ability to eat anyone anywhere anytime!
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