"Director: Gerald Thomas"

• Carry On Matron | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £11.50   |  Saving you £1.48 (17.39%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Hattie Jacques finally got to the play the title role in 1972 when Carry On Matron immortalised the character she had developed during several previous outings, most notably in Carry On Doctor. And she seized it with gusto. This is no one-dimensional performance, but a very human portrait of a woman doing her best to retain her authority in the face of mounting chaos--a raid planned by Sid James to steal the hospital's supply of contraceptive pills. Certainly, she's obsessed with regular bowel movements--this wouldn't be a Carry On film otherwise--but she remains a majestic figure of dignity with a touch of human warmth. Occasionally, too, a real hint of irony peeks through the slapstick and the innuendo. Surely scriptwriter Talbot Rothwell had his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek when he gave Barbara Windsor--then married to Ronnie Knight--a the line, "I don't fancy being a gangster's moll!" Terry Scott makes a guest appearance and Sid James is at his most conniving and lecherous. Theatre impresario Bill Kenwright has a cameo role and there's an early appearance from Wendy Richard as a prototype Pauline Fowler. But it's the female stalwarts who shine. Joan Sims and Hattie Jacques truly were comic actresses of the highest order. On the DVD: Presented like most of the other Carry On DVD releases in 4:3 picture format and mono soundtrack, this release has all the comfy quality of a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of the television. But where are the extras? It's one thing to launch a highly popular series of films as classic entertainment, but they deserve more than the budget treatment. As always, a cast list, some sort of documentary extra and biographies of at least the key players would really do them justice. --Piers Ford

• Carry On Don't Lose Your Head | DVD | (17/02/2003) from £6.64   |  Saving you £6.35 (95.63%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Carry On Don't Lose Your Head parodies the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel, with crinkly cackling Sid James as master of disguise the Black Fingernail and Jim Dale as his assistant Lord Darcy. He must rescue preposterously effete aristocrat Charles Hawtrey from the clutches of Kenneth Williams' fiendish Citizen Camembert and his sidekick Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth). The Black Fingernail is assisted in his efforts to thwart the birth of the burgeoning republic by the almost supernatural stupidity of his opponents, who fail to recognise the frankly undisguisable Sid James even when dressed as a flirty young woman. What with an executioner who is tricked into beheading himself in order to prove the efficacy of his own guillotine, it's all a little too easy. As usual, no groan-worthy pun is left unturned, or unheralded by the soundtrack strains of a long whistle or wah-wah trumpet. This is pretty silly stuff even by Carry On standards, with most of the cast barely required to come out of first gear and an overlong climactic swordfight sequence hardly raising the dramatic stakes. Most of the humour here resides neither in the script nor the characterisation but in the endlessly watchable Williams' whooping, nasal delivery (occasionally lapsing into broad Cockney) and the jowl movements of the always-underrated Butterworth. --David Stubbs

• The Big Job | DVD | (21/02/2011) from £8.00   |  Saving you £7.99 (99.88%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A gang of hapless crooks led by Sidney James successfully perpetrate a robbery only to be caught after the fact. Fifteen years later they emerge from prison intent on retrieving their stolen loot - and discover a police station has been built over its hiding place. Sylvia Syms Dick Emery Jim Dale and Joan Sims co-star.

• The Iron Maiden | DVD | (22/02/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Aviation designer Jack Hopkins is notably absent from his creation's latest test flight. He is, in fact, many miles away indulging his greatest passion: an old showman's traction engine called The Iron Maiden! Jack has his heart set on entering the prestigious Annual Steam Rally at Woburn Abbey, but hadn't reckoned on some fierce and devious opposition!Michael Craig is the engineering genius whose hobby spells trouble for boss Cecil Parker, with Alan Hale Jr. as the tycoon who eventually comes to share his passion in this stellar comedy from Carry On's Gerald Thomas. The Iron Maiden is presented here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its original theatrical aspect ratio.SPECIAL FEATURES:UK and foreign trailer materialAlternative US titles (mute)Image galleryPromotional material PDFs

• Carry On Collection Vol.2 | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £9.00   |  Saving you £3.99 (44.33%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Titles Comprise: 1. Carry On Regardless: It's non stop romps as the Carry On team deliver the goods in one of the rudest and funniest of the Carry On films. The cast are all on top form as a bunch of no-hoppers who join an agency in the search for a job. The anarchy mounts as they do a series of odd jobs including a chimps tea party trying to stay sober at a wine tasting and demolishing a house. 2. Carry On Cruising: A life on the ocean wave with the Carry On crew! Sid James is the long-suffering Captain of the luxury cruise liner S.S. Happy Wanderer a ship full of misfits who don't know their portholes from any other holes! It isn't long before the luckless passengers mix with the hopeless crew to raise titanic laughs on the ship of fools. 3. Carry On Jack: Able seaman Poop-Decker (Bernard Cribbins) signs up for adventure on the high seas with the wicked Captain Fearless (Kenneth Williams). Those swabbing the decks include Juliet Mills Charles Hawtrey and Donald Houston. 4. Carry On Cabby: Charlie (Sid James) owner of the Speedee Cabs company finds he has some serious competition when his wife Peggy (Hattie Jacques) sets up a rival firm consisting only of glamorous female drivers.

• Sid James Collection - Comic Icons | DVD | (14/05/2007) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Featuring: 1. The Big Job (1965) 2. The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) 3. Make Mine A Million (1959)

• Twice Around The Daffodils | DVD | (30/04/2012) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  From the team behind the Carry On films Twice Around The Daffodils focuses on the nurses and patients of a British TB ward.

• Carry On Cruising | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £7.55   |  Saving you £5.44 (72.05%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A life on the ocean wave with the Carry On crew! Sid James is the long-suffering Captain of the luxury cruise liner S.S. Happy Wanderer a ship full of misfits who don't know their portholes from any other holes! It isn't long before the luckless passengers mix with the hopeless crew to raise titanic laughs on the ship of fools. Carry On Cruising is the sixth Carry On film and the first in colour and stars all the Carry On favourites including Sid James Kenneth Williams Kenneth Connor Joan Sims and Lance Percival.

• Carry On Screaming | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £7.34   |  Saving you £5.65 (76.98%)   |  RRP £12.99

  One of the funniest Carry Ons ever! Who is stealing virgins and turning them into shop-window mannequins? What is the meaning of the gigantic hairy finger found at the scene of the latest crime? What clues can the mad professor or his deathly pale and impossibly buxom sister provide to the hopeless Detective Bung?

• Carry On Sergeant | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £6.23   |  Saving you £6.76 (108.51%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Fall in for the first ever film in the highly successful Carry On comedy series - now an acclaimed British institution. Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey are the prankish misfits who become the hilarious bane of Army Officers existence when he makes a bet he will turn them into 'Star Squad' Award soldiers - or bust!

• Carry On Constable | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £7.20   |  Saving you £9.79 (135.97%)   |  RRP £16.99

  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

• Carry On Abroad | DVD | (17/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  One of the last decent Carry On movies, Carry On Abroad is a 1972 venture into the world of package holidays. After this, the series descended into unfunny coarseness as opposed to camply laboured double entendre, culminating in the dreadful Carry On Emanuelle. Here, publican Sid James and dutiful mother's son turned sex maniac Charles Hawtrey are among a brace of Brits heading for the "paradise island" of Elsbels. Kenneth Williams is the out-of-his-depth tour operator, reverting to the sort of effete types he played in the 1950s, Peter Butterworth a pre-Manuel-style manager of a half-built hotel. A series of disasters ensue, with the entire gang landing up in jail following a fracas in a brothel at one point, but everyone finds romantic and sexual fulfilment in a quaint disco finale. This includes a gay character who is "dissuaded" from his homosexuality in a typical example of the thoroughly reactionary subtext that constitutes the really naughty bit of most Carry On films. Nonetheless, this throwback to an imaginary time when the lewdest innuendo of a dirty old man was greeted by young females with a flirty "Ooh, saucy!" is enjoyable on condition that you enter into its seaside-postcard spirit. June Whitfield is fine as a sexually uptight wife, Kenneth Connor a model of red-faced frustration as her wimpish husband. On the DVD: Sadly, no extra features except scene selection. The picture is a 4:3 ratio full-screen presentation. --David Stubbs

• Carry On Spying | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £7.55   |  Saving you £5.44 (72.05%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Carry On favourite Barbara Windsor makes her debut in this outrageous send-up of the James Bond movies. Fearless agent Desmond Simpkins and James Bind aided and abetted by the comely Agent Honeybutt and Agent Crump battle against the evil powers of international bad guys STENCH and their three cronies.

• Tommy Steele Collection | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This box set features the following films: The Duke Wore Jeans (Dir. Gerald Thomas) (1958): Comedy about a cockney lad who pretends to be a Lord in order to woo a South American princess It's All Happening (Dir. Don Sharp) (1963): Billy Bowles (Tommy Steele) is an A & R talent co-ordinator who has grown up as an orphan. He returns every Saturday to the place he grew up. The sentimental Billy arranges a recording session and a benefit performance to help the orphanage. He gathers a bevy of song and dance professionals in the spirit of Andy Hardy and puts on a show the kids will never forget. The Tommy Steele Story (Dir. Gerard Bryant) (1957): This is the story of the early life and rise to fame of Tommy Steele . His manager wanted him to be a tough rock'n'roller and so challenge Elvis Presley but Tommy was just too nice. Tommy The Toreador (Dir. John Paddy Carstairs) (1959): Tommy is a happy sailor travelling the world singing his favourite songs. When he visits Spain he gets mistaken for a famous bullfighter and somehow ends up in the bull-ring facing a very angry bull and an expecting crowd!

• Carry On Cabby | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £6.46   |  Saving you £10.53 (163.00%)   |  RRP £16.99

  A rare Carry On with more interest in having a proper plot than tossing off gags every line, Cabby is also one of the friendliest of the series, built around the relationship between a cackling but good-hearted Sid James and an unusually touching Hattie Jacques. Sid's so obsessed with his taxi business that he neglects his wife, spending their wedding anniversary driving expectant father Jim Dale to and from the maternity hospital on a false alarm that naturally pays off with a delivery in the back of the cab. This drives Hattie to set up her own rival firm ("Glam Cabs"), employing dolly birds in tailored uniforms to undercut the likes of Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey. It ends happily, with a pair of hold-up men trapped in a ring of taxis and the marriage saved. Among the expected Carry On bits: Connor in drag, Amanda Barrie in a corset, Hawtrey in a leather jacket as a devout rambler ("We like to go as far as we can"), Liz Fraser as Connor's perky intended. Kenneth Williams is missed, but his role as the obnoxious shop steward (Carry On producer Peter Rogers never missed a chance to be nasty about the unions) is ably taken by Norman Chappell. Other familiar faces are Bill Owen, Peter Gilmore, Milo O'Shea, Renee Houston and Michael Ward as the tweedy businessman who has apparently left a pearl earring in the back of Connor's cab. On the DVD: No extras, but it's a smashing widescreen presentation of a pristine black and white print. --Kim Newman

• Carry On Collection Vol.1 | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £12.65   |  Saving you £0.34 (2.69%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Titles Comprise: 1. Carry On Sergeant: Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey are the prankish misfits who become the hilarious bane of Army Officers existence when he makes a bet he will turn them into 'Star Squad' Award soldiers - or bust! 2. Carry On Teacher: When a well-loved headmaster decides to retire his scheming pupils have other ideas. The cunning boys unleash a campaign of practical jokes armed with gin itching power and bombs! No one is safe from the classroom havoc in this Carry On starring all the regulars including the immortal Kenneth Williams Charles Hawtrey Hattie Jacques Kenneth Connor and Joan Sims. 3. Carry On Nurse: 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 of the world famous Carry On series. 4. Carry On Constable: Police Sergeant Wilkins (Sid James in his Carry On debut) has a new batch of inept recruits on his hands whose idea of covert surveillance involves dressing up in drag.

• Carry On Vol.1 | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £17.53   |  Saving you £-4.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This Carry On collection includes the following films: Carry On Up The Khyber: British India 1895. The Burpas are revolting but then again 'The Devils In Skirts' who guard the Khyber Pass are not too inviting either! Can Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond (Sid James) prevent the scheming Khasi of Kalabar (Kenneth Williams) from starting a full blown rebellion massacring thousands of innocent people ending British rule and making his kushy job obselete? Can he rely on the help of the wayward Brother Belcher (Peter Butterworth)? And can he prevent the secret concerning the 3rd Foot and Mouth Regiment from becoming common knowledge among the natives? All will be revealed in this masterly tale of passion greed and missing underpants! Carry On Doctor: Frankie Howerd plays Francis Bigger a charlatan faith healer who ends up in hospital and what a hospital it is! Dr. Kilmore (Jim Dale) seems more interested in the staff nurses and Dr. Tinkle (Kenneth Williams) dismisses all ill health as a weakness. The Matron (Hattie Jaques) can cure any medical problem with a frosty glance and the nurses are always raising the blood pressure of the patients in the male ward.... much to their delight of course. Carry On Don't Lose Your Head: Carry On laughing until you have hysterics but...Don't Lose Your Head as the Carry On team destroy everything sacred about the classic story of the Scarlet Pimpernel set during the French Revolution. Sid James stars as the Black Fingernail always one jump ahead of Citizen Camembert and Citizen Bidet... Carry On Follow That Camel: When the carry on team head for the sea of sand there's a legion of laughs to be had plus pure gold in the raucous performance of 'Bilko' star Phil Silvers as Sergeant Nocker. Can fresh Foreign Legion recruits 'B.O.' West (Jim Dale) and his faithful manservant Simpson (Peter Butterworth) help defeat the ruthless Sheikh Abdul Abulbul (Bernard Bresslaw)? Find out in the hysterical historical spectacular featuring a host of harem beauties a bevy of blood thirsty Bedouins and a troupe of Legionnaires getting the hump!

• Carry On Cabby | DVD | (27/02/2017) from £6.21   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A rare Carry On with more interest in having a proper plot than tossing off gags every line, Cabby is also one of the friendliest of the series, built around the relationship between a cackling but good-hearted Sid James and an unusually touching Hattie Jacques. Sid's so obsessed with his taxi business that he neglects his wife, spending their wedding anniversary driving expectant father Jim Dale to and from the maternity hospital on a false alarm that naturally pays off with a delivery in the back of the cab. This drives Hattie to set up her own rival firm ("Glam Cabs"), employing dolly birds in tailored uniforms to undercut the likes of Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey. It ends happily, with a pair of hold-up men trapped in a ring of taxis and the marriage saved. Among the expected Carry On bits: Connor in drag, Amanda Barrie in a corset, Hawtrey in a leather jacket as a devout rambler ("We like to go as far as we can"), Liz Fraser as Connor's perky intended. Kenneth Williams is missed, but his role as the obnoxious shop steward (Carry On producer Peter Rogers never missed a chance to be nasty about the unions) is ably taken by Norman Chappell. Other familiar faces are Bill Owen, Peter Gilmore, Milo O'Shea, Renee Houston and Michael Ward as the tweedy businessman who has apparently left a pearl earring in the back of Connor's cab. On the DVD: No extras, but it's a smashing widescreen presentation of a pristine black and white print. --Kim Newman

• Carry On - Doctors And Nurses Collection - Digi Stack 2 | DVD | (14/03/2005) from £17.28   |  Saving you £17.71 (50.60%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Carry On Camping (1969): Sid (Sid James) and his reluctant mate Bernie (Bernard Bresslaw) hit on the idea of a nudist camping holiday to spice things up with their girlfriends! The arrival of Dr Soaper (Kenneth Williams) headmaster of the Chayste Place Finishing School his matron Miss Haggard (Hattie Jacques) in charge of eleven nubile girls including star pupil Babs (Barbara Windsor) set the scene for one of the funniest frolics in the Carry On repertoire. Carry On Abroad (1972): The Carry On team take a package holiday that starts disastrously and rapidly goes downhill. The paradise island of Elsbels is not all it's cracked up to be.... The hotel isn't finished the staff are abit thin on the ground - in fact Pepe (Peter Butterworth) is the staff - and the locals are far from friendly! Carry On Follow That Camel (1967): Can fresh Foreign Legion recruits 'B.O.' West (Jim Dale) and his faithful manservant Simpson (Peter Butterworth) help defeat the ruthless Sheikh Abdul Abulbul (Bernard Bresslaw)? Find out in the hysterical historical spectacular featuring a host of harem beauties a bevy of blood thirsty Bedouins and a troupe of Legionnaires getting the hump! Carry On Girls (1973): You might think that a beauty contest would be the perfect place for the Carry On team to discover new heights of hilarity and new depths of depravity - well you'd be right! Sidney Fiddler brings a beauty contest to a quiet seaside resort. His problems start with two curvaceous Hells Angels Miss Easy Rider and Miss Dawn Brakes. There's Major Bumble Bernard Bresslaw as Britain's first drag beauty queen and last but not least Mrs Angel Prodworthy who is fighting on behalf of Women's Lib. Carry on Behind (1975): Archaelogists Professors Anna Vooshka (Elke Sommer) and Roland Crump (Kenneth Williams) are desparate to begin poking round the remains of a Roman encampment. Unfortunately the local caravan site has been built over the historic site. Holiday pals Ernie Bragg (Jack Douglas) and Fred Ramsden (Windsor Davies) have their sites set on the local beauty spots - campers Sandra (Carol Hawkins) and Carol (Sherrie Hewson)! Carry On At Your Convenience (1971): The Carry On team throw caution to the wind and present an hour and a half of good clean lavatorial humour. Kenneth Williams is WC Boggs the troubled owner of a small company trying to manufacture fine toiletware. Incompetent management and a bolshy union are just about the least of Bogg's problems as you'll soon discover in this hysterical comedy that tells you everything you always wanted to know about your home's most vital convenience.

• Carry On Teacher | DVD | (29/01/2007) from £6.39   |  Saving you £6.60 (103.29%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Prepare for Six of the Best as the Carry On team cause chaos in the school yard. When a well-loved headmaster decides to retire his scheming pupils have other ideas. The cunning boys unleash a campaign of practical jokes armed with gin itching power and bombs! No one is safe from the classroom havoc in this Carry On starring all the regulars including the immortal Kenneth Williams Charles Hawtrey Hattie Jacques Kenneth Connor and Joan Sims.