Carry on Loving (1970)
Directed by Gerald Thomas

Film Review

After a decade of assiduous beating about the bush (so to speak) the Carry On team finally step out from behind the coy innuendos and embrace the permissive society for all its worth. This is the point at which British film comedy went well and truly down the tubes as writers and directors, in an attempt to move with the times, gave up on the clever allusions to sex and instead showed us the real thing, in all its lascivious, full-blooded, distasteful glory.  No wonder the 1970s is considered the low-point of British cinema.  This is the decade when subtlety died and mindless vulgarity took over.  Just as the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite / ice age / tsunami / a deadly plague of haemorrhoids, the British film industry was all but obliterated by a wave of tawdry low budget sex comedies.  Inevitably, the Carry On films would be one of the instigators of this catastrophe and one of its main casualties.

Carry on Loving may have set the Carry Ons on the road to oblivion but, in itself, it is not a bad film.  (You only have to compare it with the truly risible Carry on Emmannuelle (1978), affectionately known as Carry On Last-Nail-In-The-Coffin, to see how good it is.)  Yes, many of the jokes are awful, in fact so dated that they make the works of Chaucer look as if they were written yesterday.  Yes, the constant banging on about sex is tedious enough to make you want to spend the rest of your life in a monastery.  By rights, this should be a terrible film but, somehow, miraculously, it isn't at all bad. 

As ever, what saves the day are the Carry On regulars, possibly the best ensemble of comedy performers ever to waylay a British film.  And here we have almost a full house.  Sid James and Kenneth Williams, at their comedic best, are partnered with the equally delightful Hattie Jacques and Joan Sims, with stalwarts Charles Hawtrey and Bernard Bresslaw providing ample support as a private dick and homicidal wrestler respectively.  Newcomers to the team, Terry Scott, Patsy Rowlands, Richard O'Callaghan, and Jacki Piper, take up the slack and deliver more than a few classic Carry On moments, with the gorgeous Imogen Hassall providing the glamour.  And if you are trying to put a face to that lucky lad who gets to snog his way through every other scene in the film, it is Mike Grady, better known as Ken from the BBC TV sitcom Citizen Smith. 

Carry on Loving clearly ushers in a new era, one soiled by tacky permissiveness and low grade humour.  Yet, whilst the jokes are generally awful, the film still manages to deliver the laughs by the cartload, and is a paragon of virtue and sophistication compared with what would follow later in the decade.

Film Synopsis

Sidney Bliss and his long-term girlfriend Sophie Plummett run a marriage agency that prides itself on bringing together lonely hearts and setting them on the path to matrimonial success.  Ironically, Sid seems strangely reluctant to tie the knot with Sophie and is more interested in vetting one of his clients, Esme Crowfoot.  Suspecting that Sid is cheating on her, Sophie hires private detective James Bedsop to spy on him.  Although their operation is a sham, Sid and Sophie have no difficulty attracting customers.  27-year-old Bertrum Muffet, an unassuming undertaker's assistant who devotes his free time to making model aeroplanes out of milk bottle tops, suddenly realises he is missing out on something and believes that the Wedded Bliss agency will give it to him.  Terry Philpotts has made a habit of sleeping with his friend's wife and decides that it is high time he found a wife of his own.  Percival Snooper discovers that he cannot possibly be an effective marriage guidance counsellor whilst he remains single so he begins the search for a partner of the opposite sex - just for the practical experience, you understand.   Whilst Sid and Sophie try to resolve their own pre-marital differences, their hapless clients are directed to their randomly selected mates and soon discover that love can be a very dirty four letter word...