Carry On Jack (1964)

"And all I get is the scrubbing..."

This is not one of the well-remembered Carry Ons... and there's a reason for that. As with most of the films, it's written by Talbot Rothwell and shot by Gerald Thomas, but... well, it doesnt exactly not feelmlike a Carry On film, but... well, we've had films before with some of the regulars missing, but the only real regulars here are Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey. Bernard Cribbins stars, and he's bloody good... but he's not really "core" Carry On.

That's not to say that this is in any way bad, despite its lack of any truly memorable set pieces. The script is fine, and the directing is more than fine. This is the first historical Carry On, set in the Royal Navy of Nelson's day, and it all looks great. We get all the tropes- mutiny, Spanish Armadas, pirates, walking the plany, the cat o'nine tails, press gangs. It's all good fun. But a lot of the rest of the cast... well, they're competent, but no more than that.

This is a fascinating time capsule into the Britain of sixty years ago, though. There's a fair bit of sexual innuendo here; the franchise has come a long way over its six years so far but at last the '60s have started to swing a bit. Some of the social attitudes have perhaps not aged well. 

Nevertheless, this is, well, by no means a bad film, but it's hardly going to stand out, and it's no wonder that this is one of the more obscure films in the series. Still, in opening up the way to using historical settings, it points the way forward.

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

"Their laws are simple: the strong take everything."

Tonight I have learned a valuable lesson. A film may have great special effects, by no less a creator than the great Ray Harryhausen himself, showing his usual genius even within the consraints of what is clearly a lower budget than he's used to... and still be a terrible film. If you want Ray Harryhausen, watch The Valley of Gwangi. It's a much better film, and has cowboys in it to boot.

There are some awesome monsters in here- a family of pterosaurs; a giant tortoise, a saurapod, a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops being the highlights.They all interact with humans, so... yes, let's gloss over the histotical accuracy and move on to briefy praise the location filming. I suppose there's also amusement value at the start as we see Robert Brown, a future M to Roger Moore's James Bond, as a Palaeolithic chieftain. But that's literally all the positives.

Because this is an awful film. Other than some cringeworthy narration at the start there's no dialogue. The plot consist of M's son beng banished, encountering various monsters, joining another tribe where Raquel Welch's character likes him for some reason, being banished again, fighting more monsters at the end, and finishing off with a bit of natural disaster action. There's a lot of visual spectacle. The film looks good.

And yet... it's just dull. Without dialogue, it simply isn't possible for any of the characters to be interesting, or for us to care about them. And without charactesr to care about we have nothing to watch but empty spectacle.