Carry On Cowboy (1965)

 "I know a horse backfiring when I hear one!"

When I first saw this film many years ago I was, perhaps, more impressed than I was this time around, but it's still one of the better Carry Ons. The sets, locations and costumes genuinely look great: everything truly looks like the Old West. Although...well, the accents? Let's not go there.

We've settled into the cast we know from the peak of Carry On. Kenneth Williams really shines in a role that allows him to give a different but superb comic performance as the strait-laced yet hypocritical judge. Jim Dale is perfect as the hapless hero, and Sid James is strangely perfect as the baddie. Angela Douglas, though,is superb as the daughter seeking revenge for her father's murder. Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth now seem to be core cast members, with Kenneth Connors no longer a mainstay.

Charles Hawtrey as the chief of the "Indians"... yeah, that's weird, but they he was a somewhat weird man so that's not surprising. The stereotypes are, naturally, all wheeled out- smoke signals, "how", scalping, "firewater".

The jokes land well, as ever, the best being when the Rumpo Kid goes to "get" some money from the bank: we know what to expect from a Talbot Rothwell script. But both the production values and the performances serve to make this, if not right up with the best, one of the better Carry Ons.