The salty-as-Marmite flavor of the "Carry On" film series can trace its roots back to several schools of British bawdy humor: music hall revues, saucy seaside postcards, and the satirical shows put on by the ENSA (the UK version of the USO). In this go-round, the familiar cast of regulars like Sidney James and Kenneth Williams follows up the James Bond spoof Carry On Spying (1964) with this parody of the Taylor/Burton Cleopatra (1963), complete with lines like "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!" and Amanda Barrie tumbling out of a rolled up rug with considerably more momentum than Elizabeth Taylor did. (The production had the good fortune to use many of the sets left behind by 20th Century Fox.) A little nose-thumbing at Hollywood combined with patrician pride in the classical era colors this broad comedy punctuated with nimble wordplay - an antecedent to American genre parody farces like Airplane! (1980) and Blazing Saddles (1974).

By Violet LeVoit