Kenneth Williams
Martin Clunes narrates this documentary celebrating the success of the `Carry On' films. The brand has captured audiences throughout the world, and is known for introducing legendary comedy acts such as Sid James, Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams. The show replays iconic moments, as well as revealing some never-before-seen footage and photography. Some of the `Carry On' cast give interviews as they are taken on a reminiscent journey of their time on screen. The stars appearing include Amanda Barrie, Liz Fraser, Bernard Cribbins, Juliet Mills, Sally Geeson, June Whitfield, Shirley Eaton, Fenella Fielding and Jim Dale.
In the prosperous Golden City, in an unspecified Middle East, the humble shoemaker Tack finds himself coming to blows with a thief who has entered his shop and ends up on the Grand Vizier Zig-Zag, who orders his arrest (while the thief manages to escape). Tack is sentenced to death, but the young princess Yum-Yum takes pity on him and saves him momentarily by ordering him to repair her shoes. The spark strikes between the two, but the thief has a very ambitious project in mind: to steal the golden spheres that protect the city from the top of an imposing minaret. Thus begins a flurry of adventures that will see Tack and Yum-Yum grapple with the enemies of the kingdom.
Kenneth Williams was the star of the Carry Ons and Round the Horne. Despite his fame, he led a life full of mental torture as he tried to overcome his homosexuality in 1950s Britain. This film follows his life and eventual death based on the many diaries he kept
Documentary and celebration of the life and career of British comedian Kenneth Williams.
Documentary - After starting his career producing religious film shorts, J. Arthur Rank went on to become Britain's first and only movie mogul with his establishment of the legendary Pinewood Studios. Narrated by Michael Caine, THE GOLDEN GONG chronicles Pinewood's rise to success. - Richard Attenborough, Dirk Bogarde, Betty E. Box
Outstanding raconteur Kenneth Williams regales his spellbound audience in typical fashion with a long look back at his career - from his time entertaining troops in the army, his radio work (including the Hancock shows), his work in theatre and - of course - the highly successful series of Carry On films. Playing wonderfully to his audience of celebrities (which include Michael Parkinson, Ned Sherrin, Gordon Jackson and Carry On cohorts Joan Sims and Bernard Bresslaw) he even finds time to answer a few of their questions.
Based on a short story by George MacDonald, a princess experiences constant weightlessness.
Director Paul Morrissey applies a hefty dose of humor to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective story in this interpretation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Comedian Peter Cook takes on the role of brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes, who's not so gifted here as he relegates much of the investigation of demonic dogs to his bumbling sidekick, Watson (Dudley Moore), while he spends time with his mother and searches for an assistant.
The beautiful and sex-starved Emmannuelle Prevert just cannot inflame her husband's ardour. In frustration she seduces a string of VIPs, including the Prime Minister and the American Ambassador. A jealous lover gives a list of all her conquests to the national press and a scandal ensues. But will she ever manage to get her own husband into bed?
Celebrating twenty years of classic Carry On films, two of the films’ best-loved stars, Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor return to Pinewood film studios to unwrap some rib-tickling moments from the series. From the original, military mayhem of Carry On Sergeant, through to the really ancient archaeological gags of Carry On Behind, our saucy hosts get their titters out for this laugh-a-second gallop through the most successful series of British comedy films ever made.
Professors Vrooshka and Crump decide to visit an archaeological site to study the artifacts there. Lo and behold, it's right next to a caravan site where all manner of people are staying. With a randy Major owning the site, a snobbish mother, and the two professors' constant innuendos, the film ends with a sinking caravan site and a striptease performance as a replacement for the cabaret night.
Dick Turpin is terrorising the countryside around Upper Dencher. Captain Fancey and Sergeant Jock Strapp plan to put an end to his escapades, and enlist the help of the Reverend Flasher. Little do they know that the priest leads a double life. Then Madame Desiree and her "Birds of Paradise" arrive in the village...
A group of holidaymakers head for the Spanish resort of Elsbels for a 4-day visit. When they get there, they find the Hotel still hasn't been finished being built, and the weather is awful. And there is something strange about the staff. They all look very similar. To top it all off, the weather seems to be having an adverse affect on the Hotel's foundations...
A gang of thieves plan to make their fortune by stealing a shipment of contraceptive pills from Finisham maternity hospital. They assume disguises and infiltrate the hospital, but everything doesn't go according to plan. The hypochondriac consultant Sir Bernard Cutting, Matron and the doctors and nurses at Finisham have a habit of getting in the way.
This is the tale of industrial strife at WC Boggs' Lavatory factory. Vic Spanner is the union representative who calls a strike at the drop of a hat; eventually everyone has to get fed up with him. This is also the ideal opportunity for lots of lavatorial jokes...
Henry VIII has just married Marie of Normandy, and is eager to consummate their marriage. Unfortunately for Henry, she is always eating garlic, and refuses to stop. Deciding to get rid of her in his usual manner, Henry has to find some way of doing it without provoking war with Marie's cousin, the King of France. Perhaps if she had an affair...
The Wedded Bliss computer dating agency aims to bring together the lonely hearts of Much-Snoggin-in-the-Green. Its owner, Sidney Bliss, has enough complications in his own love life, but still produces a pamphlet called "The Wit to Woo". The strange collection of hopefuls lead to some outlandish matches, and jealousies are bound to lead to trouble
Sid and Bernie keep having their amorous intentions snubbed by their girlfriends Joan and Anthea, so when they decide to take them on a holiday to Paradise Camp, they think they're off to a nudist colony - but they couldn't be more wrong, and meet up with the weirdest bunch of campers you can imagine! Coach-loads of sex-starved schoolgirls and a party of hippies all add to the laughs.
Dr Nookey is disgraced and sent to a remote island hospital. He is given a secret slimming potion by a member of staff, Gladstone Screwer, and he flies back to England to fame and fortune. But others want to cash in on his good fortunes, and some just want him brought down a peg or two.
Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond looks after the British outpost near the Khybar pass. Protected by the kilted Third Foot and Mouth regiment, you would think they were safe. But the Khazi of Kalabar has other ideas. He wants all the British dead! But his troops fear the "skirted-devils"; they are rumoured not to wear anything underneath. Then one is caught with his pants on...
Francis Bigger, a notorious charlatan who tours the country lecturing on the subject of mind over matter, slips off the platform in the middle of his performance and ends up in hospital under the care of Dr Tinkle. The hospital is about to enter a period of total chaos. The regular Carry On team is joined by Frankie Howerd as the fraudulent Francis in this 'bed-panorama of hospital life'.
Bertram Oliphant West (also known as Bo West) wants to clear his unjustly smeared reputation. He joins the Foreign Legion, with Simpson his manservant in tow. But the fort they get posted to is full of eccentric legionnaires, and there is trouble brewing with the locals too. Unbeknown to Bo, his lady love has followed him in disguise...
The sinister Dr Watt has an evil scheme going. He's kidnapping beautiful young women and turning them into mannequins to sell to local stores. Fortunately for Dr Watt, Detective-Sergeant Bung is on the case, and he doesn't have a clue! In this send up of the Hammer Horror movies, there are send-ups of all the horror greats from Frankenstein to Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde.
The time of the French revolution, and Citizen Robespierre is beheading the French aristocracy. When word gets to England, two noblemen, Sir Rodney Ffing and Lord Darcy take it upon themselves to aid their French counterparts. Sir Rodney is a master of disguise, and becomes "the black fingernail", scourge of Camembert and Bidet, leaders of the French secret police...
Stodge City is in the grip of the Rumpo Kid and his gang. Mistaken identity again takes a hand as a 'sanitary engineer' named Marshal P. Knutt is mistaken for a law marshal. Being the conscientious sort, Marshal tries to help the town get rid of Rumpo, and a showdown is inevitable. Marshal has two aids—revenge-seeking Annie Oakley and his sanitary expertise.
Two Brits—inventor Hengist Pod, and Horse, a brave and cunning fighter—are captured and enslaved by invading Romans and taken to Rome. One of their first encounters in Rome leaves Hengist being mistaken for a fighter, and gets drafted into the Royal Guard to protect Cleopatra.
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.
Tenth entry in the Carry On series. 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. The film was originally to be entitled ´Up the Armada´, but the British Board of Film Censors objected to such a rude title.
Captain Crowther's lot is not a happy one! Five of his crew have to be replaced and at such short notice before the voyage begins there isn't much to choose from. Not only does he get the five most incompetent shipmates ever to sail the seven seas, but the passengers turn out to be a rather strange bunch too. The SS Happy Wanderer will never be the same.
Twice Round the Daffodils is a 1962 British comedy drama film directed by Gerald Thomas and starring Juliet Mills, Donald Sinden, Donald Houston, Kenneth Williams, Ronald Lewis, Andrew Ray, Joan Sims and Jill Ireland. A new group of patients arrive at a hospital to be treated for tuberculosis where they all take a fancy to one of the nurses. The film was adapted from the play Ring for Catty by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale. Carry on Nurse from 1959 was based on the same play. The cast and production team of Twice Round the Daffodils create a noticeable similarity with the Carry On films, but the film is not an official member of the Carry On series.
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-hopers 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.
'Carry On' director Gerald Thomas helms this comedy caper featuring early appearances by James Robertson Justice, Sid James, Leslie Phillips, Kenneth Williams, Liz Fraser and Eric Barker. The film follows the hi-jinks of a group of music students who move into a shared flat in order to cut costs and have somewhere to practice their instruments. Things get tricky when Mervyn Hughes (Phillips) accidentally sells one of his compositions to an advertising agency and risks losing his scholarship. Can he and his friends find a way to raise the money to buy back the song rights?
Author-explorer Reggie Blake takes an unorthodox approach to his craft, apparently finding inspiration in the adventures suggested by his agent Charles Lunton; it matters little that most of his experiences are wildly embellished or even entirely fictitious...
In a mansion block in Knightsbridge, a gang of middle-aged biddies decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life" by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. Terry Thomas as a retired army officer leads the gang, which includes Athene Seyler and Hattie Jacques, on a series of capers that nearly go awry when their maid, Billie Whitelaw, an ex-con and also a resident of the block, falls for a police officer.
With a flu epidemic running rife, three new bumbling recruits are assigned to Inspector Mills police station. With help from Special Constable Gorse, they manage to totally wreck the operations of the police force and let plenty of criminals get away, even before they arrive at the station. They all have to prove themselves or else they'll be out of a job and Sergeant Wilkins will be transferred. Sub-plots include romances between Wilkins and Moon, Constable and Passworthy.
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!
Set in Haven Hospital where a certain men's ward is causing more havoc than the whole hospital put together. The formidable Matron's debut gives the patients a chill every time she walks past, with only Reckitt standing up to her. There's a colonel who is a constant nuisance, a bumbling nurse, a romance between Ted York and Nurse Denton, and Bell who wants his bunion removed straight away, so after drinking alcohol, the men decide to remove the bunion themselves!
Tommy is a happy sailor, travelling the world, singing his favourite songs. When he visits Spain, he gets mistaken for a famous bullfighter. Tommy finishes up in the bull-ring facing a VERY angry bull and cheered on by the crowd. What will he do now?
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!
Thirty-five years after his premature death in 1968 Tony Hancock was voted Britain's best-ever comedy performer. Here's a chance to see what made him so special - the surviving episodes from Series 2 and Series 3 of Hancock's Half Hour, plus a Christmas special. Episodes include: "The Alpine Holiday", "Air Steward Hancock", "The Last Of The Many", "The Lawyer: The Crown vs Sidney James", "Competitions: How To Win Money And Influence People" and "There's An Airfield At The Bottom Of My Garden". The Christmas special is "Hancock's Forty-Three Minutes: The East Cheam Repertory Company".
Hancock's Half Hour is a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy, series of the 1950s and 60s written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sid James; the radio version also co-starred, at various times, Moira Lister, Andrée Melly, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams. The final television series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone. Comedian Tony Hancock starred in the show, playing an exaggerated and much poorer version of his own character and lifestyle, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, a down-at-heel comedian living at the dilapidated 23 Railway Cuttings in East Cheam. The series was influential in the development of the situation comedy, with its move away from radio variety towards a focus on character development. The radio version was produced by Dennis Main Wilson for most of its run. After Main Wilson departed for his television career, his role was taken by Tom Ronald. The television series was produced by Duncan Wood. The distinctive tuba-based theme tune was composed by Wally Stott.
Three London gentlemen take a vacation rowing down the Thames, encountering various mishaps and misadventures along the way.
Moby Dick—Rehearsed is a two-act drama by Orson Welles. The play was staged June 16–July 9, 1955, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, in a production directed by Welles. Welles used minimal stage design. The stage was bare, the actors appeared in contemporary street clothes, and the props were minimal. For example, brooms were used for oars, and a stick was used for a telescope. The actors provided the action, and the audience's imagination provided the ocean, costumes, and the whale. Welles filmed approximately 75 minutes of the production, with the original cast, at the Hackney Empire and Scala Theatres in London. He hoped to sell the film to Omnibus, the United States television series which had presented his live performance of King Lear in 1953; but Welles stopped shooting when he was disappointed in the results. The film is considered lost.
A western set in New Zealand during the 1820s following a group of British pioneers seeking a new life Down Under.
Adaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffith as the Beggar.
Romantic comedy about a group of Britons flying to Paris for the weekend.
When a wealthy business man is found dead reporter Philip Trent is sent to investigate. Against the police conclusions, he suspects the assumed suicide is really a murder, and becomes highly interested in the young widow and the dead man's private secretary.
Kenneth Williams's comedy career highlights are celebrated in a documentary narrated by his friend and fellow wordsmith, Gyles Brandreth. Showcasing Kenneth's very best bits and greatest hits, it is a journey through the life of a veritable British comedy genius - stopping at all of the comedy milestones of his career. The documentary features exclusive access to Kenneth's never-before-seen photograph albums and exclusive correspondence from the star and his family.
