Carry On Up The Khyber

Those expecting Casablanca or Citizen Kane will be depressed by my choice for C, but I feel it is worthy of greater recognition. Of all the Carry On films, this is the only one that actually works on more than the basest of levels. Admittedly, it has all the double entendres, sexism and mugging to camera that you expect for a film series that had become utterly complacent with itself, and in 1968 was about to become utterly outdated by the arrival of Monty Python.

But Khyber works. The cast are all accustomed actors comfortable working with each other, but here they are given roles which push them a little bit further than many of the other entries in the series. The jokes are (largely) funny, and the dining room scene is a comedy classic. Of the cast, everyone is excellent, and Peter Butterworth deserves special mention, but Joan Sims is the standout, as the frustrated and dotty Lady Rough-Diamond.

There is some mild racism in it’s treatment of the Indian and Pakistani peoples, bit I think it acquits itself by applying exactly the same attitudes, and taking them further, to the British. Yes, in spite of all the crudities on display, Carry On Up The Khyber actually gives quite an in depth, self deprecating insight of British-ness, particularly in dealing with the then still fairly new concept of Britain as a small, cold and damp country in northern Europe, and no longer the centre of a world-spanning empire. Obviously, it’s not a lecture from an Oxford don, but a film with a story based around knobs, but nevertheless, it’s that extra dimension that raises it above the other Carry On films.