Carry On Follow That Camel *** (1967, Phil Silvers, Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale, Angela Douglas, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey, Peter Butterworth) – Classic Movie Review 1131

In  the 14th Carry On film, released in 1967, Jim Dale makes quite a personable hero in the relatively straight part of English coward Bertram Oliphant ‘Bo’ West (ie parodying Beau Geste), who joins the French Foreign Legion to be knocked into shape by Sergeant Nocker.

Both are redeemed by saving English titled woman Lady Jane Ponsonby (Angela Douglas) and the legion’s fortress when the Arabs mount an assault.

TV’s Sergeant Bilko, Phil Silvers, replaces Sid James (who was too busy making the ITV sitcom George and the Dragon) in the star role of Sergeant Nocker of the French Foreign Legion in director Gerald Thomas’s high-spirited 1967 spoof of P C Wren’s much-filmed 1924 book Beau Geste and other French Foreign Legion films.

Though James is much missed, Silvers is very good value in his one and only Carry On appearance. And the regular team of Kenneth Williams (as Commandant Maximilian Burger: ‘there’s many a good fiddle played on an old dune’), Joan Sims (as Zig-Zag), Charles Hawtrey (as Captain Le Pice), Peter Butterworth (Simpson), Angela Douglas (in the third of her four Carry On appearances, as Lady Jane Ponsonby), John Bluthal (as Corporal Clotski) and Bernard Bresslaw (as Sheikh Abdul Abulbul) carry on regardless, raising their usual high quota of silly, smutty laughs.

Also in the cast are Peter Gilmore, Julian Orchard, William Mervyn, Vincent Ball, Julian Holloway, Larry Taylor, William Hurndall, David Glover and Gertan Klauber.

It was made and originally released as Follow That Camel. Rank took over distribution but not initially the Carry On title, which was added some years later. It was called Carry On in the Legion  in America. It was one of only two Carry On films not to have Carry On in the original title, the other being Don’t Lose Your Head.

The character named Corktip, played by Anita Harris (in the first of her two Carry On appearances), is an obscure reference to Cigarette in the 1936 Ronald Colman and Claudette Colbert film Under Two Flags, a movie about the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara desert. The name refers to cigarettes such Craven A that had a cork tip.

Phil Silvers was paid a great deal more than the rest of the cast, provoking great animosity among the regular Carry On team, who always felt under-paid. Sid James suffered a heart attack while the others were in the second week of their filming schedule.

It was shot at Camber Sands, near Rye, East Sussex, England, in the early months of 1967. Though the location was standing in for the Sahara Desert, shooting had to be stopped several times because the dunes were covered in snow! The beach was also used in the 1958 film Dunkirk starring John Mills.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1131

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