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Serengeti, 2019..

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Carry On Henry, 1971...




The coat used by Sidney James is the same coat used by Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). This is the second time that Sidney James has played a character that was originally portrayed by Richard Burton, as well as worn the same costume. The first time was Carry on Cleo (1964) as Marc Antony.

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Carry On Follow That Camel, 1967...




Filming of the Sahara Desert scenes took place on Camber Sands; ironically, filming was actually halted at one point because there was snow on the sands.

Phil Silvers replaced Sidney James in the role of Sgt. Nocker, which had been originally written for James; it turned out that James could not do the film due to commitments on George and the Dragon (1966). About two weeks into the filming of this picture James suffered a mild heart attack. Phil Silvers was paid £30,000 for his role, making him by far, the highest paid star in the history of the series, which provoked a great deal of animosity among the regular Carry On team.

The location filming took three weeks, the longest in Carry On history.

For the first week of filming Jim Dale and Peter Butterworth were not speaking to one another, even though they had the majority of scenes together. At the start of shooting, Kenneth Williams told Peter Butterworth that Jim Dale 'hated his guts' and then told Dale the same thing about Butterworth. Eventually Dale asked Butterworth on set, if Williams had said anything to him and they discovered what had happened, whilst Williams stood nearby laughing at them.
In the scene where Bo West (Jim Dale) drops the rifle on Commandant Burger's (Kenneth Williams) foot, Dale actually did accidentally drop the rifle onto Williams' foot instead of onto the sand. It was so heavy it cut the boot leather. Williams' painful reaction was real, and he can be seen limping in several subsequent scenes. Dale insisted it was accidental but Williams wrote in his autobiography that he was sure it was deliberate.

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Carry On Screaming!, 1966...





One of the most popular films of 1966, and one of the highest-grossing films of the "Carry On" series.

As a merchandising gimmick at some theatres, one could purchase rubberized toy monsters called "Kreepy Kwivers" for the cost of 12/6

Joan Sims and Angela Douglas had to visit the Pinewood Plastering Department in order that a plaster cast could be taken of their whole body. This was in order for the dummy scenes in the film.

Whenever Bung is using his car the soundtrack plays a variation of "Johnny Todd", the theme to the TV series Z Cars (1962), which featured the latest car-based police of the 1960s. When Bung rides on the horse and cart, the tune "Old Ned" is used, the theme to Steptoe and Son (1962) which also starred Harry H. Corbett.

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The Planets, 2019..




When the Venera probes first sent back their images from the surface of Venus, there was wide speculation that there was life on the planet due to irregularities in the images noted as "black flaps" and "scorpions". It wasn't until later confirmed that the anomalies in the images were simply artifacts due to image processing. The surface of Venus is essentially the temperature of the inside of a burning house.

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The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001... bluray.




This film is one of my favs; filmed in black-and-white(well actually it was filmed in colour and printed by special process in black and white) and employs voiceover narration, honoring classic film noir. It differs by including classical music, setting the plot in a small town, and featuring a protagonist from outside the criminal underworld. The Coens began developing the idea from a 1940s haircut poster they saw while filming The Hudsucker Proxy. The plot was influenced by James M. Cain's crime novels, primarily Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce. Aesthetically, The Man Who Wasn't There was inspired by films from the 1940s and 1950s—including Shadow of a Doubt—along with science fiction films and documentaries of the period.

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The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001... bluray.




This film is one of my favs; filmed in black-and-white(well actually it was filmed in colour and printed by special process in black and white) and employs voiceover narration, honoring classic film noir. It differs by including classical music, setting the plot in a small town, and featuring a protagonist from outside the criminal underworld. The Coens began developing the idea from a 1940s haircut poster they saw while filming The Hudsucker Proxy. The plot was influenced by James M. Cain's crime novels, primarily Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce. Aesthetically, The Man Who Wasn't There was inspired by films from the 1940s and 1950s—including Shadow of a Doubt—along with science fiction films and documentaries of the period.

I saw it at my film club. Have to say I'm somewhat ambivalent regarding the work of the Coen brothers: I like about half of their output and am totally indifferent about the rest.

In theory I should have liked this film, but it didn't work for me.

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I saw it at my film club. Have to say I'm somewhat ambivalent regarding the work of the Coen brothers: I like about half of their output and am totally indifferent about the rest.

In theory I should have liked this film, but it didn't work for me.

i love it, although i have to be in mood for it like most Coen films

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Murder by Decree, 1979...bluray.





Peter O'Toole was originally cast as Sherlock Holmes, and Sir Laurence Olivier was cast as Dr. Watson. But the two actors had not worked well together in the past, and were unable to overcome their differences for this movie.

Although Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote a story about Jack the Ripper, the idea of Holmes working on that case is not entirely without basis in fact. Joseph Bell, who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes, was consulted by Scotland Yard on the case.

The replica nineteenth century dockland set took two months and fifty men to construct at Shepperton Studio's largest soundstage. The set also included a replica muddy Thames River.

The Masonic signs Sherlock Holmes makes to the Chief Inspector are: the Duegard of the Entered Apprentice (right hand palm down over left hand palm up), the Sign of the Entered Apprentice (drawing the right hand from left to right across the throat), a variation of the Real Grip of a Master Mason (the handshake with the thumb and little finger extended), and finally the Sign of a Fellow Craft (drawing the right hand across the body from the left breast to the right hip). The Signs all refer to the penalties associated with the divulging of the Order's secrets to outsiders, for example, having the throat slit and the chest opened and the heart torn out. The Duegard refers to the gesture of holding the Bible during the initiation ritual in the left hand, with the right resting upon it.

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Carry On at Your Convenience, 1971.





In the scene on the motor-bike, actor Bernard Bresslaw took fourteen takes to get the scene correct. It has also been reported that the scene took over twenty takes to do. Apparently, actor Bernard Bresslaw had allegedly told producer Peter Rogers that he could ride a motor-cycle, which apparently he couldn't, arguably this being a typical actor's ruse to get an acting job.

The first "Carry On" film to lose money at the box office and only broke even in 1976 after television deals and distribution rights had been sold. Its failure at the box office was largely down to the fact it was clearly an anti-union film. This was a curious miscalculation by the makers, as they knew most of their audience were working class people who would have largely been union supporters/members.