Not sure you could get away with screening this on BBC1 early evening these days, though its strangely reassuring to find that the old Middle Eastern Muslim antipathy goes back 100 years and is hardly anything new. Bernard Bresslaw is a revelation as the swarthy anti-imperialist and I must say I prefer him in this to his similar role in Carry On Up The Kyber, which others prefer.
Many Carry Ons basically take one movie and spoof if, be it The Scarlet Pimpernel, Cleopatra, Hammer horror, James Bond. This one does The Four Feathers, as young posh boy Jim Dale leaves Blighty brokenhearted to join the Foreign Legion, with his trusty manservant in tow.
Production values are high, which makes this a joy to watch on DVD. The desert may be Camber Sands, but as this was filmed in the summer of 1967, you get some lovely shots of blazing blue skies, unlike other Carry Ons which are meant to be balmy summer but in fact were filmed in February.
Kenneth Williams mentions his tensions with interloper Phil Silvers in his diaries, though it's clear he may have been jealous of someone other than him monopolising the conversation. You don't get any sense of this with the first half of the film, where Silvers is on comic form and I personally soon forgot about Sid James, seeing as Silvers offered something different. The pace and interest does slacken towards the end, as there don't seem to be so many Carry On regulars on screen, it lacks that ensemble feel and with the Road films you did get a song or two chucked in to lighten the load.
Within three months, Kenneth Williams and the team were back on filming Carry On Doctor that early autumn. That's a heck of a work ethic.
