Carry on Christmas (1969 TV Movie) User Reviews

What a Carry On.........

[DownLoAdEr · 7/10 · 27 December 2003]

Very amusing television show, with every slapstick innuendo, classic line possible from all previous and future films and TV specials.

This is 50 mins of little giggles to huge belly laughs. Barbra Windsor is wonderful with her wicked giggle. The rest of the cast (familiar from all our favourite Carry On films including Frankie Howard) all have at least two roles to play and it is obvious they were having fun filming the show. There are too many instances where you can see they are about to giggle while delivering lines to mention. If you get a chance to see it on a TV special, and you are a Carry On fan and missed it. DO IT! What a carry on Xmas giggle........

For those perfectionists it is a 1 star

For me it is the perfection of television humor in the 70's and is worthy of TEN stars (out of ten) for the classic 70's humor back then.

Feel free to Flame Me but this is classic Brit Humour from the 70's

This humour will never be seen in new shows, enjoy!!

Comedians just want to have a giggle. It would be great if they could be as open and honest as the Carry On team, and funny, without the HR Political Police ruining it for the rest of us.

My score is 5 out of 5 but NOT on a cultural scale, just a Carry On scale..... simply brilliant and funny.

An agreeable pantomime comedy sketch show

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 22 December 2022]

A generally agreeable CARRY ON Christmas special, filled with the usual familiar faces although looking a lot more cheap than the film versions on account of it being shot on video as was so much TV fare back in the day. This one has an end-of-season pantomime feel to it, particularly in some scattershot sketches satirising the Hammer horrors (complete with Peter Butterworth playing Dracula, no less!). The story sees Sid James' Scrooge being visited by various ghosts over Christmas, and it's all very silly but lively with it. Charles Hawtrey is a highlight but the real scene-stealer is Frankie Howerd, whose asides to the audience are hilarious.

Carry On Christmas

[jboothmillard · 5/10 · 2 January 2012]

The Carry On film were a huge success, with eighteen (out of the thirty one made), and in the year that brought Camping and Again Doctor there came this seasonal television special. This spoofs the classic Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol, with Ebenezer Scrooge (Sid James) being mean and greedy with his money and to people in the Victorian town, and he is visited by three ghosts. Instead of showing Scrooge his personal past, present and future, the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Charles Hawtrey), Present (Barbara Windsor) and Future (Bernard Bresslaw) show him the fortunes of those people he did not give money to for whatever they needed. The characters affected by the miser's include Dr. Frank N. Stein (Terry Scott), Elizabeth Barrett (Hattie Jacques), Bob Cratchit (Bresslaw), Dracula (Peter Butterworth) and Robert Browning (Frankie Howerd). Obviously like the regular versions, Scrooge sees the error of his ways and gets started on mending things and giving money to those who need it, only he is carrying it in a toilet pot. All the actors in the Dickensian format do as well as they have before, it is a little annoying that Kenneth Williams does not feature, but the usual innuendos and double double entendres as always are what make this comedy special good fun. Worth watching!

Some laughs, but missing a good script.

[adamjohns-42575 · 2/10 · 13 November 2021]

I am always the first to watch a Christmas film or TV special and I do love a good 'Carry On', but this wasn't the brilliant hour of funny that it could have been.

If they had tackled Dickens' Carol more fully instead of just in bits thrown together with Shelley and Stoker, I think it would have been far more successful, similar perhaps to 'The Muppets' version. Unfortunately they tried a bit too hard to bring too much in to it and it all became OTT.

I did like a lot of the elements and they could have all worked together with a bit more thought.

Charles Hawtrey made me giggle as he always does, but it was Frankie Howerd that really made it his own. His quick wit, one liners and ad-libs gave us all a good titter, I kid ye not. It was a shame that Sid didn't get the lines he deserved and favourites like Joan Sims, Kenneth Williams and Jim Dale were missing.

It is quite daft, but it's just innocent fun that doesn't mean to offend. There are lots of references to cross dressing and men fancying men, but there's no malice. It doesn't offend me at least and is only of it's time.

205.15.

Has energy and a sort of roughshod charm to it but funny it ain't

[bob the moo · 28 December 2003]

Ebenezer Scrooge is a misery on Christmas, not allowing people money or doing anything to share Christmas cheer around his employees or acquaintances. While Scrooge is visited by three ghosts we see how his penny pinching has affected those around him.

I tuned in to this little show expecting just a version of the Christmas Carol story except with a great deal more innuendo and smut. That is half what I got - innuendo! The actual story didn't really hold true to the Scrooge story, this is apparent from the get-go where we have 10 minutes in the offices of Dr Frank A. Stein who is building a monster with his friend Count Dracula, Cinderella and a later scene with a poet and his love. The connection of these side stories to Scrooge is very, very thin indeed and they serve more as separate sketches than anything else.

If they were hilariously funny then this wouldn't be a problem - thing is, they aren't. At best they are energetic and silly, with some of the crudity and wit of Carry On movies, but sadly it doesn't even get near to the consistently of the films!

The cast is good on paper and do try hard - playing well to the studio audience but most of the material is not great and they can't work with it. Howerd has the most fun as he seems to be ad libbing all over the place. Sid James is always fun as are Hawtrey, Jacques, Winsor has a good role as Cinderella and Butterworth and Bresslaw are OK.

Overall this is a pretty average show. It has low production values and only really gets laughs because the audience are clearly hyped up to laugh. The actors lack the subtlety that is often needed to make innuendo work and I simply didn't laugh at all.

Carry on Christmas

[Prismark10 · 4/10 · 12 December 2023]

The first of the Thames Carry On specials made for television. This is a cheap pantomime take on the Christmas Carol.

Sidney James plays misery tightwad Ebenezer Scrooge, he is mean to Bob Cratchit (Bernard Bresslaw) who is looking for some festive cheer.

In an answer to Bob's prayers. Scrooge is visited by three ghosts to help him fix his penny pinching ways.

This really does play fast and loose with Dickens's tale. The spirits takes the viewer to Dr Frank A Stein's surgery, Cinderella's house and the poet Robert Browning (Frankie Howerd) hoping to take his lover to Venice.

If it was not for Frankie Howerd, this would had been a total failure. You can sense that the Carry On team knocked this one out quickly.

"Go on, 'ave a bit of fun!"

[ShadeGrenade · 10/10 · 20 October 2007]

With the 'Carry On' movies proving popular both on television and in the cinema, Thames decided in 1969 to make a special for I.T.V. This uproarious parody of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' was the first of four Yuletide romps, and easily the best.

Sid James starred as 'Ebenezer Scrooge', not merely mean but a dirty old man to boot, keeping his money under the bed in a chamber pot! Other returning cast members included Terry Scott, Bernard Bresslaw, Charles Hawtrey, Peter Butterworth, Hattie Jacques, and Barbara Windsor.

Conspicuously missing, however, was Kenneth Williams. The man with the wonderfully snide voice and flared nostrils regarded the whole enterprise as a waste of time, and in any case had signed to do a B.B.C. sketch show with Joan Sims - the disastrously received 'The Kenneth Williams Show'. His input into 'Carry On Christmas' would have been welcome, but its a credit to the cast that they coped rather well without him.

Talbot Rothwell's innuendo-laden script stayed close to the Dickens classic, occasionally straying into the cobwebbed universe of Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as the poetic and romantic world of Robert Browning. All done in typical 'Carry On' style, of course.

The cast threw themselves into the piece with commendable enthusiasm, Butterworth and Howerd in particular looked to be having the time of their lives.

As Andrew Collins noted in Channel 4's '100 Greatest Christmas Moments', the specials were cheaply made ( as indeed were the films ) and studio bound. 'Carry On' humour was not reliant on big budgets and spectacular scenery so this was not a problem. Collins' positive comments were overshadowed by a powerful blast of sanctimony from the editor of 'Q' magazine, Paul Rees, who made comparisons with 'Love Thy Neighbour' ( eh? ), trotted out the old 'we've thankfully moved on since' argument and sneered: "What sort of a world was it back then?". Well, Paul, you would do well to learn something about that world before passing judgement. People in those days were not conditioned to think through the political ramifications of a joke before laughing - unlike yourself. I'm so glad I have never bought 'Q' magazine.

'Carry On Christmas' topped the ratings for that year's festive television ( Sid James fans could see their hero again on Boxing Day in the 'Two In Clover' segment of 'All-Star Comedy Carnival' ), led to a further three specials, and ultimately to the disappointing 'Carry On Laughing', made by A.T.V. in 1975.

The idea of a 'Scrooge' send-up was reused in 1988 by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis in the excellent 'Blackadder's Christmas Carol'.

Scripted the fun out of it

[brexitstageleft · 5/10 · 15 December 2020]

Far too many overly long lines, poems and speeches shoe-horned into it, to be consistently enjoyable. Such a shame, as you can see the actors are right at their peak. Frankie Howerd is absolutely sparkling and he provides pretty much the only fun in the show. Hattie Jacques and Babs Windsor are ruined by the script, they have so much to remember it's like they're just reading a prescription label.

The writers have clearly never heard of the phrase "less is more". Frankie got more laughs out of a simple "ooh" or "aah", than all the boring rhymes that you can see the actors are finding a chore themselves.

The Carry On movies are so enjoyable, because of the laid back attitude. This just tries to squeeze in far too much and it suffocates most of the fun out of it.

Nothing else like it!

[freestyla24 · 5/10 · 23 January 2005]

Just about everything you'd expect when you mix a pantomime, Charles Dicken's Christmas Carol & a carry on film together. OK, so its not exactly a classic in the collection of carry on films, but its certainly watchable just to see Sid James having a laugh playing a leeching Scrooge, Charles Hawtrey popping up as a fairy & ghost in his own unique manner and Frankie Howered playing up to the camera (& getting on Hattie Jacques nerves at the same time, just look at her face!) I couldn't tell weather it was canned laughter or a live studio audience but it came across pretty well. Although not the best performance from the legendary carry on team, its worth a watch.

Who wrote this rubbish?

[malcolmgsw · 2/10 · 8 March 2022]

It wasn't till the end credits came up that I discovered that it was Talbot Rothwell,who wrote the original Carry Ones. Difficult to understand how they could make such an unfunny programme,but they did..Only Frankie Howerd was mildly funny.

They must have given the audience some Christmas cheer to make them laugh so hysterically. Maybe they were watching a different show.