Displaying items by tag: Amanda Barrie

I’VE GOTTA HORSE

UK, 1965, 92 minutes, Colour.

Billy Fury, Michael Medwin, Amanda Barrie, The Bachelors, Bill Fraser, Leslie Dwyer, Marjorie Rhodes.

Directed by Kenneth Hume.

Billy Fury was a popular British singer of the 1960s. He came after such celebrities as Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. And they coincided with The Beatles and the emergence of The Rolling Stones. They are symbolic of a change in taste for popular music from the 1950s to rock ‘n’ roll.

Billy Fury made few films. And, in this one, he appears as himself, a friendly and genial personality, lover of animals – which he was in real life. He had a racehorse, Anselmo, who features also in this film, receiving a credit as do Billy Fury’s dogs.

The film is very slight in plot, the putting on a show. Michael Medwin, with Amanda Barrie as his assistant, is Billy’s manager. The producer is the perpetually grumbling and demanding Bill Fraser. The popular group, The Bachelors, provide a supporting cast.

Audiences will share the joy incest of character actor, Leslie Dwyer, as Billy’s friend and assistant, joining in the singing and dancing, enjoying himself.

The film is full of songs, the popular style of the late 1950s into the 1960s, very reminiscent of Cliff Richard (as is the whole film). It would seem that any occasion offers the opportunity for a song. And, there are quite a number of song and dance routines on stage.

And, there are a lot of animals, including songs about them and the title song as well. Plenty of dogs, and some racehorses and a big finale race.

Billy Fury is not so well remembered these years – but, this is a pleasant reminder of his abilities and personality, there is also a reminder that this film was released in 1965, the year of the release of the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, indicating a different musical style and sensibility.

CARRY ON CLEO

UK, 1964, 90 minutes, Colour.

Sid James, Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims, Jim Dale, Charles Hawtrey, Amanda Barrie, Victor Maddern, Julie Stevens, Sheila Hancock, Jon Pertwee, Frances DeWolff, Warren Mitchell.

Directed by Gerald Thomas.

The late 1950s to the 1980s, the Carry On… franchise was extraordinarily popular

 Most of the films were produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas – and a few other films during this period, not Carry on comedies, but British comedies for the wide audience. The rite of this film was Talbot Roth will who began writing comedy sketches as a prisoner of war and putting on reviews, satirical touches, wordplay, Devil traditions, and risk a. He would continue to write many more of the Carry on comedies.

Many audiences, Carry on Cleo is one of the best. It has rather lavish sets and costumes – some noting that they were leftovers from production preparation for Cleopatra, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. In fact, this film came out the year after Cleopatra’s release, Amanda Barrie made to look like a variation on Elizabeth Taylor, some parody of the extravagant film, the bath with asses milk, and the rolling of Cleopatra out of the carpet – but, this time, with accidental crash results.

The film relies on audience appreciation of historical spectacles, the early sequences of Caesar trying to conquer Britain and the rather primitive Britain’s and their way of life, the attack, many of them going as prisoners to Rome as slaves – with the slave market sequence and Warren Mitchell representing the slave company, Marcus and Spence serious!

One of the advantages of the Carry on films was the constant cast (though Hattie Jacques is missing from this film). Sid James is just himself as Marc Anthony, Tony to his friends, with Kenneth Williams is a most unlikely Julius Caesar. Kenneth, is one of the captured British, based on the tales of An guest and Horse, Connor, by accident a hero and promoted to Caesar’s guard. (, Relies on his ability to do all kinds of impersonations, especially effective in Watch Your Stern.) Jim Dale is a pleasant leader of the slaves.

There are all kinds of puns, some of them very obvious with the audience waiting for them to be pronounced, quite a lot of innuendo. One of the most famous and everybody comments on it, so also here, Kenneth Williams Caesar about to be assassinated, “infamy, infamy, they have all got it in for me”. And there is a running joke of everybody adding countrymen to Caesar’s exasperation when he starts off “friends, Romans…”. In the final corny joke at his death, playing on the Latin, I came, I saw, I conked out.

Which means then that while this could be considered as lowbrow comedy (and many did), it entertains the lowbrow in all of us.