| Carry on Sergeant (1958) | |
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Rating: 6.2/10 (2,986 votes) Director: Gerald Thomas Writer: R.F. Delderfield, Norman Hudis, John Antrobus Stars: Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, William Hartnell Runtime: 84 min Rated: Approved Genre: Comedy, War Released: 19 Sep 1958 |
| Plot: Sergeant Grimshawe wants to retire in the flush of success by winning the Star Squad prize with his very last platoon of newly called-up National Servicemen. But what a motley bunch they turn out to be. | |
The Carry On films are known well for their ribald humour, innuendo riddled dialogue, and Sid James’ dirty laugh as Babs gets her…you get the picture. So returning to the early films in the series, it is refreshing to see that they didn’t start off that way, and were more gentle comedy with an element of farce layered in. Carry on Sergeant, as the first in the series, was never intended to launch a franchise of any kind, and the title itself was taken from a normal expression that an Army officer would use. The film was a roaring success, despite a very lacklustre response from critics at the time (something the series would see throughout its run), and so sparked the series off, including a spin-off TV series.
Carry On Sergeant sets the basic formula which the series would adopt for varying settings to come – a bunch of misfits are thrown together, get up to mischief and hijinks, but then come together to succeed in the end. It’s a formula which we still see in the modern era of films, and its no surprise why – after all, who doesn’t love an underdog story where rogues better themselves to defy expectations?
Bob Monkhouse plays Charlie, a newly married man who receives his call-up papers during his wedding. Taking up his National Service, he quickly finds himself bundled with a misfit bunch of recruits which include a hypochondriac (Kenneth Connor), a weak and delicate recruit (Charles Hawtrey), and in a scene stealing role that sets him firmly as an early favourite for the franchise, Kenneth William’s university graduate. Assigned to Sergeant Grimshaw (William Hartnell), who is soon to retire from Army life and wants this last squad to let him go out on a high, the recruits fail to impress Captain Potts (Eric Baker), and Grimshaw looks set to leave with a stain on his career. But can the recruits turn themselves around and become top platoon?
Female presence in the film is included in the forms of Shirley Eaton as Charlie’s wife, who sneaks into the NAAFI to be near her newly betrothed, Dora Bryan as Nora, a NAAFI worker who is smitten with Horace, and another face who would become a mainstay of the series, Hattie Jacques as the medical officer Captain Clark. Jacques settles herself in the role of stern authority figure with a heart with ease, and in this film you can see the foundation of all the roles she would later play over the years.
Whilst story wise it is all very predictable – after all, anyone who has seen any of the Police Academy films will notice the huge debt that series has to pay to these Carry On antics – the fun is in seeing this bunch of comics and thespians going through a series of misadventures, and in the sometimes sharp wit thrown back and forth between the gang. As mentioned before, Williams steals some of the best moments, with his sharp tongue darting out quick witted replies such as:-
Captain Potts: Your rank?
Bailey: Well, that’s a matter of opinion.
In fact, there’s great joy in seeing the cast who would stay with the series for a number of entries already setting up their stalls for their character-types. That’s not to say that the non-regulars don’t have a chance to shine – Hartnell is a welcome name in the role of Sergeant Grimshaw, struggling to remain calm and prove you don’t have to yell at recruits to get the best from them, and Monkhouse is affable enough in the role that starts the film off, even if he does kind of become a side-line character by the end of it all. But it is the regulars who seem more comfortable in the roles assigned to them, and watching this it is no surprise as to which of the cast we would see return over the years.
Carry On Sergeant is a charming British comedy, and a whilst not always successful in the digs for laughs, is enjoyable enough an entry to the series before it became too ‘seaside postcard humour imbued’.
