Pretty Good

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is not one of their best films but I liked it. The story is admittedly thin with a slight overbalance of the Bilko of the Dunes, the film feels rushed sometimes and Joan Sims the great actress she was has sadly little to do here. That said, I liked the set and costume design and the cinematography was good. The script is full of puns and innuendos, and there are some fun jokes particularly the Mustapha Leek one. The acting is decent generally, some of the regulars such as Sims are underused, but Phil Silvers is really quite excellent here, and Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale and Charles Hawtrey play their parts well. Overall, not exceptional but decent. 6/10 Bethany Cox

I wasn't really expecting much out of this "Carry On" spoof on Foreign Legion films – but it turned out to be a highly agreeable entry in the long-running series. Unusually for them, the film-makers went for an American lead in the person of Phil Silvers – then again, his Sgt. Nocker here was directly inspired by the latter's popular Sgt. Bilko characterization (which originated on TV); actually, the clash of comedy styles works surprisingly well here.Most of the series stalwarts are on hand – Kenneth Williams as German fort commandant Burger (with matching short hair); Charles Hawtrey as Captain Le Pice(!); Jim Dale as Beau West(!), a dishonored Englishman who joins the legion (accompanied by loyal valet Peter Butterworth) after losing girlfriend Angela Douglas; Bernard Bresslaw has one of his best roles as the flamboyant villainous sheik; and Joan Sims is Madam Zigzig, hostess of the local tavern. Anita Harris also makes an impression as a sultry belly-dancer.Apart from the traditional desert-march-fraught-with-mirages sequence, there are a couple of delightful running gags here – the naïve Douglas (who decides to stick with Dale) is taken advantage of by several men on her journey to join her lover, and eventually ends in line to being made Bresslaw's 13th wife!; another involves the constant attempts to violently curtail the cock's heralding of each new day by the reluctant soldiers. This good-looking film – which actually anticipates the team's other outing with an exotic setting, the even better CARRY ON...UP THE KHYBER (1968) – is satisfyingly capped by an action-packed climax.

FOLLOW THAT CAMEL Aspect ratio: 1.66:1Sound format: MonoWhen his reputation is compromised during a routine game of cricket, an English nobleman (Jim Dale) joins the French Foreign Legion and gets mixed up with a lecherous sergeant (Phil Silvers) and an Arab uprising.The first of two entries not to use "Carry On" in its title due to political fall-out from a change of distributor, this lumpy concoction features Silvers in a role originally intended for Sid James (producers had even considered Woody Allen, hoping an American star would help them crack the elusive US market), and while Silvers holds his own amongst an impressive ensemble cast, he seems out of place in a movie steeped in British traditions and sensibilities. Like everyone else, however, he's constantly upstaged by Kenneth Williams as the nostril-flaring German commandant at the Saharan garrison where Dale is stationed with his faithful valet (Peter Butterworth), though by this stage in the "Carry On" series, Williams' dominance of proceedings had become pretty much par for the course. Talbot Rothwell's script is long on plot and short on gags, though a couple of fruity nuggets hit the target (when heroine Angela Douglas proposes venturing onto the streets of a Middle Eastern village after dark, dismissing the possibility of being kidnapped and ravished among the sand dunes by a rampant tribesman, Williams reminds her of an old Arab proverb: "There's many a good fiddle played on an old dune!"). The screenplay also pokes fun at upper-class British twittery (Dale is quite superb as the clueless aristo, completely at odds with his surroundings), which minimises any offence caused by some broad Arab stereotypes, and Bernard Bresslaw hams it up as a villainous bedouin whose only allegiance is to the mythical 'Mustafa Leek'! For some strange reason, the magnificent Joan Sims is wasted as the owner of a small cafe where much of the film's action unfolds.Filmed in the wilds of Camber Sands, Sussex (!), the movie's low budget production values are bolstered by an ultra-professional production team (cinematographer Alan Hume would later work on a number of British-lensed blockbusters, including the Bond movies), but while Gerald Thomas' direction is as efficient as ever, the film is amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny (one gets the impression Rothwell's heart wasn't in it). For the first and only time in "Carry On" history, Silvers gets top billing over all the other actors (producer Peter Rogers always claimed the "Carry On" title was bigger than any of its stars), which must have galled some of the regular players. In fact, the principals were all wary of Silvers' presence, and Williams was particularly vocal in his opposition to the US stars' use of written prompts, causing tension on the set. To his credit, once Silvers became aware of this problem, he abandoned the prompts and memorised his dialogue, earning him the respect of his co-stars, including Williams. Though fun in its own way, the movie pales in comparison with the following "Carry On" entry, DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD (1967), an uproarious parody of the French Revolution.NB. Though often billed as 'Carry On Follow That Camel' and 'Carry On Don't Lose Your Head', neither film has ever been screened under those titles.

Anita Harris stars in this Phil Silvers burlesque, as a belly dancer named "Corktip" who does a complete belly dance cameo and spends significant portions of the rest of the movie in an orange, hiphugging, midriff-baring harem outfit. A must see for fans of the belly dance/harem girl fantasy!