Carry On Don´t Lose Your Head (Special Edition) (UK)

Carry On Don`t Lose Your Head is a historically-set British comedy film. It was not originally part of the Carry On stable (there was confusion at this time as to whether or not the production could use the name as the productions had ceased to be distributed by Anglo who had been replaced by Rank) but the cast and crew remained pretty well the same as always and the film turned out to be one of the best Carry Ons ever made.

The setting is revolutionary France. Citizen Camembert (Kenneth Williams) is over-seeing the executions en masse of the French nobility with the help of the ever-faithful (though dim-witted) Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth). In Britain Sir Rodney Ffing (Sid James) and Lord Darcy (Jim Dale) hear about the plight of their Gallic compatriots from their tailor and shocked into action, The Black Fingernail is born. The film is based around Camembert`s attempts to catch the Fingernail after the rescue of La Duc de Pommfrit (Charles Hawtrey).

It bears all the hallmarks of the later era of Carry Ons - bad (yet amusing) puns, visual gags, and almost all of the familiar Carry On faces are present. Furthermore, they are all truely on form here with Jim Dale relishing the opportunity to play a swashbuckling hero. What brings it all together though is the expensive look the piece has, with the sets beautifully set-up and some excellent cinematography. Finally the script, as a parody of the Scarlet Pimpernel, is immaculate, laced with adventure and some excellent set-pieces. If you are unfamiliar with the Carry On films it is an excellent place to start.

The film is well-presented in widescreen and the sound is mono and both are well-cleaned up when compared to other copies circulating. There are also some extra features on this special edition. There is a photo gallery which contains bubbles of information about each picture, a trailer, a specially-written booklet about the stars of the film, a feature commentary in which Robert Ross (a Carry On historian) and Jim Dale (one of the stars) discuss the experience of working on the films and an episode of the ITV series Carry On Laughing. As a series these tend to be filled with trite puns and are in historical or literary settings featuring only a couple of the film cast. The episode featured on this disc, The Prisoner of Spelda, is actually one of the funniest and whilst they are far from brilliant it is nice to see them represented on DVD. The commentary is interesting enough although not always hugely relevant to the film and certainly makes buying this edition worthwhile but there is a lot of information and anecdotes repeated by Dale from the other commentaries he recorded.

If you already own the older edition on DVD the question is how much you enjoy the film as this edition is certainly superior. You probably won`t learn anything new from the commentary if you are a big fan of the film series, but it is still an enjoyable listen whilst these discs represent the only way of getting the complete Carry On Laughing episodes. A very good package overall.