Carry On Up The Khyber
A Carry on film as one of Britain’s best? Why not? The series encapsulates so much about one level of British humour , and Carry on... up the Khyber (the 16th in the franchise) is perhaps the best of them all. It displays a love of farce; saucy-postcard double- (and let’s face it single-) entendres including the Cockney-rhyming slang of the title; panto-esque repetition; a ridiculous plot-line the audience can predict (and enjoy) from scene one; and self-deprecatory spoofing of British reserve and manners.
As ever produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas, Khyber has Sid James at his fruitiest; Kenneth Williams at his hammiest; and Peter Butterworth at his loopiest. Many of the other stalwarts of the series also appear, Bernard Bresslaw, Angela Douglas, Joan Sims and the strange Charles Hawtrey among them. The final scene where the residence and fort are being blown up while the diners studiously ignore the rude interruption is undoubtedly the best and most famous moment in the Carry on movies.
Made for peanuts – Snowdonia doubling for the Khyber Pass, uniforms from Tunes of Glory re-used for the troops – it has surely repaid its budget tens or even a hundred times by now thanks to regular TV appearances: but we still watch it to brush up on the words.
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1: Oliver!
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7: The Third Man
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