Carry on Emmannuelle

Sweet, but insatiable French nymphomaniac Emmannuelle (a charming and vibrant performance by foxy brunette knockout Suzanne Danielle) comes to London, England to live with her impotent gay French ambassador husband Emile Prevert (broadly overplayed with eye-rolling campy relish by Kenneth Williams). Emmannuelle soon starts sleeping around with a vast assortment of fellows and winds up gaining considerable notoriety in the press for her unabashed carnal exploits. Director Gerald Thomas, working from a blithely silly script by Lance Peters, maintains a light, bouncy tone and a snappy pace throughout. Danielle brings a winning blend of saucy sexiness and adorable innocence to the role of giddy free spirit Emmannuelle. The rest of the game cast essay their wacky parts with tremendous cheeky aplomb: Kenneth Connor as hearty chauffeur Leyland, Jack Douglas as stuffy butler Lyons, Joan Sims as uptight maid Ms. Dangle, Peter Butterworth as near deaf old fuddy dud Richmond, Larry Dann as bumbling smitten twit Theodore Valentine, Beryl Reid as Theodore's smothering, overprotective mother Mrs. Valentine, and Henry McGhee as newscaster Harry Hump. This movie delivers a delightful wealth of hilariously bawdy puns and equally sidesplitting raunchy jokes about such things as sex in airplane bathrooms and closets, men in drag, picking up guys in launderettes, and Emmannuelle making love to all the members of a soccer team. Sure, this picture is complete smutty dross, but it's way too amiable in its good-natured naughtiness to either resist or dislike. A real goofy hoot.

By the time that Carry On Emmannuelle rolled around, the boom in smutty sex comedies in the UK reached it's zenith and the comparatively innocent double-entendres of the Carry On movies were looking increasingly dated with audiences preferring to seek out something with strong nudity and some crude laughs, rather than watch another Carry On movie in the hope that there might be a fleeting glimpse of a pair of breasts. With the Confession movies pulling in the punters, and with David Sullivan muscling into the scene with movies like Come Play With Me & Playbirds, Gerald Thomas & Peter Rogers ventured into previously unexplored territory and plunged into spoofing adult movies. The result was ghastly. Featuring only a handful of the regular cast, most of them had flown the coup by this time. Kenneth Williams only appeared in the movie as a favour to Gerald Thomas, Kenneth Conner (the unsung hero of the Carry On series in our opinion) tries to have fun with the appalling material, but just ends up making himself look foolish - a great pity. Of the others, only Joan Sims, Peter Butterworth & belated regular Jack Douglas are on hand to help tie this car-crash of a movie to the Carry On series. One joke that will have a modern audience spitting their drinks across the room involves Dino "Mind Your Language" Shafeek as an immigration officer at an airport. The saddest slight of all in this non-starter of a movie has Kenneth Conner as Leyland, the Ambassador's chauffeur, showing Suzanne Danielle around London, in a bid to get her sexually excited - driving past Nelson's Column, he starts gurning and emoting "corr", or terms along those lines. Dear oh dear... Ultimately, Carry On Emmannuelle was too tame for the Dirty Mac Brigade and too strong for those who loved the more innocent Carry On movies. No wonder this was the last regular entry in the series.

Carry on Emmannuelle

source: Carry on Emmannuelle

Carry on Emmannuelle

Carry On Emmannuelle (1978) * 1/2 (out of 4) British comedy has Emmannuelle (Suzanne Danielle) going to stay with her upper class husband and having to teach all the workers what it means to be sexual. I recently bought a "Grindhouse 20-Film Collection", which features ten double-features and this film was shown with the one above but I guess the company didn't watch the film before including it. If you're wanting any sleaze or trash then you're not going to find it here but there are a few funny moments but a lot of the comedy is so far over the top that it comes off very force and juvenile. This was my first film from the "Carry On" series, which started in 1958.

At first, I thought this movie actually had to do with The Emmanuelle. But, then I was told that the spelling is different. When I saw the video cover, I still thought that it had to do with the Emmanuelle series. After watching this funny movie, I was very amused. This movie was super funny. It had some awkward scenes, though. The one problem I had with this film was the characters. I usually like to see films with good looking people in them, but the only okay looking person here was Emmannuelle. I guess they wanted to make her seem a lot more beautiful compared to everyone else. If you like comedies with a little dirty humor, Carry on Emmanuelle will carry you away. I give this film a 9 out of 10.

Just when I thought they wouldn't get any lower. After subjecting myself to that nadir known as Carry on England, I was hoping this would be better. Alas... this was just as worse as England, in short it is awful. The only redeeming quality was the song, and when that is the only redeeming quality you know there is something wrong. The direction is lacklustre, the jokes are terrible and poorly timed, the gags don't work, the story is naff, the pacing is messy, the sets look cheap and the acting doesn't cut the mustard. Kenneth Connor is bland and if Kenneth Williams hadn't had that dreadfully cheesy accent he may have raised this movie to a 2 but no...what a waste of a great actor. And how Joan Sims got dragged into this, I shall never know, she looks so embarrassed. Overall, awful and if you haven't seen it, I would recommend you keep it like that, because if you like Carry On like I do, you may find this movie's a disgrace to the series. 1/10 Bethany Cox

As the 'last' carry on it is often cited as the worst of the series (Along with the awful Carry on England). There's plenty of really bad d*** jokes, theres a couple of (very) soft * scenes and some peeping toms. On the plus side there is a rather nifty pop tune 'love crazy' sounding very 70's. Kenneth Williams puts in a good performance even though it is an embarrassing movie (Credibility wise) however the rest of the remaining (whats left of the) carry on crew don't do much. I actually enjoyed this as a 'so bad its fairly good!' movie, plus any movie that sends up the 70's * movie genre deserves a quick look!

Granted its obvious defects, this * parody is a far funnier Carry On than many give it credit for. The Carry On regulars are all in fine form, with Jack Douglas having his finest hour in the series as suave, randy 'Loins' the butler and there's a treasurable farewell performance from dear old Peter Butterworth, which is vintage Carry On. Kenneth Connor is brilliant, as usual, as lecherous chauffeur Leyland, Joan Sims returns to form as the Dickensian sounding Mrs Dangle and Kenneth Williams is as funny as ever as Prevert. Suzanne Danielle is quite superb as Emmannuelle and her sexy, knowing performance is all the more remarkable considering her limited acting experience at the time. If you can put aside any preconceptions and accept it as a bawdy romp of Britain in the post-pill pre-AIDS era when PC stood only for police constable, Emmannuelle provides plenty of laughs.