Carry On Emmannuelle (1978)

Carry On Emmannuelle, released in 1978, was the last of the Carry On movies and it’s the most notorious and reviled of the entire series. It’s difficult to find anyone with a good word to say about it. It’s one of those movies that everybody knows is rubbish, because everybody says it’s rubbish. Critics thought so at the time. Most online reviews start with the reviewer proudly announcing that he already knew this movie was trash before seeing it, and seeing it merely confirmed his worst fears.

When you approach a movie expecting to hate it then more often than not you will that you do end up hating it. What you need to do with a movie like Carry On Emmannuelle is to approach it with an open mind. So, is Carry On Emmannuelle really that bad? We shall see.

The movie begins with its own version of the famous sex-on-an-aircraft scene from Emmanuelle, but played for laughs.

Emmannuelle Prevert (Suzanne Danielle) has just arrived in London, to rejoin her husband Emile (Kenneth Williams). Emile is the French Ambassador. He is obsessed by body-building although it doesn’t seem to have had much result.

Emmannuelle has been looking forward to a nice reunion bedroom romp with her husband but Emile will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid doing his husbandly duty.

Emile is quite happy for Emmannuelle to find her carnal pleasures elsewhere. Which she does, but she wants carnal pleasures with her husband as well.

The movie has even less of a plot than most Carry On movies. Emmannuelle becomes obsessed by the idea that someone is going to try to assassinate her husband. Which provides an amusing sequence with Emmannuelle crawling around under the dinner table.

She then persuades the servants to recount their most outrageous sexual exploits, which is the weakest section of the movie.

And then the scandal breaks - the scandal being Emmannuelle’s sexual exploits revealed to the public, with Emmannuelle steadfastly refusing to apologise and then seducing her interviewer on camera.

The first half of this movie is quite good. It’s quite funny. It does lose steam a bit after that.

Making a kind of hybrid between a Carry On movie and the popular 70s British sex comedy genre was actually not such a terrible idea. By 1978 the Carry On formula was looking rather tame. Sexing up the formula a bit made sense. But in fact Carry On Emmannuelle doesn’t sex up the formula much at all. Maybe some of the sexual humour is marginally more risqué than in previous movies. There is however hardly any nudity at all in Carry On Emmannuelle. It actually doesn’t have much in common after all with the British sex comedies of that era. It’s really just a Carry On movie, made pretty much according to the established formula.

There were a lot of silly things said about this movie at the time. Critics pretty much accused producer Peter Rodgers of making a softcore porn movie. Which is wildly and ludicrously inaccurate. It’s only very very slightly sexier than the average Carry On movie of the 70s.

One of the many myths surrounding this movie is that Barbara Windsor stormed off the set in disgust. In fact she was never on the set. She was originally going to make an appearance but she was unavailable.

This movie includes quite a few of the Carry On regulars, with Kenneth Connors (as the ambassador’s sex-obsessed chauffeur) and Joan Sims (as the housekeeper) being in good form. Kenneth Williams is in good form as well, doing a typically outrageous French accent.

The movie’s trump card however is Suzanne Danielle as Emmannuelle. She’s funny and sexy and delightful.

It’s not a top-tier Carry On movie by any means but Carry On Emmannuelle really isn’t that bad. It’s a whole lot better than the preceding film in the series, Carry On England. I think it’s worth a look.

The ITV Studios DVD (part of their Carry On Ultimate Collection boxed set) offers a good anamorphic transfer. The extras include an excellent audio commentary featuring a couple of the cast members.