Carry On Jack

Carry On Jack
Original UK quad poster
Directed by	Gerald Thomas
Produced by	Peter Rogers
Written by	Talbot Rothwell
Starring	Kenneth Williams Bernard Cribbins Juliet Mills Charles Hawtrey Donald Houston Cecil Parker Jim Dale
Music by	Eric Rogers
Cinematography	Alan Hume
Edited by	Archie Ludski
Production company	Peter Rogers Productions
Distributed by	Anglo-Amalgamated Warner-Pathé Distributors
Release date	November 1963
Running time	91 mins
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£152,000

Carry On Jack is the eighth in the series of Carry On films to be made and was released in 1963. Most of the usual Carry On team are missing from this film: only Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Jim Dale appear throughout. Bernard Cribbins makes the first of his three appearances in a Carry On. Juliet Mills, Donald Houston and Cecil Parker make their only Carry on appearances in this film. Carry On Jack was the second of the series to be filmed in colour and the first Carry On film with a historical setting and period costumes.

Carry On Jack starts with the death of Admiral Horatio Nelson (Jimmy Thompson), whose last words are that Britain needs a bigger navy with more men, followed by his famous request for a kiss to Hardy (Anton Rodgers). In the main story, Albert Poop-Decker (Bernard Cribbins) has taken 8 ¹⁄₂ years and still not qualified as midshipman, but is promoted by the First Sea Lord (Cecil Parker) as England needs officers. He is to join the frigate Venus at Plymouth. Arriving to find the crew all celebrating as they are sailing tomorrow, he takes a sedan chair with no bottom (so he has to run), carried by a young man and his father (Jim Dale and Ian Wilson, respectively) to Dirty Dick's Tavern.

Mobbed by women in the tavern as he is holding a sovereign aloft (as advised by Dale), he is rescued by serving maid, Sally (Juliet Mills). She wants to go to sea to find her shanghaied boyfriend Roger, but landlord Ned (George Woodbridge) has let her down. She finds that Poop-Decker has not reported to the ship yet and is unknown to them, so in a room upstairs she knocks him out and takes his midshipman's uniform.