Carry On Cleo

**Carry On Cleo** is a pre-cert UK VHS release by EMI on 1980. It got re-released by Thorn EMI Video on 1980.

## Description

'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in fer me!' wails Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in the Carry On team's saucy take-off of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and the Twentieth-Century Fox epic which was on release in the U.K. around the same time. And 'they' did have it in for Carry On Cleo's poster, with its cheeky similarities to the one displaying Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. What Shakespeare would have thought we'll never know. But as a great punster himself, much given to bawdy jokes, it's not too fanciful to suppose he would have got more than a few belly laughs from Talbot Rothwell's screenplay. As history, Carry On Cleo is not so much potted as potty. Any attempt to outline the plot is as doomed to failure as it is for Sid James's fiendishly leering Mark Antony to explain his scheme to bump off Caesar to the delectably dim-witted Cleo (Amanda Barrie) when she's bathing her luscious limbs in asses' milk. Somehow it manages to involve two enslaved Ancient Britons, Hengist Pod (Kenneth Connor) and Horsa (Jim Dale) being offered for sale by Warren 'Alf Garnett' Mitchell as one of the brothers Marcus and Spencius. They escape into the clutches of sex-starved Vestal Virgins who are, of course, destined to remain frustrated. Horsa turns swashbuckling swordsman to defeat the troops who come to get them, but it is the timid Pod who becomes the bodyguard of Caesar, who is expecting a spot of trouble from sundry knobbly-kneed Roman nobles. And so it goes on, with plotters plotting, puns flying, and lavatory jokes and double meanings being tossed around with typical Carry On happy abandon. All this and Joan Sims as Caesar's wife Calpurnia, Sheila Hancock as the henpecked Hengist's wife Senna Pod, Victor Maddern rasping 'Sinister... Dexter... Sinister' as a Roman Sergeant Major, and Jon 'Dr. Who' Pertwee as a Soothsayer. Sooth to say, Carry On Cleo is a must for collectors of Carry Ons. MARJORIE BILBOW

## Cast

* Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar
* Charles Hawtrey as Seneca
* Kenneth Connor as Hengist Pod
* Joan Sims as Calpurnia
* Jim Dale as Horsa
* Amanda Barrie as Cleopatra
* Victor Maddern as Sergeant Major
* Julie Stevens as Gloria
* Sheila Hancock as Senna Pod
* Jon Pertwee as Soothsayer
* Brian Oulton as Brutus
* Michael Ward as Archimedes
* Francis de Wolff as Agrippa
* Tom Clegg as Sosages
* Tanya Binning as Virginia
* David Davenport as Bilius
* Peter Gilmore as Galley master
* Ian Wilson as Messenger
* Norman Mitchell as Heckler
* Gertan Klauber as Marcus
* Warren Mitchell as Spencius
* Michael Nightingale as Caveman
* Peter Jesson as Companion
* E. V. H. Emmett as Narrator
* Judi Johnson as Gloria's bridesmaid (uncredited)
* Thelma Taylor as Seneca's servant (uncredited)
* Sally Douglas as Antony's dusky maiden (uncredited)
* Wanda Ventham as Pretty bidder (uncredited)
* Peggy Ann Clifford as Willa Claudia (uncredited)
* Mark Hardy as Guard at Caesar's palace (uncredited)
* Percy Herbert as Guard (uncredited)
* Christine Rodgers as Hand maiden (uncredited)
* Gloria Best as Hand maiden (uncredited)
* Virginia Tyler as Hand maiden (uncredited)
* Gloria Johnson as Vestal Virgin (uncredited)
* Joanna Ford as Vestal Virgin (uncredited)
* Donna White as Vestal Virgin (uncredited)
* Jane Lumb as Vestal Virgin (uncredited)
* Vicki Smith as Vestal Virgin (uncredited)