Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

BA_Harrison With James Bond proving a smash at the box office, it wasn't long before the Carry On team cashed in on the spy craze by spoofing the exotic world of international espionage. Their 1964 effort, Carry On Spying, sees Kenneth Williams as inept spy Simkins, who is sent to Vienna with three trainee agents (played by Bernard Cribbins, Charles Hawtree and Barbara Windsor) to try and retrieve a top secret formula that has been stolen by criminal organisation S.T.E.N.C.H.The spy genre provides plenty of material for the gang to parody, and the gags come thick and fast (fnarr fnarr!), with the usual mix of innuendo and slapstick proving to be a lot of fun. Babs Windsor, in particular, is a revelation: in her very first role in a Carry On film, she steals the show with her infectious combination of wide-eyed innocence and unique sex appeal and gets some of the biggest laughs, her finest moment being a hilarious scene where she is unsuccessfully interrogated by Dr. Crow (Judith Furse), head of S.T.E.N.C.H.After much crazy shenanigans, including a trip to Algiers where Windsor and Cribbins don belly dancer disguises to infiltrate a harem (allowing for Babs to jiggle her bristols), the film winds things up in fine style with two fabulous set pieces, the first aboard a speeding steam train crawling with enemy agents (including Dilys Lane as sultry spy Lila), and the second taking place inside the villains' underground lair, where our quartet of brave but bumbling agents are chased by sexy gun-toting female agents in skin-tight outfits into an automation area where they narrowly escape being killed by numerous large pieces of machinery—not just once, but twice, when the system is put into reverse!Favourite gag: the British secret service's description of the enemy agent known as The Fat Man… He's male. And fat.

Robert J. Maxwell I saw one or two examples of this series when they were released and found the amusing. Now that I'm a crotchety old curmudgeon I don't find them so funny, but it may not be the fault of farces like this. It just takes more to amuse me.As it stands, this isn't too bad. A trio of newly graduated spies are sent in the care of Kenneth Williams first to Vienna (nods to "The Third Man") and then to Algiers ("The Maltese Falcon" and a couple of other allusions). Surprisingly few references to the immensely popular James Bond novels and films of the period. The spying here is more old fashioned.There are a couple of laughs in it and the gang is trying hard to please, but it's rough going with such raw material. A man walking along the street steps into an open manhole and disappears with a shriek. Ha ha.Williams uses a peculiar accent and juts his jaw more than usual, as if showing off that grin full of gleaming chiclets. I can't imagine there are many people like the giddy blond, Barbara Windsor. Four people could play a hand of bridge on her bosom, which seems to defy gravity.Not the worst of the lot by any means.

jc-osms Everyone has a secret vice and mine, I suppose, is a predilection for the "cheap as chips" and often as saucy "Carry On" films of the 60's and early 70's which are on constant rotation on UK TV channels even today.This is one of the earlier black and white ones and stars some but not all of the commonly accepted ensemble cast (no Sid James or Joan Sims for example). The innuendo is not as heavy as in later films as the "Swinging 60's" and liberated 70's advanced, but it's there of course, pushing the envelope as much as they dare.The plot is a spoof of the early James Bond films, but also nods in the direction of classics like "Casablanca" and "The Third Man", only don't expect any exotic location shots here, in fact the drop-in library footage of these locations gets a laugh in itself, it's so obvious.There are plenty of amusing quips and situations, with the usual hit-or-miss success rate. Kenneth Williams minces about as only he can, implausibly playing up to the ladies in the cast while a young Barbara Windsor gets disrobed as usual but otherwise spares us her trademark cackle and for once is quite palatable. There are a couple of obvious mis-casts - Charles Hawtrey's arch campness is too close to Williams' to be effective and it's obvious that Jim Dale would have been better suited to the gormless young male lead part than the irritating Bernard Cribbins (something the casting director would put right before too long - Cribbins never got another part in the series while Dale got the nod in at least two of the funnier entries soon afterwards, in "Carry On Cowboy" and "Carry On Doctor").The humour is, as has been said before akin to that in British sea-side postcards of the time and is the film equivalent to the likes of Benny Hill on TV. Both were hugely successful in the UK although I doubt the "Carry On..." films travel much outside the UK, unlike Hill. Even so, the best of them are really quite funny and it's fun to see the writers toying with the censor of the time in attempting to slip in as risqué a joke as they can.

Ephraim Gadsby "Carry On Spying" is more than just a "Carry On." Like the previous entry in the series starring Bernard Cribbins ("Carry On Jack"), "Spying" is a good spoof of a film genre in its own right."Jack" had upped the "Carry On" ante, with non-"Carry On" actors outnumbering the usual "Carry On" team. It was also the first of the great movie spoofs in the "Carry On" tradition."Spying" -- coming on the heels of "Jack" -- is among the best spy spoofs ever.Kenneth Williams (using his "Hancock's Half Hour" snide voice throughout), Cribbins, Charles Hawtrey, and Barbara Windsor (in her first "Carry On") are inept agents sent out by "The Chief" (Eric Barker) to recover a formula.Also among the good guys are Jim Dale, as a James Bond type character (looking remarkably like a young Timothy Dalton) who is always being thwarted by his own colleagues.The sets are fantastic. There is the high-class restaurant where Williams and Cribbins are in black tie and Hawtry is in the clothes of a cycling racer. There's the "Vienna" set (actually a sound-stage at Pinewood) so reminiscent of "The Third Man" one almost expects to see Orson Welles lurking in the shadows (he isn't, worse luck). The have a cross-country train like that where so many espionage thrillers have taken place, and which gives one the feeling of constant, claustrophobic movement despite being stage-bound. They wonderfully capture the spirit of the Casbah in a scene with Eric Pohlmann, who was in several episodes of "Danger Man." And there are the space-age corridors of the underground hide-out of the bad guy, with the futuristic, slightly off-kilter oblong doors.The timing of the film could not have been better. Made after "Dr. No" and contemporaneous with "From Russia With Love" (which also had an exciting train sequence), "Spying" came out just as James Bond was prepared to explode with "Goldfinger." Because of its black-and-white photography it really seems closer in spirit to the great television show "Danger Man" -- though the Vienna scenes could have been cut out of "The Third Man." It's hard to believe Michael Caine's "Harry Palmer" movies were released after "Carry On Spying." "Carry On" movies were always at their best with spoofs of specific movie genres. "Carry On Spying" is one of the better entries in the series and can stand on its own as a remarkable spoof of espionage thrillers. Anyone who knows their espionage noir, or loves the "Carry On" spoofs, will dig this flick.