Saturday, May 19, 2007

Infamy! Infamy!














My good friend Tupper, man of many and fearless opinions, urges me to ‘lighten the pudding’ (his very words) with one or two less formal posts.

And therefore, from the Blogger’s own collection, this publicity still of Amanda Barrie, goofing around for Carry on Cleo (1968), a cinematic magnum opus rather tendentiously credited to William Shakespeare (book) and Talbot Rothwell (screenplay).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057918/

I think the delectable Amanda may not at this point even have been cast as Cleopatra, for her costume is exotic dancing girl, and not the full works as Queen of Egypt, but Cleopatra she became. I have very fond memories of Sid James as Mark Antony goggling at her as she reclines in her bath of asses’ milk, a cockney Cleopatra yattering away in tones raucous enough to strip the paint off the set.

Like all of such delights, it cannot possibly be as good as I remember it being.

There, at last I can truly feel I have enriched the internet with the kind of thing it lacked (for an image search didn't show anywhere such a pleasing image of the subject).

4 comments:

Laura said...

Before my time, but I'm afraid I can't see the appeal. She looks like she has some strange deformity of the spine.

DrRoy said...

I'm more puzzled by the urn or amphora: maybe this was actually a still from a projected but abandoned melding of the Dance of the Seven Veils and Antiques Roadshow. She is just saying, 'A mid-nineteenth century copy actually, Arthur'. I will pitch this to Channel 5 as an idea whose time has come: 'and next week the Pussycat Dolls will make you wish that your bone china was hot like theirs...'

Laura said...

I'm surprised you know the Pussycat Dolls. Maybe you'll enjoy the Summer Ball line-up: Vengaboys, Journey South, The Automatic and Pete from Big Brother. Personally, I'm only going because I get to wear a dress.

Tupper Kneetoss said...

Why thank you for the reference. Did I really abjure you to 'Lighten the pudding'? It does sound like me.

My favourite one-liner from the film is Cleo warning Sid James (as Mark Antony) to be careful of the asp: "One bite could kill you". He bites the head off the animal and chews boldly. "Ugh! I'd think that would kill anybody."