The first Carry On of a new decade saw the team start on good, if, not great form. Originally going to be called Carry On Tarzan until producer Peter Rogers couldn’t get the rights to use the name, Carry On Up The Jungle uses the not particularly convincing plot strand of an exotic African adventure (filmed not in Kew Gardens as in popular belief but on Pinewood soundstages) to string together a series of skits, parodies and bawdiness that for the most part hit the mark.
Jungle does what the Carry Ons do best (see Carry On Up The Khyber), placing a group of British eccentrics in a hostile alien environment and sitting back to watch how they cope. The sparring between James’ bumbling white hunter (he shoots shirpas instead of lions) and Howard’s fey ornithologist is sparkling stuff, more than compensation for the aimless plotting. Yet the big laugh getter is Terry Scott (in a role turned down by Jim Dale) as the wannabe Tarzan type, swinging through the jungle like a klutz, being child-like in his sexual awakening by Carry On crumpet Jacki Piper and almost enjoying carnal relationship with his mother (Sims).
The action fizzles out in the end when the gang are captured by an all female tribe from Aphrodisia and marks should be deducted for a blacked up Bernard Bresslaw as a lazy servant but this is Carry On working at its natural state; cheap, charming and funny.