Leofwine_draca HOLIDAY CAMP is a fine little British comedy production that feels like HI-DE-HI, albeit with a 1940s setting. It was popular enough to spawn sequels along with an associated radio series. The film has a larger-than-life family heading to a holiday camp for a weekend of excitement, so if you wanted to see what Butlins looked like in the 1940s, this is the film. Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison are the ever-bickering couple, but the fun comes from seeing all of the different character sub-plots that mingle and interact as the story goes on. Dennis Price plays one of his ultimate cad characters, womanising everywhere he goes. Jimmy Hanley is a jilted sailor with a penchant for chocolate. Peter Hammond plays a gambling addict who gets fleeced by a couple of chancers. Flora Robson hunts for lost love Esmond Knight (stealing the film with his one-scene cameo, full of pathos). Hazel Court, future scream queen, is gloriously beautiful and lights up the screen whenever she appears. There's also a biggish role for the criminal underutilised in cinema Esma Cannon. If you're a fan of British comedy, then HOLIDAY CAMP is a real treat.

bkoganbing This film introduced me to a British institution I was not familiar with, as the title says Holiday Camp. It's kind of like a cruise ship on land with organized activities like one where guests stay in various cabins. This film also introduced the Huggett family to the British movie-going public. The Huggetts are parents Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison, son Peter Hammond and daughter Hazel Court. Like Ma and Pa Kettle who were introduced in The Egg And I, the Huggetts would go on to a few feature films and were a great favorite in the United Kingdom.But they were second billed here to Flora Robson a kindly spinster woman who lost her true love during the first World War and who is rooming with a young woman Jeanette Tregarthen. Tregarthen is also pregnant but only her boyfriend Emrys Jones knows. Tregarthen's aunt Beatrice Varley a hatchet faced old harridan is there as well. Robson's performance as a woman who does a great kindness to Jones and Tregarthen is the highlight of the film. She was quite touching.Also billed above the Huggetts is Dennis Price whose character is something along the lines of David Niven's Major in Separate Tables. But Price is a lot more sinister.Young Peter Hammond gets good and taken by a pair of card sharps who work these camps, but those two get a nice comeuppance and Hammond learns a life lesson. Hammond is also bunking with Jimmy Hanley who played a lot of young juvenile leads in the 40s and 50s in British films. He takes an interest in Hazel Court and Hanley would also appear in future Huggett films.This was a nice family comedy with a touch of drama and pathos and I can see why the Huggetts were so popular in the United Kingdom.

howardmorley My first inkling of Esma Cannon was in the BBC t.v. comedy series "The Rag Trade" from the early 1960s in which she played a comic "put upon" machinist.She was a funny comedienne with her 4'10" height and way of speaking.In "Holiday Camp" she again plays a lonely spinster on the look out for a beau.Unfortunately a confidence trickster and "Mannequin" murderer, "Sq. Ldr. Hardwick" (Dennis Price), takes her out for a walk down a remote country lane and although we don't see her end in the film, we have to presume she became his next victim.Bear in mind this was a 1947 family film and the British Board of Film Censors would have clamped down hard on any graphic sex & violence."Holiday Camp" has quite a cast and although Charlie Chester & Patricia Roc get star billing you only see them (as themselves) for very short scenes.The real stars are Jack Warner & Kathleen Harrison as working class parents Mr Joe & Mrs Ethel Huggett along with their daughter,Hazel Court as Joan Huggett who has a toddler in tow.I did not hear whether she was a war widow or had an unfortunate accident but she finds a boyfriend in the shape of Jimmy Hanley (Jimmy Gardner) who has been left a "Dear John" letter by his former girlfriend.There are some nice period touches like sweet rationing (Britain did not finally come off it until 1955 and I vividly remember my parents stocking up our rations so we could go away on holiday with our chocolate/butterscotch etc, (I was born in 1946).Of course contraception was not mentioned and a previous reviewer mentioned it was daring of Sydney Box (the screenplay writer) to include a subplot of a pregnant unmarried girl Valerie Thompson (Jeannete Tregathen) whose musical boyfriend Michael Halliday (Emrys Jones) cannot afford to keep them both.Which brings me to Dame Flora Robson.I was surprised to see her in this type of film as she normally appeared in serious drama but even a Shakespearean actress wants some light relief occasionally.She plays Esther Harman a woman who lost track of her boyfriend in 1918 and supposed him dead with the millions of others.She keeps a photograph of them as young lovers in her handbag.Due to a very unlikely coincidence (which only happens in films), it happens her old lover, Esmond Knight, is now married with two boys and working (although blind as a result of a mine) as the holiday camp announcer.Although she meets him in his office, she does not divulge who she is as she realises he is a happy man.Rather Esther becomes a sympathetic mother-type figure to Valerie and admonishes Valerie's very disapproving aunt played by Gainsborough stalwart Beatrice Varley for not lending her support to her niece's desperate need.Another subplot involves the perils of engaging cardsharps in pontoon, but Jack Warner thankfully comes to the rescue.Beauty parades, swimming, wonky bicycles, dances, entertainment on the stage, communal eating etc. its all there.I am so glad my parents took me & my two sisters down to the coast and avoided organised entertainment!!

fsmith@bigpond.net.au Isn't Jack Warner the wise Father and the nice man we all saw in the Dixon of Dock Green series in the 1950's. I spent some very happy moments as a teenager in the 1960's at Butilns Holiday Camp in North Wales. I can tell you it was in those days a very sophisticated place for a young lad out of a northern working class family. It was a magic place and seeing this movie brought it all back. Living in your very own (shared) "chalet". Coming home at night as late as you like and all activities laid on for FREE. I thought it was heaven. I loved the pretty daughter in the film and pleased to see on the IMDb that she is still alive and had a very eventful career in films. And Flora Robson giving more than a hint of the great actress she was. The blind announcer at the camp also played in many movies including the RED SHOES a classic film of the 1940's with Moira Shearer. (He played the conductor of the orchestra.) Loved the film and will see it again. regards, frank.