Carry on Christmas (1973)

Ebenezer Scrooge is a misery on Christmas, not allowing people money or doing anything to share Christmas cheer around his employees or acquaintances. While Scrooge is visited by three ghosts we see how his penny pinching has affected those around him.

The second of the four Carry On Christmas specials, this one loosely recounts the story of Treasure Island with Sid James as Long John Silver and Barbara Windsor, strangely, as Jim Hawkins. The writing never quite builds up any steam, and many of the jokes were recycled from previous films anyhow. This special was filmed in black and white -- strangely, since the previous one was in color. I generally love the look of black and white, and the earliest films in the Carry On series do fine with it. But here it is used ineffectively and feels like a budgetary concession, which I'm sure it was.