Richard Lester made the only film version to date of George McDonald Fraser's Flashman books (something he'd been trying to set up for years; apparently John Alderton was an early choice for the role). Royal Flash was probably the only one of the books that could actually be filmed, not least as there's no large-scale battles in it.
Fraser wrote a hilarious take-off of The Prisoner of Zenda, but Lester doesn't make much more of it than a Carry on Ruritania, handsomely enough staged (with location shooting in Bavaria) but let down by its rather leaden humour and a miscast Malcolm McDowell as Harry Flashman (at a book-signing event in the early 1990s, I asked Fraser his opinion of the film and he tactfully replied he thought it was as good as it could be).
Oliver Reed steals the acting honours as an excellent Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, however. Britt Ekland is more or less routine. Alan Bates looks on a bit bemused.
Fraser wrote a hilarious take-off of The Prisoner of Zenda, but Lester doesn't make much more of it than a Carry on Ruritania, handsomely enough staged (with location shooting in Bavaria) but let down by its rather leaden humour and a miscast Malcolm McDowell as Harry Flashman (at a book-signing event in the early 1990s, I asked Fraser his opinion of the film and he tactfully replied he thought it was as good as it could be).
Oliver Reed steals the acting honours as an excellent Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, however. Britt Ekland is more or less routine. Alan Bates looks on a bit bemused.