★ 6 / 10
A largely overpowering Frankie Howerd heads the cast
CinemaSerf
A largely overpowering Frankie Howerd heads the cast for this slightly revamped version of "Carry On Nurse" (1959) as the crooked preacher who ends up in…
A largely overpowering Frankie Howerd heads the cast for this slightly revamped version of "Carry On Nurse" (1959) as the crooked preacher who ends up in hospital after a posterior altercation leaves him a bit bruised. When he gets to the hospital - where everything happens under the watchful gaze of the portrait of "Sir Lancelot Spratt" - he alights on "Roper" (Sid James) and "Barron" (Charles Hawtrey) and encounters the ruthless matron (Hattie Jacques). She resurrects her established partnership with Kenneth Williams' doctor - this time he's called "Tinkle" and the scene is now set for some fairly standard fayre of mischief and mayhem. Jim Dale features a little too frequently for me - I found his efforts just too busy and frenetic - as the bumbling "Dr. Kilmore" who is the apple in the eye of the nurses, especially "Miss Clarke" (Anita Harris) and so the seeds of romance are sewn. It's all a bit same old, same old, this comedy - but the last twenty minutes or so give them all a chance to shine as revenge is taken and Williams, in particular, gets a little more than he bargained for. It's quickly paced and there is plenty of innuendo but here I found the script a bit more akin to the traditional films - less smut and more fun. A power struggle with anaesthetics - what's not to like?
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★ 7 / 10
"Oh no you don't," says the patient to the nurse, who comes into his room holding daffodils, "I saw that film!"
Terrell-4
The patient is Francis Bigger, played by Frankie Howerd, and the line is a sly reference to the funniest scene in Carry On Nurse. It's probably the cleverest…
The patient is Francis Bigger, played by Frankie Howerd, and the line is a sly reference to the funniest scene in Carry On Nurse. It's probably the cleverest line in Carry On Doctor. Like Carry On Nurse, Carry On Doctor takes place in hospital and, as the movie says, is a bedpanorama of hospital life.
The long-running Carry On movies were bawdy, low-comedy, good-natured madhouses that featured a repertory company of comics we came to recognize instantly. Here, the company is made up of Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale, Hattie Jacques, Sid James, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor and Bernard Bresslaw, among others. They play the patients, the doctors and the nurses at Finisham Hospital. If you relish jokes about bedpans and hernias, where any possible activity below the waist will wind up as corny, corny jokes or wheezing double entendres, Finisham is the place to be. Says Dr. Kilmore (Jim Dale) to Francis Bigger, "Just as I thought. You fell on your coccyx." "I did not," says Bigger, "I fell on my back." "Your coccyx is at the base of the spine," points out Dr. Kilmore. Says Bigger, "Well I've never heard it called that before."
A Carry On hospital movie always has lots of nubile nurses assisting the longing denizens of the male ward. "Nurse, I dreamt about you last night," says a hobbled Ken Biddle (Bernard Bresslaw) to the stacked Nurse Clarke (Anita Harris). "Did you?" she asks? "No," Biddle says, "you wouldn't let me." And of course we have to deal with the Matron, a large woman more indomitable than a battleship, who knows how to keep any male quivering at the thought of one of her enemas or her ice baths. Has a matron ever been played as perfectly as Hattie Jacques? Her matrons always know what they want, and in this movie, Matron wants Dr. Kenneth Tinkle (Kenneth Williams), the hospital's chief physician. "Matron," Dr. Tinkle says, "you may not realize it but I was once a weak man!" "Doctor," says Matron, "once a week is enough for any man!"
Who cares what the plot is when we have lines like these? We even have Charles Hawtrey who, in film as well as in life, raised mincing about to an art form, playing a father-to-be suffering from false pregnancy symptoms. It's a small, unlikely and vivid bit. The whole movie is a funny, gently off-color and totally innocent experience...such as the small boy who swallowed half a crown and was taken to hospital. Two days later the boy's mum asks the doctor, "How's he doing?" "Sorry, missus," the doctor says, "there's still no change."
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Thanks! However this copy is from a FS source (i.e is cropped to 4:3) Hoping you can get us a copy in the original 1.66 aspect ratio.