40 grados de amor

In the last episode I was introduced to the girl who would be painted in Goldfinger (Shirley Eaton). In this one, I see Charles Bronson's wife Jill Ireland (Death Wish II, The Mechanic). You just never know who is going to turn up.

Of course, the usual "Carry On..." cast (Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques (playing Matron) and Joan Sims in her first "Carry On..." appearance) is present to carry on with their gags in a hospital. Most of those gags, of course, revolve around typical male behavior in the presence of pretty nurses. Nothing very original, but it is fun.

Check it out.

The second in the popular series is one of the best, but also the first in a quartet of medical lampoons from this stable – the others being CARRY ON DOCTOR (1968), CARRY ON AGAIN, DOCTOR (1969) and CARRY ON MATRON (1972); I’ve watched the latter but not the other two, though I should be able to get to them fairly soon...

Anyway, coming very early in the series, CARRY ON NURSE – which manages to make the most of its single setting – isn’t as crude or as slapdash as a good many of the later entries regrettably proved to be: in fact, it’s pretty much in the vein of classic British comedy of the time (such as the satirical films by the Boultings). The cast brings together several practiced performers in the field: Kenneth Connor (his “Cor, Blimey” attitude as a boxer with a broken hand is somewhat reminiscent of Norman Wisdom), Kenneth Williams (having a less central role than would be the case later but in quite good form as a bookworm nuclear scientist who’s also something of a misanthrope), Charles Hawtrey (playing a radio fanatic, where his prissy antics are already a bit over-the-top), Joan Sims (as an accident-prone nurse), Hattie Jacques (as the fearsome Matron – which became her trademark role), Wilfrid Hyde-White (as an old man whose military record allows him privileged service at the hospital but hasn’t rescinded his gambling mania!), Leslie Philips (as a fun-loving sort who in a drunken binge with his fellow patients decides to have them perform his delayed operation themselves – the latter scene is the film’s hilarious highlight where, predictably, laughing gas is let loose at the most inopportune moment).

The nominal leads here are actually Terence Longdon as a recovering reporter and gorgeous Shirley Eaton as the idealized nurse, who provide the obligatory romantic interest; Jill Ireland (the future Mrs. Charles Bronson) has one of her earliest roles as the girl who finally ensnares Williams, while both Michael Medwin and Norman Rossington appear briefly – as, respectively, Connor’s manager (a self-proclaimed showman) and a punch-drunk remnant of the boxing profession. Other gags revolve around a snob patient who’s continually embarrassed by his commoner wife, another who’s occasionally compelled to run riot in the corridors, and an impossibly solemn-looking student nurse. Apart from throwing Longdon and Eaton in each other’s arms, the denouement sees the release of several of the ‘star’ patients from the hospital – and culminates with the long-suffering nurses’ revenge on the fastidious Hyde-White, by fitting a daffodil in his rectum instead of a thermometer just as the Matron is making her rounds!

The Carry On formula was a straightforward one: take any familiar stuffy Brit institution with its blustering authority figures and inflexible bureaucracy and reduce it to chaos with a little strategically applied low class maliciousness. The resulting mayhem and farcical runnings about inevitably turn pompous prigs into quivering jellies, to the roaring amusement of Brit audiences who lived their lives under the heel of such petty authorities and loved to watch them taken down.

Carry on Nurse, with its casual snipes at the Public Health, zany ward carryings on after hours by bored neglected patients fed up with their authoritarian Matron (Hattie Jacques, in her first of more than a dozen appearances as this familiar type) and fighting back in a series of anarchic stunts, shows the Carry On formula in ready-made form and is an excellent starting point for new viewers.

Carry On Nurse was the second of the Carry On movies and also the first of the medical ones.

This one is about life in a ward in Haven Hospital. The patients include a boxer, nuclear scientist and a Major. We get to see one of them snogging a nurse, the Major always calling for help and, best of all, the patients trying to do a bunion operation while breathing in laughing gas! There is also an accident prone nurse to add to the chaos.

I find this to be one of the funnier Carry Ons and is shot well in black and white.

Now to the cast, which includes plenty of well known stars joining the regulars: Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jaques, Kenneth Conner, Charles Hawtrey, Leslie Phillips and the Carry On debuts of Joan Sims and June Whitfield. With Bond girl Shirley Eaton (before she was painted gold in Goldfinger), Bill Owen (Compo from Last Of the Sumer Wine), Norman Rossington, Joan Hickson (Miss Marple), Susan Shaw, Jill Ireland (Charles Bronson's wife) and Wilfred Hyde-White as the Major.

Have a good laugh with Carry On Nurse. Great fun.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

While not a laugh riot, this film about nurses and patients at a ward at Haven Hospital holds your interest because of the endearing characters. Kenneth Williams is his usual fun self, aided by an interest in a young (and fairly beautiful, of course) Jill Ireland. Joan Sims plays a bumbling student nurse perfectly, while Hattie Jacques is near perfect as the unamused matron. The beautiful Shirley Eaton is also in this, any film I've seen her in she has been naturally good. The jokes are not hilarious or anything like that, but the film puts a smile on your face often enough (Charles Haughtry is funny in this). There have been (much) worse Carry On Films and some better, but this is a watchable one I think you'll enjoy but not love.