Carry on Teacher

This one seems to me to be an underrated “Carry On” film – which, again, the series website mini-review puts down by labeling it atypical (the school setting making CARRY ON TEACHER feel more like an unofficial entry in the contemporaneous “St. Trinian’s” franchise, which I’m only vaguely familiar with and has actually just been revived)!

While there are some flat spots on occasion, and a few of the gags are extended to their ultimate detriment, the film is generally hilarious (with a fair share of side-splitting moments); besides, the series’ notorious lewdness – mainly evident in the previous entry, CARRY ON NURSE (1959), during its closing moment – is inescapable here, given that Joan Sims’ physical education teacher has been suggestively named Allcock (which Leslie Philips’ character keeps harping on, having fallen for her at first-sight)!

Several of the actors from NURSE return here: these include unacknowledged series performers such as the afore-mentioned Philips (again, incarnating the playboy type but who also happens to be a child psychologist!), Rosalind Knight (her small role as the studious nurse has been amplified here to the similarly workaholic school auditor – though she’s made to share a hesitant romance with Kenneth Connor, playing the nuclear scientist this time around but relentlessly flubbing his lines in anxiety) and Cyril Chamberlain (the delusional patient of CARRY ON NURSE is now the school janitor).

Kenneth Williams, then, is the English Literature teacher (he’s been assigned to stage “Romeo & Juliet” for the annual prize-day – the students, however, are disappointed that the text has been significantly ‘cleaned-up’!); Charles Hawtrey is the music instructor (who is also to provide accompaniment for the play – the constant bickering between both teachers over whether predominance should be given to Shakespeare’s words or the dramatic emphasis allowed by the score is one of the film’s mainstays, with Williams questioning Hawtrey’s very talent by comparing the latter’s work to a dirge…and, sure enough, that’s what his eventual ‘incidental music’ sounds like on the day of the performance!); corpulent Hattie Jacques is once again the indomitable female type, playing the maths professor.

Ted Ray – whom I’d never heard of, but is supposedly a comedy institution in Britain – is the long-suffering acting headmaster. He’s against punishing students, though he’s almost driven to it after the children turn the school – the address, by the way, is on Maudlin Street! – upside down during the inspectors’ one-week stay…except that this transpires to be a deliberate scheme on their part to quash Ray’s chance at a position in another college, because they don’t want him to leave!! The latter element actually leads to an uncharacteristic, sentimental GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS-style ending.

Among the highlights are Connor’s hand-made rocket going through the roof during science class, Hawtrey falling through the floor of a room, Sims’ judo attack on the persistent Philips, the students’ various pranks on their instructors (such as having the tea spiked with alcohol, spreading itching powder in the teachers’ room, or faking a bomb plant), and the disastrous climactic performance of “Romeo & Juliet”.

P.S. Incidentally, a British comic who excelled in playing schoolmasters was Will Way – and in one of these, THE GOOSE STEPS OUT (1942), Charles Hawtrey himself was featured as a student!

If there is anything that Carry On Teacher immediately does better than its predecessors, it is that there's a much stronger narrative at play, however skeletal it may be. We're slowly moving away from a simple frame environment in which each character was given their own slice-of-life vignette; while the narrative is still a bit thin, this is a story that progresses. It's a much warmer-hearted entry than the previous two, choosing prat-falls and genial set-pieces for its comedy, the teachers bicker and crack under the strain of the kid's pranks and sabotages. While there are some flat spots on occasion, and a few of the gags are extended to their ultimate detriment, Carry On Teacher is generally hilarious with wry social observations and a harmless naivety towards the education system backed by plenty of great wordplay and slapstick pratfalls, though the film tends to favour the latter more so than the former, mileage may vary.

Maudin Street School is hardly a paradise and, when a new school starts looking for a headmaster in his rural hometown, the Maudin headmaster plans to go for the job. However his first problem is a school inspector and child psychologist coming to visit the school and give it a full assessment. On learning this news the pupils decide to get a bit of revenge on the headmaster and the staff by orchestrating a campaign of problems and bad behaviour; but not so direct that the staff will be able to work out who is responsible and easily bring it to a halt.

In the third of the Carry On series, the film moves away from the basic template of Sergeant and Constable and goes for a different plot in a school setting. The basic frame is that the staff are being forced into a series of pratfalls by the scheming pupils while busily trying to impress the inspectors at the same time. Into this mix is thrown the usual element of romance (with Connor getting his third bite at the "shy man desired by forward female" cherry in three films) and the whole thing is rather slight. The humour doesn't have the heavy focus on bums, tits and innuendo that the series developed but this is not to say that it is the height of wit because it is not. Instead the humour is a mix of physical humour and some mild word play and, as such it is actually quite amusing if you are in the mood, although I'd be surprised if you found yourself roaring with laughter at any point.

The cast are OK even if they are mostly just repeating the roles they have had from the first two Carry On films. As I said Connor has the same character and essentially the same subplot but is OK with it. Hawtrey camps it up well while Williams is nicely proper and stuck up. Phillips does his usual stuff reasonably well in a minor role but his partner, Knight, is not that good and is a bit stiff. Sims continues with the "fanciable female" role in this film (although she would become more the "battleaxe wife" as the series went on) and didn't totally convince me. After being a bit flat in Constable, Jacques has a good slice of the comedy while also having her usual matron-style character.

Overall this is an OK entry into the series although those used to the more bawdry entries into the series may be a little disappointed with how slight it is. The plot is unengaging and only acts as a frame for the comedy that is mainly pratfalls with some wit in the dialogue. Few viewers will be roaring with laughter (or even laughing out loud that much) but it is a little bit harmless fun that should distract for a short while.

The third Carry On film in the series, Teacher still manages to maintain the gentle, clean fun of its predecessors.

Many of the favourites are present here (Williams, Hawtrey, Sims, Jacques, Connor) and are well at ease in the roles they would make their own for the next 20 odd years.

Kenneth Connor is a delight as the bumbling science teacher who finds himself falling for the prudish school's inspector while Leslie Phillips is as smooth as he ever was as the well-oiled child psychologist. Ding dong!

It is interesting to note here that at this early stage, it is Joan Sims who plays the blonde bombshell in the series - a much different role to the screaming, bawdy characters she would play later.

To sum up, Teacher is basically a series of set pieces in which the kids of Maudlin Street School, so desperate for their current headmaster not to leave, set about causing havoc so as to create a bad impression for the school inspectors.

Of course it's all harmless, St. Trinians meets Greyfriars fun and there's a happy ending too. In all, a great addition to the series.

This school-based variation on St Trinian's, with the little horrors (including a very young Richard O'Sullivan) driving their teachers mad, was one of the earliest of the Carry On series and a particularly good one.

Key members of the team come together here - Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims (always worth watching, hilarious), Hattie Jacques, and Kenneth Connor - alongside other showy actors such as Ted Ray, Leslie Phillips, and Rosalind Knight.

Names are fun as ever (Sims is 'Miss Allcock') and the action is fun, frenetic, and entertaining. I loved the scene with the itching powder that ruins a meeting; as well as the chaos in the staff room - not to mention of course the goings-on with the two horny couples (Phillips and Sims; Connor and Knight). Never a dull moment.