Dentist in the Chair

Dentistry is hardly a barrel of laughs, and if this was to be the start of a rival to the Doctors series, all had their work cut out from the kick off. It does begin well with the students' antics and their diffidently exasperated tutor Reginald Beckwith. Kenneth Connor gives the funniest performance, Eric Barker is ideal as the bemused Dean and Peggy Cummins lovely and charming as his niece; Monkhouse a bit of a fish out of water. Half way through things are running out of steam, and the ending is a bit wet. All quite painless overall though for fans of British comedies of the period. Wasn't that the superb comedienne Avril Angers in the small role as the second tea lady Maggie, masquerading under the rhyming slang moniker Rosie Lee?

I'm confused by the quantity of negative reviews on this site for DENTIST IN THE CHAIR, a low budget British comedy released in 1960 and starring the comic double-act of Bob Monkhouse and Kenneth Connor. Monkhouse and his cronies are the youthful students of a dental school and Connor is a bumbling thief who through various machinations of the plot ends up masquerading as one of the students himself.

The laughs in DENTIST IN THE CHAIR come thick and fast and most of them take the form of character humour which in the hands of Monkhouse and Connor is very funny. Certainly this is no worse than the likes of CARRY ON CABBY from the same era so I'm not sure why all the hatred. At the same time I can understand that this sort of humour feels very genteel and dated by modern standards, but as I despise modern comedy that's fine by me.

The script was written by the ubiquitous Val Guest, although bizarrely he didn't direct in this instance; those duties were handled by Don Chaffey, who went onto helm one of the all-time classics, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. The supporting cast includes the illuminating Peggy Cummins, familiar from the horror classic NIGHT OF THE DEMON, with the likes of Eric Barker in more minor parts. I can't lie and say DENTIST IN THE CHAIR is a classic, but it's certainly a fun movie for fans of British comedy. A sequel, DENTIST ON THE JOB, was to follow.

This was to be the first of a series of comedies cued to the enormous success of, and utilizing many of the same players from, England's "Carry On" comedies. Only two were made, and this one demonstrates the principal shortcoming leading to the series' end. Despite the presence of an attractive cast, and the same frantic pace which commanded audience approval for the "Carry On" films, "Dentist in the Chair" is betrayed by an extraordinarily inane script.

Being an expatriate Brit, I watch quite a lot of vintage British movies of any genre. I watched this movie mainly because I had never before seen a movie with Bob Monkhouse appearing in it. However. it didn't take long to see that the movie was headed towards being inane and pathetic. I don't know whether the director thought "the more the merrier" but ninety nine percent of the movie showed large numbers of people crammed into small halls or rooms within the dental hospital. It was all too frenetic and random to be amusing. And the silly old-fashioned elevator was hopelessly over-used. Of course, the story line was limp also - not even worth recounting, indeed just like all the "Carry On" movies but this one fell short of even those, as if that was at all possible! No wonder Monkhouse made relatively few movies. As a scriptwriter, TV show host and stand up comic he was a bit (but not much) better. As an actor (in this movie at any rate) he was remarkably wooden and dull. As I mentioned at the beginning, my curiosity was that I not seen a Bob Monkhouse movie before. After having viewed this painful offering, I will not let my curiosity about Monkhouse movies get the better of me again!

Dentist in the Chair is directed by Don Chaffey and adapted to screenplay by Val Guest from Matthew Finch's book. It stars Bob Monkhouse, Kenneth Connor, Peggy Cummins, Eric Barker and Ronnie Stevens. Music is by Ken Jones and cinematography by Reginald Wyer.

A pretty unfunny Brit comedy that has good intentions but even a talented cast and writer can't lift this above the maudlin. Plot revolves around dentistry students at The King Alfred Dental Hospital, who get involved in stolen instruments and affairs of the heart, the latter complicated since the focus of the boys' attention is The Dean's niece!

It's all very innocent of course, but as it lacks daring or any sort of worthy story based cohesion, it's a chore to get through. Not helped by a damp squib of a finale. Cast are fine enough but all involved in this venture have better legacies elsewhere. 4/10