Un thermomètre pour le colonel

"Carry on Nurse" is one of the finer examples in the series. Only the second film to be made this still captures the naive charm of late 50s humour while exploring the more risque ground of the double-entendre.

The usual gang of misfits are present: Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques (playing Matron!) and Joan Sims in her first "Carry On..." appearance.

The hospital setting works especially well in this film and indeed later entries in the series which sees the gang placed within some institution or other are usually worth a look to see how our heroes react and rebel against authority.

"Nurse", actually voted Best British Film of 1958, is a delight to watch and it's hard to equate this with something as bawdy as "Camping" or "Girls".

And the ending is a scream too with a most inventive use for a daffodil in medical history!

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.

Well, it was interesting. I laughed more at "Carry On Sergeant".

Fun seeing Wilfred Hyde White, an early Jill Ireland (but as a love interest for old Nasal Nose?) and June Whitfield, no doubt best known in America as Edina's mother on "Absolutely Fabulous."

The strongest point seemed to be waiting for Matron (what little I have seen of this woman, she is steadily emerging as the fave) to show up for inspection, but nothing really coming of it. I suppose the daffodil scene was bold for its time, must remember that. Certainly more daring than anything on American cinema.

I did enjoy Nurse Nightingale tho, keeping an eye on the patient.

There was just a bit of a hint of what is to come with Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques, as the two argued here over why he couldn't wear his robe while lying in bed.

And the laughing gas operation was highly original. I would wager that scene had something to do with why it got noticed in America.

Truthfully, I have never heard of any of these movies until a vacation to the UK back in '97.

It is an utterly fascinating idea to use the same actors over and over again in different settings tho.