Dentist in the Chair

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.

And here we have another byproduct of the sort of humorous movie that first flowered with DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, as Bob Newhouse, Ronnie Stevens, and Peggy Cummins try to graduate dental school.

In the genre of "professional in training," not only have we seen doctors in the house, but nurses, veterinarians, lawyers and now dentists. I think these were popular, not just because the original starred Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice, but because it made these types funny to the audience. Mack Sennett began the profess with his Keystone Kops, reducing authority figures feared by his lower-class audience into objects of ridicule. These movies didn't just rely on funny stuff, they humanized them.

Unfortunately, this one is a step back. Aside from the obligatory hazing of the students by the fearsome dean, Eric Barker, there's only one short sequence in which the students have to deal with patients, who come out of their clinic rather worse for the experience. That's not the way the public comes out of encounters with the young, unsure, but basically competent young professionals of the other movies of the genre. Instead, most of the movie is taken up with what would be, in other movies of the type, an irrelevance, caused by Kenneth Connor stealing dental instruments by accident, flogging them to the students, and then having to recover them by raising a hundred pounds to buy them back. An interesting, if rather worn-down genre of humor has been reduced to boiling oil and melted lead... and dental students pulling out perfectly good teeth.

Therefore, this movie needs to be approached as pure farce, and that's a matter of the excellence of the gags and the styles of the comic performers involved. Miss Cummins is cute in the rote role of the pretty young professional, but Monkhouse and Ronnie Stevens are neither particularly sympathetic, nor, to my taste, are they particularly funny. I'm going to chalk that up to Your Mileage May Vary; they certainly had their fans in their day. However, while Connor is adept in his role, there's little of novelty in all of this. Just another watchable movie for a rainy afternoon.

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

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.

Some student dentists, who look as if they are on the verge of being middle aged, receive some 'dodgy' dental equipment that's.been stolen. What follows is a painful and tedious narrative whereby Kenneth Connor and his student dental colleagues try to rid themselves of the loot. Bob Monkhouse, a popular TV comedian of the time, couldn't really act. Someone like Leslie Phillips would have been far better, hence from the word go, Monkhouse is out of his depth and thus looks distinctly uncomfortable in the starring role. Sadly, the second lead, Ronnie Stevens, doesn't really impress in a comedic role, but comes across as nothing more than a bland, stuffy and colourless figure. Only Kenneth Connor comes out with any credit, but even he can't save this awful film due to the puerile dialogue and the flimsy storyline. This sort of film was an effort to cash in on the 'Doctor in the House' films but spectacularly fails! The film wasn't funny when it was released and after 60 years, it's lost all traces of humour! After 30 minutes of watching this drivel, I needed a stiff drink.