Infirmières en folie

I've always loved the Carry On... movies. I guess growing up in Britain, these movies were the first real movies you get to see, where they use words like 'bum', 'arse', and 'knickers', and you don't have to feel embarrased in front of your parents, because you knew that whilst there was a lot of innuendo, there's never be anything actually rude.

This one was filmed in and around my home town, and features loads of local landmarks. It is also a showcase for the cream of british comedy actors from the seventies, such as Sid James, Frankie Howard, Kenneth Williams, Charlie Hawtrey, and the very under-valued Jim Dale. The plot is simple. Two doctors in a hospital. One is popular with staff and patients, is good at his job, and is loved from afar by the pretty nurse. The other doctor is resentful, and enlists the help of the old battle-axe Matron to engineer his dismissal. Cue some saucy humour ('Oh, youve got a nice pear!') and some slapstick to match keaton, and you have the movie. You all know how it'll end, but that's OK. Just watch and enjoy.

I find it truly difficult to review Carry on Doctor, a film that has been there when I've needed it, it's helped with exams, tragedies and all sorts. The humour even now is loud, brash, bawdy, saucy and just plain old fashioned funny. I find it difficult to understand how on earth someone could watch it and not find it funny, it provides uplifting fun, gag after gag, and an innocence that has long since past. The performances all around are just sensational. Frankie Howerd, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques and Sid James in particular are all magical. Nurse had previously shown that the medical format worked extremely well, as would the later hospital based films, but Doctor will always be the pick of the bunch. Still shown on TV, DVD and download sales aplenty, hard!y surprising, Carry on Doctor is a gem, a true British institution.

When the hugely popular Dr Kilmore (Jim Dale) is fired unjustly by devious superiors, the patients do something about it.

If only British hospitals were like this. The nurses look like Anita Harris and Barbara Windsor, the doctors are bonkers and the patients are having the time of their life. Yes this is a "Carry On" movie in all it's jovial glory. Thinly plotted it may be, but it's an excellent script from Talbot Rothwell that lets the true comedians in the piece showcase their worth.

Hattie Jacques as a battle-axe Matron, Kenneth Williams as snobby unscrupulous head Doctor Tinkle, Charles Hawtrey suffering a phantom pregnancy, Frankie Howerd as Francis Bigger (a man in hospital after making a living out of saying you don't need Doctor's! And then believing he only has a week to live) and the likes of Bernard Bresslaw and Sid James as rogue patients playing up. It's a marvellous set up that works a treat for visual comedy. Witness Howerd's incredulity when he is woken at 06.00, or Hawtrey's reaction when the stocking laden minx that is Barbara Windsor arrives on the ward. Great comedy moments in a great comedy film. 7.5/10

The Carry On gang are admitted to hospital once again for more medical mirth-making, the marvellous ensemble cast bringing to life an eclectic range of eccentric characters. Jim Dale plays bumbling Dr. Kilmore, who is forced to resign by conniving Matron (Hattie Jacques) and egotistical Dr. Tinkle (Kenneth Williams) who falsely accuse him of the sexual harassment of several nurses (including ditzy Babs Windsor and the lovely Anita Harris). Sid James, Bernard Bresslaw, Frankie Howerd, Charles Hawtree and Peter Butterworth are among the crazy patients who decide to use whatever means necessary to force a confession from the devious pair and have the wronged physician reinstated.

Not quite as ribald as the 70s movies, but not without its saucy moments, the fourteenth in the Carry On series is a delightful mixture of harmless slapstick, mild innuendo and cheap titillation. Even though I tend to prefer the period piece/genre Carry On films to the contemporary efforts, Carry On Doctor remains a firm favourite thanks to memorable performances and a sparkling script packed full of priceless moments, such as the classic 'What a lovely looking pear' gag, Harris accidentally having her skirt pulled down on the hospital roof, and a few textbook 'phwooarrrs' from a variety of randy men as Babs wiggles her way to the wards.

The patient is Francis Bigger, played by Frankie Howerd, and the line is a sly reference to the funniest scene in Carry On Nurse. It's probably the cleverest line in Carry On Doctor. Like Carry On Nurse, Carry On Doctor takes place in hospital and, as the movie says, is a bedpanorama of hospital life.

The long-running Carry On movies were bawdy, low-comedy, good-natured madhouses that featured a repertory company of comics we came to recognize instantly. Here, the company is made up of Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale, Hattie Jacques, Sid James, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor and Bernard Bresslaw, among others. They play the patients, the doctors and the nurses at Finisham Hospital. If you relish jokes about bedpans and hernias, where any possible activity below the waist will wind up as corny, corny jokes or wheezing double entendres, Finisham is the place to be. Says Dr. Kilmore (Jim Dale) to Francis Bigger, "Just as I thought. You fell on your coccyx." "I did not," says Bigger, "I fell on my back." "Your coccyx is at the base of the spine," points out Dr. Kilmore. Says Bigger, "Well I've never heard it called that before."

A Carry On hospital movie always has lots of nubile nurses assisting the longing denizens of the male ward. "Nurse, I dreamt about you last night," says a hobbled Ken Biddle (Bernard Bresslaw) to the stacked Nurse Clarke (Anita Harris). "Did you?" she asks? "No," Biddle says, "you wouldn't let me." And of course we have to deal with the Matron, a large woman more indomitable than a battleship, who knows how to keep any male quivering at the thought of one of her enemas or her ice baths. Has a matron ever been played as perfectly as Hattie Jacques? Her matrons always know what they want, and in this movie, Matron wants Dr. Kenneth Tinkle (Kenneth Williams), the hospital's chief physician. "Matron," Dr. Tinkle says, "you may not realize it but I was once a weak man!" "Doctor," says Matron, "once a week is enough for any man!"

Who cares what the plot is when we have lines like these? We even have Charles Hawtrey who, in film as well as in life, raised mincing about to an art form, playing a father-to-be suffering from false pregnancy symptoms. It's a small, unlikely and vivid bit. The whole movie is a funny, gently off-color and totally innocent experience...such as the small boy who swallowed half a crown and was taken to hospital. Two days later the boy's mum asks the doctor, "How's he doing?" "Sorry, missus," the doctor says, "there's still no change."