User reviews

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 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."

Thinly plotted but funny hospital comedy.

My favourite part is the early sequence depicting Frankie Howerd's first morning in the ward. Bernard Bresslaw's character is also funny and involved in a cute romance with a woman patient, Dilys Laye.

The main story has the matron (Hattie Jacques) and a doctor (Kenneth Williams) engineer the expulsion of young Doctor Kilmore (Jim Dale). This story is a bit more mean-spirited than usual for a Carry On but this doesn't kill the film. Jacques later has a great scene where she double-crosses Williams.

With such a large cast many have reduced screen time. So Sid James (as a malingering patient), Barbara Windsor, Peter Butterworth and Charles Hawtrey are very much in support roles. They're good, but it seems weird to have James and Windsor in smaller roles.

The biggest disappointment is having Joan Sims in not only a support role but as a dull spinster besotted with Howerd's character.

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.

RANKING: Although this is as "average" as you can get, it's actually quite a funny one. After all these years its rare for a Carry On film to make you laugh out loud but surprisingly this manages to do that a few times.

TYPICAL: Very typical - it's a really good example. Having spent what amounted to a fortune for this team with their period, full-costume comedies it was back to filming outside Maidenhead's council offices but that enthusiasm is still there and this has tons more energy than most of the modern dress entries.

Everyone is in this including Frankie Howerd who for once doesn't try to take over. The plot is as nuts as ever but it all seems to make perfect sense when you're watching it.

SEXY LADIES: The other essential of a Carry On film is saucy, sexy ladies. This definitely is one for those Barbara Windsor fans as she does feature quite a lot - often taking her nurses' uniform off for seemingly no apparent reason whatsoever other than because she's Barbara Windsor. This one's also got the popular 1960s TV personality and singer Anita Harris who's got a really pretty smile.

This was the second of the Carry On films set in a hospital and was released in 1967. It featured the first appearance in a Carry On film by the late, great Frankie Howerd and he is excellent here. He went on to appear in Carry On Up The Jungle in 1970. Most of the Carry On regulars appear here, though Charles Hawtrey is somewhat more subdued than normal. Kenneth Williams is also excellent as a smarmy doctor, as is Hattie Jacques as the matron and Anita Harris also appears as a nurse. It was rumoured that Jim Dale did some of his own stunts and he has a great set-piece here on a rooftop, as he hangs on for dear life. Sid James, who suffered a heart attack just before the film was due to start shooting, has less to do here, though and spends most of the film in bed. I did not enjoy Barbara Windsor in this film, though, but I could never tolerate her as an actress, she couldn't act for toffee and she only got parts in films because of her generous bosom. The film is funnier than some of the other Carry On films, though and it has always remained one of my favourites of the series. I watched it again recently and I still found myself laughing, even after all these years. I regard it as one of the best of the series and much better than most of their films to come during the 1970s. If you haven't already seen it, then watch it on TV or DVD. You won't regret it.

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.

Dr Kilmore is a popular doctor who ends up getting the sack when he is spotted on the roof spying on Nurse May (this wasn't his intention he believed that she was going to jump from the roof and was only trying to help her). Refusing to believe that a nice doctor like Doctor Kilmore is capable of doing what he is accused of the patients all rally round in an effort to overthrow Dr Tinkle and the matron whom were responsible for Dr Kilmore's sacking whilst simultaneously getting Dr Kilmore re-instated again...

Carry on doctor had some narrative similarities with Carry on teacher; in both films we have groups of people rallying together in order not to lose somebody who is deemed to be popular. This is by no means a bad thing as I loved the script to Carry on teacher and was kind of glad that a similar approach was adopted in a later film.

Although every plot summary confirms that the story involves Dr Kilmore's sacking and the patients rallying to get him re-instated at the hospital it is quite a long time into the film before this plot element actually kicks in. Prior to this, the focus is mainly on the patients and their various shenanigans (most of the time they are feigning illness for varying reasons). For this reason, Carry On Doctor is one of the weaker offerings when it comes to its story, but on the other hand there are still plenty of amusing situations (the scene where Mr Roper's wife turns up and she just rambles on at him whilst he's listening to music on his headphones was very funny). Then when she leaves she says "I've barely had time to tell you anything."

The cast are all on great form and it just goes to show that even with the absence of a story for much of its run time they can still put on a good show and provide us with plenty of laughs. As I've said Carry on doctor is not the wittiest script in the carry on franchise and it doesn't really contain many memorable lines, but at the end of the day it still delivers the good by providing many a funny moment.

Not the best of the franchise, but there's still plenty to like here.

A lighthearted romp from the Carry On crowd, featuring many of the players you have come to know and love in all the other films. As the title suggests, this film takes place in a hospital. As expected, the film is full of slapstick, sexual innuendos and one liners. Not perfect, but a good addition to the other Carry On films. You know what you're getting, and the film succeeds. See it, its fun and easier to swallow than the medicine the patients have to take. I especially liked the comic timing of everyone and the silly things that happen just make the film more enjoyable. Not much to think about, but its the kind of film where you find yourself smiling often.

Not up to the level of their best stuff, but far from the level of the Carry On team's weakest, this entry is as usual silly but entertaining. Some of the jokes are plainly obvious, but there are a few laugh-out-loud moments to make up for the tamer and lamer gags. The acting is good, but hardly the best that the team has displayed. It is however excess length that is the prime weakness here. The final fifteen minutes or so are very weak, and could have been handled better. Otherwise, this is simple, amusing fun, although 'Carry On Again Doctor' comes more highly recommend than this, and despite the title, the two films share as much in common as any of the Carry On films do.

Big screen and small screen medical dramas get their dose of satire from the Carry On troupe in Carry On Doctor. Usually those are solemn and serious when performed but none when this crowd does it.

Young Dr. Kilmore played by Jim Dale is an earnest well meaning sort of doctor even if he is a bit of a klutz. The patients in the ward like him even if the higher ups in the hospital don't. They include the head doctor Kenneth Williams and the head nurse Hattie Jacques. When a series of colossal and hysterically funny accidents put Dale on the hospital roof looking like he's enjoying a little slap and tickle with a patient, that's enough to get him fired.

Those patients though consisting of folks like Sid James, Frankie Howerd, and Charles Hawtrey aren't about to lose their favorite doctor. He's valuable to them like Captain Parmenter was to Sergeant O'Rourke on F Troop. Things get righted in their universe with a lot of laughs along the way and many jokes about bodily secretions.

Howerd's got some good moments as a motivational speaker who believes that doctors are superfluous until a big fall on his derrière lands him in hospital. Even funnier is Hawtrey as a man going through sympathetic labor pains with his wife on the birth of their first child.

You'll never watch St. Elsewhere with quite the same view again after seeing Carry On Doctor.

The second of four "Carry Ons" dealing with the medical establishment is certainly a comedown from the first – CARRY ON NURSE (1959), to which there is even an unsubtle reference at one point – if still quite tolerable and intermittently inspired. Amusingly, the film sports a barrage of fake alternate names – hence the full title shown on screen in the opening credits sequence is CARRY ON DOCTOR, OR NURSE CARRIES ON AGAIN OR, DEATH OF A DAFFODIL OR, LIFE IS A FOUR-LETTER WARD – A BEDPANORAMA OF HOSPITAL LIFE.

Ironically, it was originally conceived as being the last of the series – hence the idea to return to the environment of their first true success for the swan song! Of course, the series not only lasted for another decade but produced some of their best (and very worst) entries during that twilight period. Furthermore, this was also intended as a closure to another long-running film comedy series – the "Doctor" films which had started with DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (1954) that were produced by "Carry On" producer Peter Rogers' own wife, Betty Box – which explains the portrait of a stalwart of that series, James Robertson Justice, finding itself hanging on the walls of the hospital in which this film is set!

Apart from the fact that they returned to the present-day after half a dozen period pieces...er...genre spoofs, they also introduced other celebrities into the fold, most prominently Frankie Howerd (who is even top billed here). Usual "Carry On" lead Sidney James had suffered a heart attack before shooting began, and this probably necessitated the introduction of Howerd – as well as confining James' character mostly to a hospital bed practically for the film's whole duration! Most of the usual members of the gang are here: the afore-mentioned James (who is here nagged to distraction by wife Dandy Nichols), Kenneth Williams (the feared Dr. Tingle, who himself fears new recruit Windsor!), Charles Hawtrey (as a husband suffering the pregnancy pains felt by his wife?!), Joan Sims (as Howerd's devoted and practically deaf assistant), Hattie Jacques (as the matron who has the hots for Williams!), Barbara Windsor (the new nurse whose busomy figure and skimpy outfits gets every male patients' temperature to boiling point), Jim Dale (as Williams' amiably accident-prone 'rival') , Bernard Bresslaw (as the chap who underwent an appendectomy surgery but stayed on after breaking his leg from falling off the operating table!) and Peter Butterworth (quite wasted as another appendectomy patient); for whatever reason, one of the patients turns out to be The Invisible Man!

As I said before, there is some good stuff in here mostly provided by Howerd (as a charlatan faith healer who injures his backside and misunderstands Williams' diagnosis as having a mere week to live!), Dale (his rooftop antics after misreading Windsor's intentions to sunbathe as a suicide attempt is one of the film's comic highlights) and Bresslaw (who keeps convincing his visiting friend to swap clothes with him so that he can go see an attractive but lonely patient in the women's ward). Even so, the film is definitely unbalanced by having two ultra-campy performers – Howerd and Williams – letting rip in it (which perhaps explains why the equally effeminate Hawtrey is atypically restrained here). Furthermore, the cruder aspects of the "Carry On" brand of humor, not to mention a more frenzied gag structure, have clearly started to take center stage here – to the eventual detriment of the genteel sophistication and genial characterizations displayed in earlier, better films like CARRY ON NURSE itself and CARRY ON TEACHER (1959).

Marking the midway point of the franchise Carry On Doctor serves a pastiche of Carry On Nurse, even featuring an intertextual gag about it even with the postmodern tomfoolery in full swing. It falls back on the familiar formula of the earlier entries, abandoning the more adventurous settings of the past few films for a self-contained location full of knockabout hospital hi-jinks; The cast is on top form as usual, with a great guest performance from Frankie Howerd and a returning Sid James post-heart attack confined to a hospital bed for most of the film; nevertheless, a bedridden Sid James is better than no Sid James at all. While there seems to be a greater reliance on nostalgia for Carry On Doctor, the cruder aspects of the series' humour, not to mention a more frenzied gag structure, have started to take centre stage; the whole thing has been mildly titillating for generations now and still could fuel a fantasy or two.

A bit hit-and-miss but generally good fun.

The life and times of the doctors, nurses and patients at an English hospital.

Some weird and wacky characters and funny scenarios make this a reasonable comedy. Story line is fairly interesting and there are some great laugh-out-loud moments.

However, in between all this there are some pretty silly scenes. Some attempted jokes fall very flat.

Overall it is reasonably good fun. Hardly a must-see but worth watching if you want some mindless entertainment and have 1 1/2 hours to kill.

Carrying On Inappropriately with Carry on Doctor (1967).

A series of films carried on, with perpetual double entendre, loved to finger an organ, unleash melons to gorge on, baps, flaps, jugs, bazookas went ding dong.

Though it's not quite so funny today, Fanny plays with her balls in new ways, Dick's choppers been cut, Kitty's curtains are shut, the clams gone from splayed to being spayed.

What an awful sequence of films these were, revisited today, they demonstrate just how out of touch and offensive the so-called humour of yesteryear was, and how a generation of inappropriate behaviour was considered acceptable.

Carrying On Inappropriately with Carry on Doctor (1967).

Francis Bigger is a notorious charlatan who tours the country lecturing on the subject of mind over matter. During one of his performances he falls off the platform and is taken to the local hospital where he causes total chaos. The regular Carry On team is joined by Frankie Howerd in this 'bedpanorama of hospital life'.

The second, and most possibly my favourite Medical carry on. It has the usual gags and slapstick routines. The rooftop scene with Jim Dale had me in stitches. Frankie Howerd is a brilliant addition to the usual star cast - Hattie Jacques, Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey - and has some good lines, but Joan Sims is a scene stealer as a dim witted lady with hearing problems. This is Carry on at its best, released at the time when series at its peak.

The patients of a suburban town hospital rebel against the registrar Dr Tinkle (Kenneth Williams) and the matron (Hattie Jacques) who got a popular doctor and nurse the sack.

Fairly amusing entry in the series which manages to hold up because it has the charm of an England that never was and the fact that it isn't always hilariously funny dosen't really matter. Frankie Howerd is excellent as the mind over matter charleton who goes around the country persuading people that they don't need medicines or doctors for cash and the ever reliable Syd James also carries the picture with his usual charm this time as a lazy out of work good for nothing who fakes illness just so that he can stay in hospital. Dandy Nichols also turns up as Syd's nagging wife in a funny moment where he listens to the hospital radio while pretending to listen to his wife's constant nagging and she's too busy having a go at him to notice.

While there are few genuinely laugh-out-loud moments in this hospital-set film - and while it's a definite come-down from the 1950s CARRY ON NURSE - CARRY ON DOCTOR proves to be a worthwhile and effectively amusing entry from the middle of the series, one that stands out perhaps because it proves a nice contrast to the number of period-set movies the team had been making previously.

For me, one of the best things about the production is that almost all of the team is present (aside from the much-missed Kenneth Connor, still on his six-year hiatus from the franchise). All that and you get Frankie Howerd too, delivering a slightly more restrained performance than you'd expect from the actor.

I enjoy the films that are set in single locations, because they tend to work harder for the laughs and this is no exception. Although there's a noticeable emphasis on sex and titillation for laughs compared to earlier instalments, this is still relatively tame compared to later efforts like CARRY ON DICK. Of the cast, Jim Dale and Kenneth Williams are on top form, and it's great to have Sid James and Barbara Windsor back in the fold (even if both are in relatively minor parts). A fast pace and general feeling of hard work and physical performance on part of the cast make this a superior CARRY ON adventure.

A largely overpowering Frankie Howerd heads the cast for this slightly revamped version of "Carry On Nurse" (1959) as the crooked preacher who ends up in hospital after a posterior altercation leaves him a bit bruised. When he gets to the hospital - where everything happens under the watchful gaze of the portrait of "Sir Lancelot Spratt" - he alights on "Roper" (Sid James) and "Barron" (Charles Hawtrey) and encounters the ruthless matron (Hattie Jacques). She resurrects her established partnership with Kenneth Williams' doctor - this time he's called "Tinkle" and the scene is now set for some fairly standard fayre of mischief and mayhem. Jim Dale features a little too frequently for me - I found his efforts just too busy and frenetic - as the bumbling "Dr. Kilmore" who is the apple in the eye of the nurses, especially "Miss Clarke" (Anita Harris) and so the seeds of romance are sewn. It's all a bit same old, same old, this comedy - but the last twenty minutes or so give them all a chance to shine as revenge is taken and Williams, in particular, gets a little more than he bargained for. It's quickly paced and there is plenty of innuendo but here I found the script a bit more akin to the traditional films - less smut and more fun. A power struggle with anaesthetics - what's not to like?