Carry On Teacher (1959)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The third of the Carry On series finds the gang up to their necks in strife at Maudlin Street Secondary Modern School. Headmaster William Wakefield (Ted Ray) is a fine and good man who doesn't believe in corporal punishment, this has endeared him to the children of the school. However, he is considering moving on to another school to further his career, but first he has to oversee the arrival of two school inspectors and hope all goes smoothly. Fat chance of that happening, the kids have got wind or Wakefield wanting to leave and start to sabotage everything, with the teachers suffering the brunt of things."Teacher" is a warm hearted entry in the series, choosing prat-falls and genial set-pieces for its comedy. The teachers bicker and crack under the strain of the kids pranks and sabotages, while there's also a couple of nice romantic threads bubbling away. Also of note is the not so sly debate on corporal punishment, Wakefield is firmly against it, while robust Maths teacher Grace Short (Hattie Jacques) is the other end of the scale - she's cane mad! There's a feminist angle as well, adding some more depth to Norman Hudis' screenplay.Ultimately though it's about the laughs, about the chaos, and watching the series regulars go about their way with skill and tongues in cheek. A hit at the box office, Carry On Teacher is quintessentially an early Carry On movie, with wry social observations and a harmless naivety towards the education system, there's not much to dislike here. 8/10

Carry On Teacher is one of the earlier entries in the Carry On series and I found this quite funny.The Headmaster at Maudin Street School plans to apply for another job at another school. As the students like him, they don't want him to leave. They decide to play some practical jokes just as school inspectors are about. They put chewing gum and super glue on chairs, saw a piano leg and make it collapse and launch an experimental rocket. Through all of this, two of the teachers fall in love with each other.This sort of thing never happened when I was at school when the headmaster left! The cast includes some of the Carry On regulars including Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Kenneth Conner and Leslie Phillips. With Ted Ray as the Headmaster.Have a good laugh with Carry On Teacher. Excellent.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Maudin Street School is hardly a paradise and, when a new school starts looking for a headmaster in his rural hometown, the Maudin headmaster plans to go for the job. However his first problem is a school inspector and child psychologist coming to visit the school and give it a full assessment. On learning this news the pupils decide to get a bit of revenge on the headmaster and the staff by orchestrating a campaign of problems and bad behaviour; but not so direct that the staff will be able to work out who is responsible and easily bring it to a halt.In the third of the Carry On series, the film moves away from the basic template of Sergeant and Constable and goes for a different plot in a school setting. The basic frame is that the staff are being forced into a series of pratfalls by the scheming pupils while busily trying to impress the inspectors at the same time. Into this mix is thrown the usual element of romance (with Connor getting his third bite at the "shy man desired by forward female" cherry in three films) and the whole thing is rather slight. The humour doesn't have the heavy focus on bums, tits and innuendo that the series developed but this is not to say that it is the height of wit because it is not. Instead the humour is a mix of physical humour and some mild word play and, as such it is actually quite amusing if you are in the mood, although I'd be surprised if you found yourself roaring with laughter at any point.The cast are OK even if they are mostly just repeating the roles they have had from the first two Carry On films. As I said Connor has the same character and essentially the same subplot but is OK with it. Hawtrey camps it up well while Williams is nicely proper and stuck up. Phillips does his usual stuff reasonably well in a minor role but his partner, Knight, is not that good and is a bit stiff. Sims continues with the "fanciable female" role in this film (although she would become more the "battleaxe wife" as the series went on) and didn't totally convince me. After being a bit flat in Constable, Jacques has a good slice of the comedy while also having her usual matron-style character.Overall this is an OK entry into the series although those used to the more bawdry entries into the series may be a little disappointed with how slight it is. The plot is unengaging and only acts as a frame for the comedy that is mainly pratfalls with some wit in the dialogue. Few viewers will be roaring with laughter (or even laughing out loud that much) but it is a little bit harmless fun that should distract for a short while.

The third Carry On film in the series, Teacher still manages to maintain the gentle, clean fun of its predecessors.Many of the favourites are present here (Williams, Hawtrey, Sims, Jacques, Connor) and are well at ease in the roles they would make their own for the next 20 odd years.Kenneth Connor is a delight as the bumbling science teacher who finds himself falling for the prudish school's inspector while Leslie Phillips is as smooth as he ever was as the well-oiled child psychologist. Ding dong!It is interesting to note here that at this early stage, it is Joan Sims who plays the blonde bombshell in the series - a much different role to the screaming, bawdy characters she would play later.To sum up, Teacher is basically a series of set pieces in which the kids of Maudlin Street School, so desperate for their current headmaster not to leave, set about causing havoc so as to create a bad impression for the school inspectors.Of course it's all harmless, St. Trinians meets Greyfriars fun and there's a happy ending too. In all, a great addition to the series.