Carry On Doctor (1972)

Lack of good storyline.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

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

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.

Carry On Doctor (1976) Love This Show Madness Level Never Countless EverGreen.Whan I Seen In 2010.Kenneth Williams I Always Have That Expression.And I Love Joan Sims Smile Lovly.Sid James Comedy Humor Lovly The Popular Dr Kilmore Is Sacked After Being Discovered In A Compromising Position On The Roof Of The Nurses Home. The Patients Are Determined Not To Lose Him, And So Take On The Might Of The "Cutting" Dr Tinkle And The Overpowering Matron. Francis Bigger, 'Preacher And Healer', Ends Up In Hospital In This Chaotic Carry-on Medical Movie. With Dr. Kilmore in Trouble, Matron Refuses To Support Him After The Amorous Attentions She Has Fed Dr. Tinkle Have Paid Off. There's A Humorous But Slight Role For Charles Hawtrey Suffering From A Sympathetic Pregnancy And The Film Closes With The Patients Revenge On Dr. Tinkle And The Formidable Matron Because Of Their Conspiracy Against Dr. Kilmore.

More hospital hi-jinks from the Carry On gang (NURSE,AGAIN DOCTOR and MATRON are other examples from the series),DOCTOR has a very wispy and slim plot line (even for this series' standards),merely seeming to be a collection of brief sketches,but is still very enjoyable thanks to some good verbal and visual gags and performances.Mainstays like Sid James,Charles Hawtrey,Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques are on board,but the nominal male leads are the less regular mainstay Jim Dale and the great Frankie Howerd,making the first of his two appearances in a Carry On,with a pneumatic Barbara Windsor and a glamorous Anita Harris(another non-regular) in the main female roles. Howerd wasn't always a natural for the cinema,being happier delivering his rambling comic tales on the stage or TV rather than playing scripted characters in a movie,but this is one of the few occasions when his unique comic style successfully transferred to the big screen.Howerd's familiar cheesed-off,cynical,oohs and aahs persona is amusingly exploited here,and Frankie delivers some priceless one-liners and slapstick incident;Frankie's performance gives DOCTOR an extra added quality that it doesn't particularly have,and wouldn't have had,if he wasn't present.Dale also raises some laughs as the hopelessly gauche and clumsy Doctor Kilmore,and regulars like James,Williams,Jacques,Hawtrey,Joan Sims,Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth are adequate but unusually relegated to fairly secondary roles for once.Good cameos from familiar faces like Brian Wilde,Dandy Nichols,Peter Jones and Gordon Rollings add to the fun.The Carry On's were never much concerned with cinematic artifice or subtle humour,but for those who simply want to watch an ensemble cast of talented comic performers do their thing,CARRY ON DOCTOR perfectly serves it's purpose.RATING:6 and a half out of 10.

Normally when I write reviews of films I have seen I open with a short plot summary – it helps me focus my thoughts on the film I have just seen and also provides a bit more information for any readers. However with Carry on Doctor the plot is little more than a series of antics involving the patients and the doctors. In fairness, this may not be a bad thing since the "plot" in the film Carry On Matron was the worst part of it. Anyway, here we have a collection of love-struck patients, flirting doctors, pratfalls and women with ample breasts and giggles. So far so basic and to be honest none of any of these really work that well, producing a film that isn't that funny and pretty much does what you expect it to do.However, what makes it better than these aspects and better than Matron is the presence and material of Frankie Howerd. For those that like him he is great with a constant tongue in his cheek and material that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the script. Whether he is giving the nurses a hard time or dropping wonderful in-jokes (he greets a daffodil with "oh no you don't – I've seen that movie") he is the best thing in the film and makes it much better than it should have been. The rest of the cast are OK without really doing much. Having seen them be good in Matron, Williams and Jacques were a disappointment with not a great deal to do. Dale's clumsy doctor is obvious and easy while Windsor is all breasts and Butterworth and Bresslaw don't have much more to do. James is his usual self to good effect but I must admit that I liked the fact that Sims wasn't immediately recognisable as the sort of characters she usually plays.Overall this is an enjoyable film but not consistently; instead it is the presence of Howerd that raises everything to a higher level – his delivery is classic and his material is head and shoulders above the rest of the script. I generally prefer the Carry On movies that have more of a setting and some narrative to them but Howerd makes this one work and it is an enjoyable entry in the series just as it started to go further down the road of crudity that would kill it late in the seventies.