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Awesome Movie

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

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.

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 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).

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.