Carry on Nurse

source: Carry on Nurse

The Matron of Haven Hospital is a fearsome lady, she runs a tight ship and the staff and patients are constantly walking on egg shells. After the admittance of a couple of lively characters, the patients decide enough is enough and start to take things into their own hands. Following on from Carry On Sergeant, this was the second entry into the Carry On franchise, tho some of the humour is borderline bawdy, it's still a long way short of what would become the franchise's trademarks. A number of character peccadilloes keep the film frothy and entertaining, there is budding romances, a hapless nurse, annoying private patient and a whole ream of havoc inducing goings-on. It's well adapted by Norman Hudis, from the play "Ring For Catty", which was written by Patrick Cargill and Jack Searle, and it's directed safely by Gerald Thomas. Who along with his producer, Peter Rogers, would bag themselves in the process a nice on going contract from Pinewood Studios. The film was a big box office success in Britain and even made a splash in America. It's not hard to see why, consistently funny and charmingly simple, Carry On Nurse is as safe as a Victorian built terrace house. Or should that be Hospital? 7.5/10

The humour is more traditional and less broad than the later carry-ons, with more genuine social observation, though there are many seaside postcard gags (What a fuss over a little thing!) as the nervous male patients are stripped, bathed and pummelled by the robust young nursing staff. I'd just like to give an honourable mention to the lovely Joan Hickson (the ward sister). She later starred inimitably as Miss Marple but was a great comedienne (try the Miss Marple audiotapes where she plays all the parts). I like the way the story is told from the nurses' point of view with a real sense of the tedium, squalor and essentialness of their job. In later hospital carry-ons they are farcical walk-on parts (and I'm sure Sid James can get a double entendre out of that). Kenneth Williams is a delight as always (I'm a nuclear physicist, not a surgeon!) and even acquires a beatnik girlfriend. Charles Hawtrey spends most of the time playing imaginary piano concertos long before Rowan Atkinson. This being England, there's more than a touch of the surreal ("...but not with a DAFFODIL!"). I think this gag was repeated later with Frankie Howerd as the victim.

Since I bought the boxed set, I'm compelled to watch all 43 episodes of the "Carry On" series -- or is it 430? Of the few I've watched so far, this is the most grounded in reality and the most amusing. The usual faces are present, although Wilfred Hyde-White is new, at least to me. He's an ornery and authoritarian old Major who's continually bothering the nurses with complaint and spends his time place bets on the horses with Billy, the janitor. At the end of the movie, when things are resolve and couples properly paired off, Wilfred Hyde-White gets what's coming to him. A nurse enters his room and tells him his temperature must be taken rectally, so he should bare himself and roll over prone. He does so and she inserts not a thermometer but a daffodil she's plucked from a vase. Now -- if this is funny rather than silly, it's your kind of movie. It's not too funny to me but I may be turning into the kind of old crab that Hyde-White has become. However, for lagniappe, there is Shirley Eaton, who I wish would come and take care of me instead of those ragged and louche neurotics in the Fosdick Ward. I need her to share her warmth. There is also a young Jill Ireland, looking sweet and innocent and resembling in her porcelain good looks the ballerina she was. I'd love to see her toe dance too. Knowing of her distressful end sort of dampens the enjoyment one gets from seeing her. I said it was "grounded." What I meant was that, though many of the events are absurd, they are more likely to have taken place than the events in "Carry On Doctor," which had one of the patients, Kenneth Williams maybe, on the roof top ripping the skirt from a nurse while trying to save her. I don't suppose having a daffodil in your rear end is exactly "likely" but the probability is higher than a patient's teetering on a roof top, if you see what I mean.

Scenes from the life of a hospital full of crazy patients and even crazier staff. The first real Carry On that turned to be an archetypal piece of a distinctly individual and increasingly broad humour. The hospital setting, as well as much of the characters (matron Jacques, bachelor Williams, gay-like Hawtrey, amply dimpled Sims, swab Connor, etc.) have became regular clichés. The crudity of script and direction, albeit bawdy enough, is smoothly restrained yet, and the cast also lacks manners and excesses which later ruined the level of many in the series.

The second film from the Carry On team, following on from 'Carry On Sergeant', it is not as funny as its predecessor and very slow to build up, but it is quite amusing, especially in the final few scenes with the laughing gas. The storyline is again rather fragmented, the jokes again do not work all the time, and in fact there's little in it for me to recommend it more so than the average comedy; but it is a pleasure to see the delightful cast of the first film back in different roles, and those final scenes are almost worth the film themselves. The film was followed in the series by 'Carry On Teacher' - an entry that I would provide a stronger recommendation for than this one.

I have long found it rather odd that British people find hospitals so hilariously funny. They are preoccupied with bed pans, injections and telling patients to get back into bed. The patients rarely look very sick and having once experienced the health scheme in England I wonder if the Carry on team need a reality check. Still at least England has a national health scheme as all civilised countries should. Charles Hawtrey is a delight. He is as always wonderfully supported by Kenneth Williams. Hatti Jaques is as always delightful and there are plenty of fine British actors such as Joan Hickson, Wifred Hyde White, Irene Handl, Joan Sims and the gang to keep the show going. Its a very warm little movie but not really very funny. It has one of the best endings which other users have discussed. The British have long found bottoms extremely funny. I must say I found the film much funnier as a kid and when I watched it last night I was a bit surprised that the film was not all that funny. The annoying Kenneth Connor is so irritating I am finding him the weak link in all these films. I might have found him funnier when I was young. Its rather fun watch patients smoke in hospital, flirt with nurses.. ah sweet nostalgia. Its in glorious black and white. Not as good as Carry on Regardless which followed. Kids will love the film.

I can remember seeing this early "Carry On" comedy film in the theatre when in my early 20s. It was amusing then, at times so downright hilarious, and it still is today. I think they just got better in their subsequent series over the years. Good fun all round if you are tuned in to their style of over-the-top shenanigans. If you need a good laugh this is the place to find it.

In Haven Hospital an entire ward is made up of men, ranging from the snooty Oliver Reckitt, the distracted Hinton, the gambling Colonel to the injured boxer Bernie Bishop. With nothing but men around young female nurses things could easily get out of hand but luckily the nurses are ruled by the Sister who in turn lives in fear of Matron, who rules the hospital with an iron fist. However when discipline is so strict, it is only a matter of time before the patients start to act out and rebel. This is one of the earliest Carry On films in the long running series and it stands out from Constable and Sergeant because it has a much more ensemble feel to it and more of a rambling narrative that works better than the "serious story surrounded by sketches" stuff that the others had tries at doing. In this regard it does seem to keep up a constant tone and is amusing even if it rarely made me actually laugh out loud. This is the problem with a lot of the earlier films in the series – they lack the wit and cheeky humour of the films made in the heyday of the series and thus feel quite stiff and perhaps almost dull at times. There are enough amusing moments here to make it worth seeing but two or three good laughs in 90 minutes is not really enough I'm afraid. The cast are the same from the first film with a few additions and yet still lacking some of the names that are synonymous with the series (Sid James in particular). Connor is OK in a simple role; Eaton is pretty to look at even if she has few laughs to her name; Hawtrey seems to be in his own film but is fun regardless; Phillips does his usual stuff but familiarity has not bred contempt in me and I enjoyed him; Hyde-White is good value and has the famous final scene to himself while Joan Sims runs around a lot in the way she did in the early days. Owen is OK but the film is stolen by a typical but funny turn from Williams and the very famous Matron character as played by Jacques, who suits the larger than life domineering character well. Overall this is not a great film and it has not dated well at all. It is amusing but yet rarely that funny – a problem when it seems to be trying to be wacky and outrageous at each step. Time has not treated it well and it is the structured but cheeky Carry On films that have lasted the best. Fans of the series may like it and the cast certainly make it worth a look but this is nothing that special and were it not part of this famous series I doubt it would be seen that often by many viewers.

The next time you're in your hospital bed and two nurses walk in with a long-stemmed daffodil, do not under any circumstance roll over on your stomach. Carry On Nurse was the second in the Carry On stream of British comedies that began with Carry On Sergeant and lasted for nearly 20 years. You'll either love 'em or you'll hate 'em. You'll love Carry On Nurse, or at least feel a warm, gentle glow of nostalgia break out over you like a rash, if naughty humor based on bedpans, buxom nurses, buttock massages and bunions make you smile. We're in a hospital ward where the male patients are ruled by Matron and where almost every nurse is a knock-out. Naturally, they innocently cause acute adjustment problems for the men who are away from wives and girlfriends. The Carry On gang is represented here by Kenneth Connor as an anxious but well-meaning boxer; Kenneth Williams, all intellectual condescension; Terence Longdon, the good-looking observer; Charles Hawtrey, who made mincing about an art form; Hattie Jacques as the iron-willed Matron; and a number of others, including a solo appearance by Wilfred Hyde-White as a demanding patient who winds up in the best joke of the movie. It involves that daffodil. Among the nurses is Shirley Eaton, guaranteed to disturb any man's dreams. The story, such as it is, is even slighter than Carry On Sergeant. Carry On Nurse is really a series of episodic vignettes and jokes, leading up to Hawtrey swishing about in a nurse's uniform, Williams brandishing knives and preparing to remove a bunion while reading how to do it, Connor administering the anesthetic which turns out to be laughing gas, and poor Lesley Phillips, who just wanted his bunion fixed so he could get on with a bit of snogging he'd arranged for the next day. The whole thing's a funny set up. By the gross-out standards of today's movie humor, Carry On Nurse is about as raunchy as Pollyanna. It's vulgar, silly and a lot of fun. Just like the use that daffodil is put to.