Carry On Nurse (1959)

The nursing profession gets a look in this second of the Carry On series of films. Carry On Nursing takes place in the public male ward of a hospital where we have one interesting section of cross Brittania Carry On style.Among the patients are boxer Kenneth Connor, professor Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey who seems to be in his own world, Terence Longden who is getting acquainted with nurse Shirley Eaton, Leslie Phillips who just wants a bunion removed and keeps getting that constantly postponed and in a private room a most demanding colonel Wilfrid Hyde-White. Hyde- White is a sportsman and has an arrangement with one of the orderlies to keep his bets being placed.They all live in mortal terror of the head matron Hattie Jacques who is the mother of Nurse Ratched. They'd all like to do something to her, but only Williams actually tells her off.The climax of this film is hysterical as Williams who believes he can master any subject reads a book on surgery and decides to do a little operating to help his mate Phillips out. The others all join in with Hawtrey in a nurses uniform keeping a lookout and Connor applying a little too much anesthesia all around. You have to see it to believe it.Carry On Nurse is a great followup film to Carry On Sergeant and insured this series would have a life.

I am quite fond of the Carry On movies, and Carry on Nurse while not the best is no exception. It is too short, the story is rather slight and plays second-fiddle to the gags and while most of them are funny and work very well the film does overdose a tad on the food, bedpan and needle gags. The film does look good enough, I can understand why people would say it's dated, but the photography is crisp and the setting is quite nice too. Carry on Nurse is efficiently directed by Gerald Thomas, the script is snappy and the gags are funny. The performances also add a lot, Hattie Jacques is superb while Joan Hickson, Joan Sims, Shirley Eaton, Leslie Phillips, Kenneth Williams and especially Wilfred Hyde-White are a lot of fun to watch. All in all, an enjoyable film and worth seeing for the cast. 7/10 Bethany Cox

From 1959 comes the second film in the famous "Carry On" series. Many of the personnel return from the earlier "Carry On Sergeant", now in a different setting but still poking fun at British traditions and authority.Some of the actors from the first film return in very similar roles: Kenneth Williams as the intellectual, Shirley Eaton as the glamorous love interest, Hattie Jacques as an imperious authority figure and Charles Hawtrey as the wimpish man. Others are now playing different types of characters, notably Kenneth Connor, shedding his previous persona as a neurotic hypochondriac to portray a confident, successful boxer. Bill Owen is no longer an establishment figure as in the first film and joins the ranks of the common men.Added to the mix are many new faces, not least Joan Sims and Leslie Philips who will go on to become established stars of the film series. The big name guest star on this occasion is Wilfrid Hyde White.Like the earlier film, there are many witty one-liners, much of the humour suggestive rather than coarse, and the story is littered with instances of authority constantly being undermined by ineptitude.Did I say story? Alas, that is Carry On Nurse's big glaring weakness. The plot is virtually non-existent. Whereas Carry On Sergeant unfolded with a clear sense of purpose and progression, Carry On Nurse just lurches from one situation to another in a seemingly random manner. As with the earlier film, there are two romances on the go but in this film they seem rather incidental. Kenneth Williams' connection with Jill Ireland (surely one of the most unlikely romances in cinematic history) just sort of happens, and occurring so quickly without complication makes one wonder what the point of it was. More drawn out is Terence Longdon's pursuit of Shirley Eaton. There is a hint that there could be twists in store when Eaton is shown to be looking more longingly at Doctor Winn, but this plot thread, like many others, is just discarded and forgotten about. Another is the idea that Longdon's reporter character is hired to observe hospital life whilst he is a patient there and write a report on it, but again this idea never gets picked up again.It seems that whenever the film starts running out of steam, a new character is introduced just to keep events ticking along. Having had one incompetent nurse in the form of Joan Sims, we later get another one (Rosalind Knight). Having had one smooth talking, womanising patient in Terence Longdon, halfway through the film we get another in the guise of Leslie Phillips.The only thrust of the plot in the first half of the film is that Matron mustn't be defied, but we don't get too care too much because we don't see much by way of what happens when she *is* defied, other than a nice brief essay on rank, when Matron's stern rebuke of the Ward Sister is passed on in turn by the Sister to the staff nurse, and so on until the student nurse gets the ear-bashing.Late on the film comes the most interesting phase, when a drunken Williams is coerced into putting his money where his mouth is and performing an operation himself. This leads to the patients taking over an operating theatre and then unwittingly overdosing themselves with laughing gas. It is pure Carry On comedy, but it only lasts about 15 minutes.Aside from the main plot is Wilfrid Hyde White's colonel, in a private room. He likes gambling on horses and pestering the nurses, but doesn't really contribute anything by way of laughs until the film's famous closing gag. White is given no interaction with most of the main cast at all and his inclusion seems completely superfluous.There are lots of good gags, and good performances, but with a shallow plot and, consequently, shallow characters, the overall film is merely average. Writer Norman Hudis just fails to make the ideas work. To see how it should have been done, watch Talbot Rothwell's later reworking of the same ideas in "Carry On Doctor" which is not only much funnier, it has a much stronger storyline and characters the viewer will care more about.

This was the first 'Carry On' movie I saw, and watched on television.Most of The Gang are featured, and each does a sterling job with their particular character. The movie has no particular plot; it contains a series of situations and running jokes based upon the characters themselves and their various medical conditions. The playboy with a bunion, the boxer with a fracture, and so on. Campy Kenneth Williams plays an educated and rather snooty individual who thinks he can do anything. Reliable Hattie Jaques plays the role of matron with considerable panache. It's a fine mixture of medical humour, sexual innuendo, comedy of manners, with some great sight gags and situation comedy in the classic British 1950's tradition. There isn't a bum role in the movie. The sequence in which the drunken patients commandeer an operating theatre to remove the playboy's bunion only to get additionally hammered by laughing-gas is one of the funniest pieces of cinema. You can't help but laugh along with the likes of Kenneths Connor and Williams at full fog-horn. It's rather a pity that the genre got 'hijacked' in the mid 1960's and subverted into the rather narrow appeal of exclusively toilet humour. Those of the late 1950's and early 1960's are definitely both the funniest and the wittiest. Even today, 'Carry On Nurse' is great fun. It also serves to remind you how far standards of professionalism, care and hygiene have slipped in the last half-century. Today; you enter hospital at the risk of your life.