Carry On Doctor

Dir: Gerald Thomas

1968

****

Carry On Doctor is the fifteenth Carry On film of the series and it represents the first time the franchise really dodged a bullet. 1966’s Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head and Carry On Follow That Camel, which was released earlier that year, were the two biggest flops the series had endured at that point. The franchise was in danger, so a special guest star was ordered and many of the usual actors who had been missing for that last few Carry On films were begged back. Carry On Nurse was still the most popular of the series to date so director Gerald Thomas and producer Peter Rogers took the team back to the hospital. The great Frankie Howerd made his first of two Carry On appearances, something that franchise regular Kenneth Williams was said to be upset about. The two were Britain’s top camp comedy performers, Williams refused to be a part of the film until he realised that it was his series and he’d be damned if he would give way to someone else. Howerd was largely brought in as Sid James, although in the film, had just had a heart attack, so spend the entirety of the film in a hospital bed. Jim Dale, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Peter Butterworth and Bernard Bresslaw all returned, Barbara Windsor came back for her second Carry On performance and Hattie Jacques was begged back after being absent for four years and seven films. It worked and Carry On Doctor became the third biggest film in the UK of 1967. The revisit to the world of a British NHS hospital was done with a nudge and a wink, beautifully so in a certain scene whereby a nurse arranges some flowers – daffodils no less – in Frankie Howerd’s room, only for Howerd’s character to snap back “Oh no you don’t! I saw that film” in reference to Carry on Nurse, where a nurse used a daffodil instead of a rectal thermometer. The comradery between patients under the strong arm of the hospital’s matron is now something of comedy legend in the UK and a wonderfully nostalgic look back at the way things were. The franchise had to be careful though, as the story came very close to ‘Doctor’ film series, that stared one time Carry On actor Leslie Philips and the great James Robertson Justice. However, the Doctor series was produced by Carry On producer Peter Roger’s wife, the wonderfully named Betty E. Box. He was granted permission as long as his wife was credited and a little bit of money offered and a portrait of James Robertson Justice with the caption ‘Dr James R. Justice, Founder’ was also hung over the ward door in tribute and acknowledgement. The film certainly has one of the better Carry On scripts with a collection of some of the series’ better characters. Howerd plays Francis Bigger, a charlatan faith healer who promotes ‘mind over matter’ over conventional medical treatment. During a lecture, he falls offstage and is admitted to hospital where he moans that he’s being treated badly and demands preferral treatment. There is a lot of sneaking into the women’s ward and hiding from matron and there is a very funny scene involving laughing gas. My favourite character is Charles Hawtrey’s Mr Barron who seems to be suffering sympathy pains while his wife awaits the birth of their baby. It’s all good clean fun before the series got really smutty. I’m glad the series was saved, as this was meant to be the last, but I’m not sure anyone really learned from their mistakes, although many a great Carry On followed.