Leofwine_draca My favourite Carry On films are the ones set within a single location: such plot devices allow the scriptwriters to focus on amusing character aspects and interactions, while the ones that have the team travelling all over the place feel a little contrived.CARRY ON NURSE is set entirely on a men's ward and proves to be one of the very best the series had to offer, made long before the rot set in (i.e. colour, endless tired smut, Barbara Windsor). Sid James isn't present, but most of the team are and on top form with plenty of gentle humour and exaggerated laughs.Of the group, Kenneth Connor bags the best role as a boxer with a broken wrist. Kenneth Williams gives strong support playing his usual snobby character, Charles Hawtrey gets to dress up as a nurse, and Wilfrid Hyde-White may be the most annoying patient ever to grace the screen (the much-remembered end gag is well deserved). The likes of Bill Owen, Terence Longdon and Leslie Phillips round out the rest of the blokes.The nurses are the equals of the gents. Joan Sims supplies the pratfalls, Hattie Jacques is excellent as the Matron (a role that's defined her ever since) and Shirley Eaton is quite wonderful as the one everybody loves. In fact, nobody puts a foot wrong, and that's what makes CARRY ON NURSE so great: it's a genuinely funny film throughout with never a dull moment.

crossbow0106 While not a laugh riot, this film about nurses and patients at a ward at Haven Hospital holds your interest because of the endearing characters. Kenneth Williams is his usual fun self, aided by an interest in a young (and fairly beautiful, of course) Jill Ireland. Joan Sims plays a bumbling student nurse perfectly, while Hattie Jacques is near perfect as the unamused matron. The beautiful Shirley Eaton is also in this, any film I've seen her in she has been naturally good. The jokes are not hilarious or anything like that, but the film puts a smile on your face often enough (Charles Haughtry is funny in this). There have been (much) worse Carry On Films and some better, but this is a watchable one I think you'll enjoy but not love.

DPMay 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.

lastliberal In the last episode I was introduced to the girl who would be painted in Goldfinger (Shirley Eaton). In this one, I see Charles Bronson's wife Jill Ireland (Death Wish II, The Mechanic). You just never know who is going to turn up.Of course, the usual "Carry On..." cast (Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques (playing Matron) and Joan Sims in her first "Carry On..." appearance) is present to carry on with their gags in a hospital. Most of those gags, of course, revolve around typical male behavior in the presence of pretty nurses. Nothing very original, but it is fun.Check it out.