Spikeopath The 18th of the Carry On series and the third of the medical themed adventures, plot finds Jim Dale as Doctor Nookie, who is stitched up by his superiors and sent to a tropical Beautific island to tender medical treatment to the natives. What he actually finds when he gets there is a rainy windswept isle that has no need for his services at all. The compound is run by Gladstone Screwer (Sid James), a crafty old sort who deals in whisky and cigarettes and has a wife for every day of the week. Screwer also has something else of interest that perks up the flagging interest of Nookie, a potion that considerably aids weight loss. Nookie senses an opportunity to make a financial killing back in Blighty whilst simultaneously getting one over the superiors who had him sent to his island misery.This was the last of 10 Carry On films for Jim Dale before he returned for the ill conceived "modern" reinvention that was Carry On Columbus in 1992. I don't know if the makers knew that Dale would be leaving the series and thus made him the lead character in this jovial farce? But it proves to be a smart move. One of the unsung heroes of the series, Dale's energy and comic reactions to plot situations were always a joy to watch, and here, with James in customary wise cracking support, he lifts the film above the ordinary with a show of endearing buffoonery. He also did his own stunts and broke his arm on this production. Director Gerald Thomas keeps things brisk, with the double location axis of the plot stopping things from stagnating visually, Charles Hawtrey goes undercover in drag to provide the last third of the film with some quality laughs and the likes of Barbara Windsor and Valerie Leron raise the pulses considerably.Thin of plot but big on charm and laughs, one of the better Carry On movies. 7.5/10

ShadeGrenade 'Again Doctor' ( 1969 ) proved to be Jim Dale's last film in the 'Carry On series for twenty-three years ( he foolishly signed on for 'Columbus' in 1992 ). It cast him as the accident-prone but likable 'Dr.Jim Nookey' of Little Hampton hospital, a man who cannot so much as use an X-ray machine without causing chaos. After losing his girlfriend - the sexy model 'Goldie Locks' ( Barbara Windsor ), and scaring to death a woman patient afraid of men - he is sent in disgrace to a medical mission in the Beatific Islands, run by the seedy Gladstone Screwer ( who else but Sid James? ). Gladstone has developed a weight reduction formula. Sensing a chance to make money, Nookey flies home with some of the stuff. In no time at all he is running a posh clinic in partnership with the rich widow 'Ellen Moore' ( Joan Sims ). Disgusted by his upswing in fortunes is 'Frederick Carver' ( Kenneth Williams ), and his sneaky side-kick 'Dr.Walter Stoppage' ( Charles Hawtrey ). They conspire to bring Nookey down...Talbot Rothwell's script for this movie originated for the rival 'Doctor' series; in fact it was to have been 'Doctor In Clover', until Jack Davies came along with another version. Its not as good as 'Nurse' or 'Doctor', but better than 'Matron'. There were some concerns that 'Nookey' was too similar to Leslie Phillips' 'Dr.Tony Burke/Gaston Grimsdyke' and that 'Frederick Carver' might strike audiences as James Robertson Justice's 'Sir Lancelot Spratt' by another name. Dale is his usual chirpy self. Yes, that really is him in its most famous scene - hurtling down stairs on a trolley while Carver and the Matron ( Hattie Jacques ) look on in disbelief. This scene was later used as the title sequence to I.T.V.'s 'Carry On Laughing' compilation series. All the regulars - barring Bernard Bresslaw and Kenneth Connor - are present and correct, although there's surprisingly little of Peter Butterworth. He's confined to a short scene in which Nookey and a fellow doctor ( Peter Gilmore ) debate which illness he is suffering from.Things To Look Out For - no, its not Babs Windsor's arse ( nice though it is! ) but a cameo by Wilfrid 'Steptoe' Brambell as a dirty old man called 'Mr.Pullen' who is receiving hormone injections on the N.H.S. and as a result keeps making improper suggestions to nurses. The 'Steptoe & Son' series ended in 1965, but Eric Rogers included a few bars of Ron Grainer's theme ( the show would be revived in colour the following year ). The party scene features Rogers himself as bandleader. Some of the music was first heard in 'Carry On Spying' and 'Nurse On Wheels' ( a Peter Rogers comedy starring Juliet Mills as a district nurse ).Funniest moment - Nookey jumps into a hammock in the medical mission, only to go crashing through the floor boards! ( it was not so funny for Dale though, and gave him a back injury he still has to this day! )

jaibo Carry on Again Doctor often gets neglected as an inferior re-run of Doctor, and this does the film an injustice. Gladstone Screwer is one of Sid James' best roles, as he plays a genuine oddity - a man who grew up in isolation on a tropical island and who pursues women not for their beauty or youth but whether they conform to the large tribal buxomness he is accustomed to. He is shocked when Jim Dale's Dr Nookey says he wants a slim girl. There is a wonderful moment where Screwer first sees Hattie Jaques' Matron and gives her a great big whack on the backside. "Do you mind?!" she demands, only to have him brazenly announce "As a matter of fact, I don't." Sid as a dirty old chubby-chaser is more satisfying casting than the usual Sid as pursuer of young women.The film is a satire on slimming crazes and the final 5 minutes are truly perverse. Nookey is making a fortune out of a slimming cure which Gladstone manufactures in and exports from the tropics. Gladstone demands a partnership (as does Kenneth Williams' Dr Carver, who knows something fishy is going on) and, when Gladstone is cheated, he substitutes another serum for the slimming one. It gives all of Nookey's patients a sex-change! Amongst the victims is Barabra Windsor, and the film ends with her marriage to Nookie, who complains as they go on their honeymoon that she hasn't shaved that morning. In the crowd, we spot Charles Hawtrey looking very knowing and pleased with himself as Dr Stoppage, and we realise that he has taken the serum himself and so is now a woman! The clinic is also revealed to be now owned by all of the interested parties.In a way, this ending shows us an extraordinary thing. Gladstone Screwer is a gone-native colonial who sends back to England a very un-Victorian transformative potential which the kind of medical colony he works in was presumably meant to eradicate abroad - the film claims that polymorphous perversity is an unexpected by-product of colonial Capitalism. The film sees, in a Visionary way, how Puritan Capitalism contained the seeds of its own undoing. Yes, products were imported from abroad which make the lucky few a lot of money, but in the meantime everyone wants their slice of the pie (aristocrats & parvenus, old money & new mix as both Gladstone and Carver end as partners in the clinic with Nookey and Joan Sims' Lady Moore). What is more, old ideals of masculinity and femininity have been forever eroded. That final shot, of a man and a woman who are now two men riding away and being waved at by men and women who themselves have no fixed gender is a prophecy we now see being fulfilled around us all of the while.In a couple of hundred years time, these strange, surreal and perverse films will tell people more about how our 20th Century society worked than many a so-called "serious" classic.

crossbow0106 I have to give the makers of this film credit from the outset. They could have made Carry On Doctor volume 2, retreading the gags. Although it is a sequel (sort of), this film ventures farther afield, often out of the hospital, where the first Carry On Doctor was set. Most of the crew from the original is here, and they try. Kenneth Williams is, of course, great in his role. More of the same double entendres and one liners are evident. However, the story itself is somewhat flimsy, and a few times I was just shaking my head. I would recommend you see the first one, its great fun. This film has some laughs, just not as many. However, it is a Carry On film, so you're probably going to leave the film smiling at least.