tc_nafsasp You either love them or hate them, and if you're reading reviews on them you probably fall into the former category, so I won't disappoint you because this is about as good as it gets. Only Kenneth Connor is missing, and you get the added delights of Peter Gilmour, Brian Wilde ( Mr Barraclough in Porridge ), Dilys Laye, Frankie Howerd and many others. Almost every scene is funny, Jim Dale stands out ( a vastly underrated talent ), with Barbara Windsor exuberant, Bernard Bresslaw in one of his best roles, Julian Orchard in a cameo, Sid and Joan, Hattie and Charles, and need I say more. This was perhaps, with Camping and Up the Khyber, the pinnacle, from then on it went downhill faster than Franz Klammer. Oh happy days, nearly all the cast members sadly departed us. If you're new to Carry On's, most of series is excellent, but don't watch Columbus. It's not a Carry On really, lame and dull.

TheLittleSongbird I have always liked/loved the Carry on movies, and this is no exception. I do agree that the story is thin, it is, but the humour and cast elevate it. The humour is very bawdy but it never ceases to be hilarious, whether in the script or the innuendos. The film looks pretty good too, the music is quirky, the direction is solid and the film goes along at a good pace. The cast are great as per usual, it was wonderful to see all of those I love. Sidney James, who was genuinely bedridden for much of the film is good still, while Kenneth Williams is very funny as the sneering consultant. Jim Dale is funny and charming as the clumsy Dr Kilmore and Frankie Howerd makes for an impressive series debut. But Charles Hawtrey steals the show as he experiences the pangs of a "sympathetic" pregnancy. Overall, a fun entry in the series. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Terrell-4 The patient is Francis Bigger, played by Frankie Howerd, and the line is a sly reference to the funniest scene in Carry On Nurse. It's probably the cleverest line in Carry On Doctor. Like Carry On Nurse, Carry On Doctor takes place in hospital and, as the movie says, is a bedpanorama of hospital life. The long-running Carry On movies were bawdy, low-comedy, good-natured madhouses that featured a repertory company of comics we came to recognize instantly. Here, the company is made up of Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale, Hattie Jacques, Sid James, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey, Barbara Windsor and Bernard Bresslaw, among others. They play the patients, the doctors and the nurses at Finisham Hospital. If you relish jokes about bedpans and hernias, where any possible activity below the waist will wind up as corny, corny jokes or wheezing double entendres, Finisham is the place to be. Says Dr. Kilmore (Jim Dale) to Francis Bigger, "Just as I thought. You fell on your coccyx." "I did not," says Bigger, "I fell on my back." "Your coccyx is at the base of the spine," points out Dr. Kilmore. Says Bigger, "Well I've never heard it called that before." A Carry On hospital movie always has lots of nubile nurses assisting the longing denizens of the male ward. "Nurse, I dreamt about you last night," says a hobbled Ken Biddle (Bernard Bresslaw) to the stacked Nurse Clarke (Anita Harris). "Did you?" she asks? "No," Biddle says, "you wouldn't let me." And of course we have to deal with the Matron, a large woman more indomitable than a battleship, who knows how to keep any male quivering at the thought of one of her enemas or her ice baths. Has a matron ever been played as perfectly as Hattie Jacques? Her matrons always know what they want, and in this movie, Matron wants Dr. Kenneth Tinkle (Kenneth Williams), the hospital's chief physician. "Matron," Dr. Tinkle says, "you may not realize it but I was once a weak man!" "Doctor," says Matron, "once a week is enough for any man!" Who cares what the plot is when we have lines like these? We even have Charles Hawtrey who, in film as well as in life, raised mincing about to an art form, playing a father-to-be suffering from false pregnancy symptoms. It's a small, unlikely and vivid bit. The whole movie is a funny, gently off-color and totally innocent experience...such as the small boy who swallowed half a crown and was taken to hospital. Two days later the boy's mum asks the doctor, "How's he doing?" "Sorry, missus," the doctor says, "there's still no change."

bob the moo Normally when I write reviews of films I have seen I open with a short plot summary – it helps me focus my thoughts on the film I have just seen and also provides a bit more information for any readers. However with Carry on Doctor the plot is little more than a series of antics involving the patients and the doctors. In fairness, this may not be a bad thing since the "plot" in the film Carry On Matron was the worst part of it. Anyway, here we have a collection of love-struck patients, flirting doctors, pratfalls and women with ample breasts and giggles. So far so basic and to be honest none of any of these really work that well, producing a film that isn't that funny and pretty much does what you expect it to do.However, what makes it better than these aspects and better than Matron is the presence and material of Frankie Howerd. For those that like him he is great with a constant tongue in his cheek and material that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the script. Whether he is giving the nurses a hard time or dropping wonderful in-jokes (he greets a daffodil with "oh no you don't – I've seen that movie") he is the best thing in the film and makes it much better than it should have been. The rest of the cast are OK without really doing much. Having seen them be good in Matron, Williams and Jacques were a disappointment with not a great deal to do. Dale's clumsy doctor is obvious and easy while Windsor is all breasts and Butterworth and Bresslaw don't have much more to do. James is his usual self to good effect but I must admit that I liked the fact that Sims wasn't immediately recognisable as the sort of characters she usually plays.Overall this is an enjoyable film but not consistently; instead it is the presence of Howerd that raises everything to a higher level – his delivery is classic and his material is head and shoulders above the rest of the script. I generally prefer the Carry On movies that have more of a setting and some narrative to them but Howerd makes this one work and it is an enjoyable entry in the series just as it started to go further down the road of crudity that would kill it late in the seventies.