The second in the popular series is one of the best, but also the first in a quartet of medical lampoons from this stable – the others being CARRY ON DOCTOR (1968), CARRY ON AGAIN, DOCTOR (1969) and CARRY ON MATRON (1972); I’ve watched the latter but not the other two, though I should be able to get to them fairly soon...
Anyway, coming very early in the series, CARRY ON NURSE – which manages to make the most of its single setting – isn’t as crude or as slapdash as a good many of the later entries regrettably proved to be: in fact, it’s pretty much in the vein of classic British comedy of the time (such as the satirical films by the Boultings). The cast brings together several practiced performers in the field: Kenneth Connor (his “Cor, Blimey” attitude as a boxer with a broken hand is somewhat reminiscent of Norman Wisdom), Kenneth Williams (having a less central role than would be the case later but in quite good form as a bookworm nuclear scientist who’s also something of a misanthrope), Charles Hawtrey (playing a radio fanatic, where his prissy antics are already a bit over-the-top), Joan Sims (as an accident-prone nurse), Hattie Jacques (as the fearsome Matron – which became her trademark role), Wilfrid Hyde-White (as an old man whose military record allows him privileged service at the hospital but hasn’t rescinded his gambling mania!), Leslie Philips (as a fun-loving sort who in a drunken binge with his fellow patients decides to have them perform his delayed operation themselves – the latter scene is the film’s hilarious highlight where, predictably, laughing gas is let loose at the most inopportune moment).
The nominal leads here are actually Terence Longdon as a recovering reporter and gorgeous Shirley Eaton as the idealized nurse, who provide the obligatory romantic interest; Jill Ireland (the future Mrs. Charles Bronson) has one of her earliest roles as the girl who finally ensnares Williams, while both Michael Medwin and Norman Rossington appear briefly – as, respectively, Connor’s manager (a self-proclaimed showman) and a punch-drunk remnant of the boxing profession. Other gags revolve around a snob patient who’s continually embarrassed by his commoner wife, another who’s occasionally compelled to run riot in the corridors, and an impossibly solemn-looking student nurse. Apart from throwing Longdon and Eaton in each other’s arms, the denouement sees the release of several of the ‘star’ patients from the hospital – and culminates with the long-suffering nurses’ revenge on the fastidious Hyde-White, by fitting a daffodil in his rectum instead of a thermometer just as the Matron is making her rounds!
