Nurse on Wheels

She gets more screen time here than in most of her films and she grasps the opportunity with both hands.She is splendidly dithering.She reminds me of Billie Burke who played dithering matrons in Hollywood. Much of this film is familiar stuff.It looks as if Norman Hudis has taken the driving lesson sequence from Please Turn Over.Nevertheless it is still entertaining.

In the style of the carry on films with producer and music from the above, and full of so many of the best famous names in British film comedy ! It may not be one of the greatest films, but with the cast and the music it's still a class example British film comedy of the 1960's.

This type of movie played a major part of my childhood/early 'teens. During the school holidays (or when ever I was off ill during term time), there was always an old black and white movie playing on Monday and Friday afternoons.

Sometimes a thriller or a war movie, most of the time a comedy, all of them 'forgotten' movies such as this one.

Re-watching 'Nurse On Wheels' after almost twenty years a few things become obvious. The most important being that, despite what some marketing people have tried to do recently, this isn't a 'Carry On' movie under a different name. The humour is more gentle and sentimental (though the movie ends with a variation on 'Carry On Nurse's famous 'daffodil gag') and comes across as a slightly more serious 'Doctor' movie. In fact parts of it verge on comedy-drama, for example Raymond Huntley's Vicar is no comedy eccentric, but a man going through a crisis of faith (or simply compare Jim Dale's comic turn as an expectant father in 'Carry On Cabby', with his more serious role in this).

Once again Juliet Mills lights up the screen, proving to have genuine screen presence and she is backed by a typically strong cast of familiar British faces. Not a movie to watch for belly laughs, but a pleasant, charming movie that they really do not make any more.

Juliet Mills was rewarded for her charming performance as a nurse in 'Twice Round the Daffodils' with the title role in this breezy little comedy in black & white.

A strong female supporting cast includes Esma Cannon as Mills's feather-brained mother ("How your mind wanders. I wonder who you get it from!"), Joan Sims in a refreshingly 'normal' role, with a name - Deborah Walcott - to match, and Athene Seyler in her final big screen appearance.

Among the men Jim Dale plays the first of two expectant fathers in a row for director Gerald Thomas, and Ronald Lewis (who's Land Rover carries a tax disc bearing an April 63 expiry date) is unfortunately a boor as Mills's supposed love interest (which makes it a pleasure to see him scared witless by her driving in a white-knuckle drive through the fictional village of Blandley which is probably the film's comic highlight).

A marvellous bit of whimsy from Britain's film industry of the early 60's, when we knew how to make this kind of light-hearted comedy/drama. Almost everyone is perfectly cast - especially the pretty and pleasant Juliet Mills as Nurse Jones - and her mother, played by the incomparable Esma Cannon very nearly steals the show; the scene with the sink plunger never misses. Raymond Huntley's vicar is a bit thin on plot, but then he is there only to provide Joan Sims with a purpose anyway. However, on every DVD and TV showing I've seen, the reels seem to have been assembled in the wrong order and the plot strand concerning Joan Sims applying for a job seems back-to-front! Despite this, Nurse on Wheels is a pleasant 90 minutes of classic British gentle comedy with a fine cast of regulars. I can only agree with other posters who have said 'they don't make them like this anymore'.