The greatest movie ever made..!

Best movie ever!

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

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.

When the hugely popular Dr Kilmore (Jim Dale) is fired unjustly by devious superiors, the patients do something about it.If only British hospitals were like this. The nurses look like Anita Harris and Barbara Windsor, the doctors are bonkers and the patients are having the time of their life. Yes this is a "Carry On" movie in all it's jovial glory. Thinly plotted it may be, but it's an excellent script from Talbot Rothwell that lets the true comedians in the piece showcase their worth.Hattie Jacques as a battle-axe Matron, Kenneth Williams as snobby unscrupulous head Doctor Tinkle, Charles Hawtrey suffering a phantom pregnancy, Frankie Howerd as Francis Bigger (a man in hospital after making a living out of saying you don't need Doctor's! And then believing he only has a week to live) and the likes of Bernard Bresslaw and Sid James as rogue patients playing up. It's a marvellous set up that works a treat for visual comedy. Witness Howerd's incredulity when he is woken at 06.00, or Hawtrey's reaction when the stocking laden minx that is Barbara Windsor arrives on the ward. Great comedy moments in a great comedy film. 7.5/10

Frankie Howerd plays the part of a man who says people do not need doctor's to survive. He then gets a bad back and must go to the doctor. Jim Dale play Dr. Kilmore, and he lets him know who he is in a very funny scene. Kenneth Williams plays a wacky doctor. Bernard Bresselaw, Sid James and Charles Hawtrey play a couple of the patients. Bernard wanders around a lot and he sees Dilys Laye and falls for her. Hattie Jacques plays the matron again. Barbara Windsor shows up later to play one of the nurses. Two of my favorite nurses are played by Valerie Von Ost. She appeared in my favorite Avengers episode, "Dead Man's Treasure". Also there is Anita Herris who plays the lead, Nurse Clarke. She is so hot and beautiful. The best scene of the film has Jim Dale thinking Barbara Windsor is going to jump off the roof. She is actually sun bathing. Jim almost falls off the roof until Nurse Clark comes for him. He holds on to her and rips her skirt right off and then he falls into the tub of another hot brunette. Jim is fired for the incident. The patients revolt and they get Jim's job back. The main three men and Nurse Clarke make this film very good.

The second of four "Carry Ons" dealing with the medical establishment is certainly a comedown from the first – CARRY ON NURSE (1959), to which there is even an unsubtle reference at one point – if still quite tolerable and intermittently inspired. Amusingly, the film sports a barrage of fake alternate names – hence the full title shown on screen in the opening credits sequence is CARRY ON DOCTOR, OR NURSE CARRIES ON AGAIN OR, DEATH OF A DAFFODIL OR, LIFE IS A FOUR-LETTER WARD – A BEDPANORAMA OF HOSPITAL LIFE.Ironically, it was originally conceived as being the last of the series – hence the idea to return to the environment of their first true success for the swan song! Of course, the series not only lasted for another decade but produced some of their best (and very worst) entries during that twilight period. Furthermore, this was also intended as a closure to another long-running film comedy series – the "Doctor" films which had started with DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (1954) that were produced by "Carry On" producer Peter Rogers' own wife, Betty Box – which explains the portrait of a stalwart of that series, James Robertson Justice, finding itself hanging on the walls of the hospital in which this film is set! Apart from the fact that they returned to the present-day after half a dozen period pieces...er...genre spoofs, they also introduced other celebrities into the fold, most prominently Frankie Howerd (who is even top billed here). Usual "Carry On" lead Sidney James had suffered a heart attack before shooting began, and this probably necessitated the introduction of Howerd – as well as confining James' character mostly to a hospital bed practically for the film's whole duration! Most of the usual members of the gang are here: the afore-mentioned James (who is here nagged to distraction by wife Dandy Nichols), Kenneth Williams (the feared Dr. Tingle, who himself fears new recruit Windsor!), Charles Hawtrey (as a husband suffering the pregnancy pains felt by his wife?!), Joan Sims (as Howerd's devoted and practically deaf assistant), Hattie Jacques (as the matron who has the hots for Williams!), Barbara Windsor (the new nurse whose busomy figure and skimpy outfits gets every male patients' temperature to boiling point), Jim Dale (as Williams' amiably accident-prone 'rival') , Bernard Bresslaw (as the chap who underwent an appendectomy surgery but stayed on after breaking his leg from falling off the operating table!) and Peter Butterworth (quite wasted as another appendectomy patient); for whatever reason, one of the patients turns out to be The Invisible Man!As I said before, there is some good stuff in here mostly provided by Howerd (as a charlatan faith healer who injures his backside and misunderstands Williams' diagnosis as having a mere week to live!), Dale (his rooftop antics after misreading Windsor's intentions to sunbathe as a suicide attempt is one of the film's comic highlights) and Bresslaw (who keeps convincing his visiting friend to swap clothes with him so that he can go see an attractive but lonely patient in the women's ward). Even so, the film is definitely unbalanced by having two ultra-campy performers – Howerd and Williams – letting rip in it (which perhaps explains why the equally effeminate Hawtrey is atypically restrained here). Furthermore, the cruder aspects of the "Carry On" brand of humor, not to mention a more frenzied gag structure, have clearly started to take center stage here – to the eventual detriment of the genteel sophistication and genial characterizations displayed in earlier, better films like CARRY ON NURSE itself and CARRY ON TEACHER (1959).