Review of Carry On Doctor (Special Edition)

Introduction

Love them or loathe them, the Carry On series was the backbone of British comedy on both the big and small screen throughout the `sixties and `seventies. Elitists may bang on about the genius of some modern comics, but the time-served comics of the Carry On era were doing camp, observational, surrealist humour and innuendo before people like Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton and Ricky Gervais were even born. The only difference is modern comics can use medical terms and profanity to elicit a (very) cheap laugh.

Carry On Doctor is one of the four archetypes of the series - the Professional Carry Ons (Sergeant, Nurse, Teacher, Constable, Cabby, Doctor, Again Doctor and Matron). There were also the Historical Carry Ons (Jack, Cleo, Don`t Lose Your Head, Up The Khyber, Henry, Dick, England and Columbus), the Genre Carry Ons (Spying, Cowboy, Screaming, Follow That Camel, Up The Jungle and Emmannuelle), and the Contemporary Carry Ons (Regardless, Cruising, Camping, Loving, At Your Convenience, Abroad, Girls and Behind). It is, alongside Cleo, Up The Khyber and Camping one of the genuine classics of the series. This is the movie with lines like "...it is all a question of mind over matter. What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind."; "Here is the X-ray Doctor, the posterior is a little fuzzy. So would yours be if a contrivance had exploded all over it!"; "No bleeding... Just like the service." and the classic "Oo, what a lovely looking pear! You took the words right out of my mouth, hur hur!"

These were the days of a BBFC so genteel that the yardstick used for cutting films was the level of embarrassment a father would experience explaining a joke to his young son. The Carry On team, or more precisely their leading wordsmith Talbot "Tolly" Rothwell, were masters of the double entendre and it is only modern generations and modern comics wishing to appear superior that have turned the gags of this era into single entendres.

As ever, there is no clear lead in the film, the story being a string of stories woven together like an episode of "The Love Boat". We follow the fortunes of what we would now call self-help guru Francis Biggar (Frankie Howerd) after a nasty fall at a church hall; Hospital Registrar Dr Kenneth Tinkle (Kenneth Williams) and a love triangle of Matron (Hattie Jacques) and lovelorn nurse Sandra May (Barbara Windsor); professional shirker Charlie Roper (Sid James) and his battle with medical science to stay in his hospital bed; Ken Biddle (Shrek look-alike Bernard Bresslaw) and his long-distance courting of Mavis (Dilys Laye) in the womens` ward; expectant father Charlie Barron (Charles Hawtrey) and his sympathetic labour pains for his wife; ultimately all the fall out from these stories impinges on genial junior doctor Kilmore (Jim Dale) and a misunderstanding that almost leads to his dismissal.

A classic, and easily the best starting point for anybody wanting to understand the appeal of the Carry On films. The scary thing is, all the jokes still work about the NHS even thirty-six years on. Is that a sign of the timelessness of this movie or an indictment of government health policies for the last forty years?

Video

At first glance, when the movie came up on screen, I wondered why Carlton had bothered with this release. The picture was the same non-anamorphic 1.66:1 as the VCI release. The chapter stops had been moved but there was little else to recommend the new disc. Fortunately, the addition of the extras (see appropriate section below), makes this new copy of the disc worthwhile, although I`d hope that Carlton would consider striking an anamorphic release.

Audio

Dolby Digital 2.0 reproducing the original mono mix soundtrack. You can`t really expect any better.

Features

Carry On Doctor comes with full hard of hearing subtitles - a huge improvement on the old version. There is a theatrical trailer (presented non-anamorphic) and an audio commentary with Jim Dale and Robert Ross (author of a number of books on the Carry On films and an authority on British comedy.) There is an animated stills gallery from the making of the movie, a text-only trivia section and an episode of the 1975-6 mini-Carry-On tv series "Carry On Laughing". The episode on this disc is "One In The Eye For Harold", a crazed adventure for Friar Kenneth Connor and Sergeant-At-Arms Jack Douglas taking a secret weapon to King Harold to defeat the invading Normans at Hastings.

Conclusion

A very nice package in spite of the lack of an anamorphic transfer. "Doctor" is a genuine classic not only of the Carry On series but British comedy movies in general. Without it, the English language would be bereft of the exclamation "Oooooh, Matron!"