I find it truly difficult to review Carry on Doctor, a film that has been there when I've needed it, it's helped with exams, tragedies and all sorts. The humour even now is loud, brash, bawdy, saucy and just plain old fashioned funny. I find it difficult to understand how on earth someone could watch it and not find it funny, it provides uplifting fun, gag after gag, and an innocence that has long since past. The performances all around are just sensational. Frankie Howerd, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques and Sid James in particular are all magical. Nurse had previously shown that the medical format worked extremely well, as would the later hospital based films, but Doctor will always be the pick of the bunch. Still shown on TV, DVD and download sales aplenty, hard!y surprising, Carry on Doctor is a gem, a true British institution.

Carry On Doctor (1976) Love This Show Madness Level Never Countless EverGreen.Whan I Seen In 2010.Kenneth Williams I Always Have That Expression.And I Love Joan Sims Smile Lovly.Sid James Comedy Humor Lovly The Popular Dr Kilmore Is Sacked After Being Discovered In A Compromising Position On The Roof Of The Nurses Home. The Patients Are Determined Not To Lose Him, And So Take On The Might Of The "Cutting" Dr Tinkle And The Overpowering Matron. Francis Bigger, 'Preacher And Healer', Ends Up In Hospital In This Chaotic Carry-on Medical Movie. With Dr. Kilmore in Trouble, Matron Refuses To Support Him After The Amorous Attentions She Has Fed Dr. Tinkle Have Paid Off. There's A Humorous But Slight Role For Charles Hawtrey Suffering From A Sympathetic Pregnancy And The Film Closes With The Patients Revenge On Dr. Tinkle And The Formidable Matron Because Of Their Conspiracy Against Dr. Kilmore.

More hospital hi-jinks from the Carry On gang (NURSE,AGAIN DOCTOR and MATRON are other examples from the series),DOCTOR has a very wispy and slim plot line (even for this series' standards),merely seeming to be a collection of brief sketches,but is still very enjoyable thanks to some good verbal and visual gags and performances.Mainstays like Sid James,Charles Hawtrey,Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques are on board,but the nominal male leads are the less regular mainstay Jim Dale and the great Frankie Howerd,making the first of his two appearances in a Carry On,with a pneumatic Barbara Windsor and a glamorous Anita Harris(another non-regular) in the main female roles. Howerd wasn't always a natural for the cinema,being happier delivering his rambling comic tales on the stage or TV rather than playing scripted characters in a movie,but this is one of the few occasions when his unique comic style successfully transferred to the big screen.Howerd's familiar cheesed-off,cynical,oohs and aahs persona is amusingly exploited here,and Frankie delivers some priceless one-liners and slapstick incident;Frankie's performance gives DOCTOR an extra added quality that it doesn't particularly have,and wouldn't have had,if he wasn't present.Dale also raises some laughs as the hopelessly gauche and clumsy Doctor Kilmore,and regulars like James,Williams,Jacques,Hawtrey,Joan Sims,Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth are adequate but unusually relegated to fairly secondary roles for once.Good cameos from familiar faces like Brian Wilde,Dandy Nichols,Peter Jones and Gordon Rollings add to the fun.The Carry On's were never much concerned with cinematic artifice or subtle humour,but for those who simply want to watch an ensemble cast of talented comic performers do their thing,CARRY ON DOCTOR perfectly serves it's purpose.RATING:6 and a half out of 10.

There is a slight air of desperation about "Carry on Doctor" as if England is in the process of re - inventing itself ,rather belatedly,for the swinging sixties.Radio stars,Pop stars and TV stars come together in a not entirely successful mishmash of styles and techniques.It must be said that the refugees from the Light programme come off best.The three Hancock alumni,Mr S.James,Mr K.Williams and Miss H.Jacques rise above the rest of the cast along with Mr F. Howerd,another performer steeped in the Sound medium.He "ooohs "and "aahs" very satisfactorily but all too clearly is under restraint and fails to give full rein to his unusual gifts. Mr J.Dale,who,I believe,made his movie debut in "Six - Five Special" in 1957,was the sort of pop singer admired by those who considered Cliff Richard to be too ballsy.If you were to take Norman Wisdom ,remove the pathos and the talent for slapstick you might be left with the nearest thing to a role model for him.He pouts rather a lot too.It was unkind of someone to put him on the screen with Mr Williams and Miss Jacques who appear to be acting in another dimension. There is very little point in talking about the plot because,as in most of the other "Carry On" films it is a magnificent irrelevance. Miss B. Windsor happily gets her kit off at the first available opportunity and Miss A.Harris gets her skirt ripped off in a rooftop escapade that goes on for far too long as well as proving beyond all doubt that Mr Dale has absolutely no talent for physical comedy. It's nice to see stalwarts like Mr H Locke and Mr D. Guyler proving once again that less is very often more;not,perhaps,a proposition other members of the cast would go along with. "Carry on Doctor" does have many felicitous moments nonetheless,and its political incorrectness only adds to its appeal.Admirers of Mr Williams will find that he gives of himself most generously throughout. There is a rather sly tribute to the original "Doctor" series in the form of a portrait of one of the Hospital's founders who bears a remarkable resemblance to Sir Lancelot Spratt;otherwise most of the jokes are of the battering - ram persuasion.I particularly enjoyed the performance of Miss J.Sims as Mr Howerd's affianced(as unlikely an alliance as you are likely to find in all cinema).Acquiescent to the point of being totally self - effacing until they are married,she instantly turns into a domineering harridan in a fine piece of comic acting. By 1967 the "Carry On" franchise was running on empty.It staggered and spluttered on for a few years,but the deeply unfunny "Confessions of a window Cleaner" was on the horizon and good old - fashioned English smut was overtaken by an unpleasant sleaziness that made one feel grubby simply by watching it. Happily ,in contrast to the "Carry On"sagas,it has not travelled well and it is now all but forgotten,a fate that will never befall the late Mr Williams and his companions.