Carry On Nurse/Carry On Sergeant

Comedy back in the day...when laughs were a matter of boobs, bedpans and mincing about on parade. Good stuff it still is

Carry On Sergeant:
A group of misfits undergo Army basic training under the eye of an irascible but ultimately goodhearted sergeant. No, it isn't Stripes. It's Britain in the Fifties, and this was the first of a string of Carry On movies that numbered well over 20 and lasted, I think, until the Seventies. Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor and several others made a pretty good living appearing in the series.

And the movie's not bad. Corny, with broad humor, good spirits, and with a nice, sentimental ending. It's the last platoon the sergeant will train before he retires. Will they win the outstanding squad cup after the final parade? Plus it has all the instantly recognizable cliche characters...the unconsummated newly wed (with his bride who gets a job on base), the nervous hypochondriac, the stumble-foot innocent, the hip guitar player. All very un-P.C.

Nice jobs by William Hartnell who plays the sergeant and by Eric Barker who plays the officer in charge who doesn't have the firmest grip on reality. Not least, the movie opens and closes with a really first-rate, rousing march.

Carry On Nurse:
The next time you're in your hospital bed and two nurses walk in with a long-stemmed daffodil, do not under any circumstance roll over on your stomach.

Nurse was the second in the Carry On stream of British comedies that began with Carry On Sergeant. You'll either love 'em or you'll hate 'em. You'll love Carry On Nurse, or at least feel a warm, gentle glow of nostalgia break out over you like a rash, if naughty humor based on bedpans, buxom nurses, buttock massages and bunions make you smile. We're in a hospital ward where the male patients are ruled by Matron and where almost every nurse is a knock-out. Naturally, they innocently cause acute adjustment problems for the men who are away from wives and girlfriends. The Carry On gang is represented here by Kenneth Connor as an anxious but well-meaning boxer; Kenneth Williams, all intellectual condescension; Terence Longdon, the good-looking observer; Charles Hawtrey, who made mincing about an art form; Hattie Jacques as the iron-willed Matron; and a number of others, including a solo appearance by Wilfred Hyde-White as a demanding patient who winds up in the best joke of the movie. It involves that daffodil. Among the nurses is Shirley Eaton, guaranteed to disturb any man's dreams.

The story, such as it is, is even slighter than Carry On Sergeant. Carry On Nurse is really a series of episodic vignettes and jokes, leading up to Hawtrey swishing about in a nurse's uniform, Williams brandishing knives and preparing to remove a bunion while reading how to do it, Connor administering the anesthetic which turns out to be laughing gas, and poor Lesley Phillips, who just wanted his bunion fixed so he could get on with a bit of snogging he'd arranged for the next day. The whole thing's a funny set up.

By the gross-out standards of today's movie humor, Carry On Nurse is about as raunchy as Pollyanna. It's vulgar, silly and a lot of fun. Just like the use that daffodil is put to.

Carry On Nurse and Carry On Sergeant were huge hits in their time. Nurse made more money in 1959 than any other British film and was a great success in the United States. Look for the Region 2 DVDs from Optimum/StudioCanal. The transfers aren't in as good a shape as the nurses, but they'll do. The Optimum Carry On Nurse includes a pleasant and nostalgic film commentary by the two more-or-less romantic leads in the film, Shirley Eaton and Terence Longdon. They're elderly now, and it was nice to hear what they had to say. January 21, 2008

The Very First Two Carry On Movies

When Carry On Sergeant hit cinemas in 1958 nobody could have predicted how long the series was actually going to run. The very first Carry On film saw Peter Rogers as the producer and Gerald Thomas as the director (together they made all 31 Carry on films). A low budget farce, the film doesn't entireley encapsulate the feel of a typical Carry On film though gave mere hints of what was to come over the next 20 odd years. An army based comedy where strict, no-nonsense drill sergeant, William Hartnell (who was not a bit unlike his ferocious character in real life) attempts to train a bunch of eccentric, accident-prone young men into soldiers fit for fighting the war. Of course when you have the likes of Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Connor amongst the cast you pretty much can guess what happens. Several slap-stick mishaps raise a chuckle with the flamboyantly camp characterisations of Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey causing the most amusement. The film does hold a surprisingly refreshing sentimental ending which was not untypical of 1950's British comedies. Amongst the rest of the cast is the delightful Hattie Jaques who is given a supporting role, Bob Monkhouse in his first and only Carry On (who also receives top billing), Leslie Phillips and the glamorous Shirley Eaton (a one-time Bond girl) who provides the sexual charisma that would later more famously be provided by Barbara Windsor. An entertaining first entry in the series.

Carry On Nurse saw the series hit the jackpot with this proving an enormous box office suucess in the U.S.A where it ran in some cinemas for an astounding 2 and a half years! Whilst some firmly regard this as one of the best of the entire series, it has to be said that this film has nothing on some of the later medical entries such as Doctor (1967) (even though that was a virtually an updated remake of Nurse), Again Doctor (1969) and Matron (71). The film develops at a leisurley pace and has no real back bone of a plot. Hattie Jaques plays the no-nonsense Matron which would become something of her trademark in the series, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Connor and Leslie Phillips are amongst the patients and Joan Sims makes her debut apperance in a Carry On film (who would stay with the series through to Carry On Emmanuelle in 1978) as a clumsy, accident-prone nurse. A gentle comedy that doesn't quite hit the delights of some of the series future entries but with the vast majority of the regulars being involved its defintley worth a look! October 30, 2002

More reviews at Amazon.com ...