Carry on Again Doctor (1969) - film review

Dr Carver’s ambition is to run his own private clinic, but without a huge capital outlay how can he realise this dream?  The wealthy widow Mrs Moore, one of his private patients, could be the answer.  She is so grateful to Carver for taking out her appendix that she will offer him the support he needs, providing he sends a doctor to her late husband’s missionary in the Beatific Islands.  Having disgraced himself, the inept skirt-chasing Dr Nookey has no choice but to accept the post offered to him by Dr Carver, but soon realises his mistake.  Far from being a tropical paradise, the Beatific Islands are a rain sodden Hell-on-Earth where the locals have no need of Dr Nookey’s services.  The orderly, Gladstone Screwer, is at home here, although he does have five wives to keep him occupied.  Dr Nookey is amazed when Screwer demonstrates a weight reducing potion and sees an opportunity to get filthy rich.  Three months later, Dr Nookey is running a thriving weight loss clinic in London.  When Screwer realises that he is being – er – diddled by Nookey, he decides to pay the doctor a personal visit.  Meanwhile, Dr Carver is surprised by Nookey’s sudden success and is determined to get to the bottom of it...

After the phenomenal success of Carry On Doctor (1967), it was inevitable that the Carry On team would once again return to the wards for another offering of saucy double entendre and bedpan humour.  This time round, the jokes are beginning to look a little past their sell-by date and any sublety that may once have been lurking in Talbot Rothwell’s script-writing has been well and truly overtaken by crudity and facile low humour.  Despite this, the laughs still keep coming, thanks to the regular players, who still manage to turn in some superlative comic performances.  Whilst not the best of the Carry Ons, this one is eminently watchable, and not just because of what Barbara Windsor manages to flash in front of the camera.

Carry On Again Doctor was the last of the classic Carry Ons to feature Jim Dale.  The actor’s stage career in London’s West End had begun to take off and he would trump this with a very successful career in the United States, appearing in several films for Disney.  Dale left the Carry Ons at more or less the right time, just as the films were beginning to take a turn for the worse, and he goes out in a blaze of glory, throwing himself into some of the most memorable slapstick routines to have graced the series.  Twenty years later, Jim Dale was persuaded to return in the ill-conceived Carry On Columbus (1992), the only regular in the Carry Ons to appear in this film.

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