Carry on Matron (1972) - film review

Small-time crook Sid Carter plans to steal a stock of contraceptive pills from Finisham Maternity Hospital, although his friends Ernie and Freddy and son Cyril are far from sold on the idea.  Cyril is even less enthusiastic when he learns that he must disguise himself as a nurse so that he can gain access to the hospital and locate the pills.  Mistaken for a trainee nurse, Cyril ends up being pursued by the over-sexed Dr Prodd and sharing a room with the gorgeous Nurse Ball.  Meanwhile, the hospital’s chief surgeon, Sir Bernard Cutting, is convinced that he is undergoing a spontaneous sex change.  Dr Goode, the hospital psychiatrist, assures him that these anxieties stem from a latent desire to prove his manhood and suggests that he starts to have relations with the opposite sex.  Sir Bernard, hitherto a confirmed bachelor (as celibate as they come), wastes no time proving his masculinity by throwing himself on the tender mercies of Matron, whom he has secretly admired for years.  Alas, Sir Bernard has chosen a particularly bad moment to release his pent up desires.  Hiding in Matron’s wardrobe is none other than Dr Goode...

After Carry on at Your Convenience (1971) failed at the box office, producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas wisely returned to the medical theme that had given them three of their biggest successes.  Carry On Nurse (1959) had been the most successful film in the series (proving to be a huge hit in both America and the UK), whilst Carry On Doctor (1967) revived the series’ fortunes after the switch of distributor from Anglo-Amalgamated to the Rank Organisation in the mid-60s.   Carry On Again Doctor was another notable success a few years later, so surely another Carry On set in a hospital would be a sure-fire hit?  Of course it was.  Carry On Matron not only recouped it modest £200k budget but turned a healthy profit of around £200k.  Alas, this would be the last of the great Carry Ons.  After this, it would be downhill all the way, down into the twin abyss that was Emmanuelle and Columbus.

The medical jokes are starting to look a little worn by this stage but Carry on Matron still offers great entertainment value.  Most of the regulars are here, firing on all cylinders and clearly loving every minute of it.  Talbot Rothwell turns out another gag-filled script which, whilst lacking in plot structure and prone to reusing old material, is guaranteed to deliver the laughs.   This is classic Carry On, untainted by the patronising political bias of At Your Convenience and the crude vulgarity of the following films.

There is a strange demob-happy feel to this film, as if the regulars knew that the party was soon to be over.  Terry Scott takes his final Carry On bow, before moving on to pastures new (in the  shape of the popular BBC sitcom Terry and June).   Charles Hawtrey had already fallen out with Peter Rogers over his drink problem and would be unceremoniously ejected from the team after the next film.  Talbot Rothwell was just three scripts away from the breakdown that would end his career.  One of Britain’s great institutions was about to go down for the last time, but there is no hint of that here. 

Hattie Jacques is back as the archetypal matron for the fourth and final time, albeit a somewhat gentler creature than the tyrant she portrayed in previous Carry Ons.  Kenneth Williams is at his most outrageous as a camp Casanova, nostrils flaring as they have never flared before, his love scenes with Hattie being an hilarious reversal of what audiences saw in Carry On Doctor.  Sid James makes a dapper comedy gangster, the part he had played so ably in the comedy classic Too Many Crooks (1959).  In his second and last Carry On, Kenneth Cope gets the full drag treatment, and looks surprisingly fetching in a nurse’s uniform (even when he is in the same shot as Barbara Windsor).  And Jack Douglas makes his Carry On debut (is that a good thing?).  With its enjoyable concoction of French farce, double entendre and slapstick (not to mention the classic bus route gag), Carry On Matron is where the series should have ended, on a glorious high.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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