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Carry On Again, Doctor

That telltale third word shows scenario inspiration was flagging, and sure enough there’s not much to distinguish this last of the hospital offerings apart from James’ Gladstone Screwer, Jim Dale’s chaotic fuse box meltdown and trolley-assisted staircase descent, Williams, Hawtrey and Jacques’ nookie-starved medical staff, and (yawn) that *other* ‘iconic Babs appearance. Hmm, that looks like quite a lot actually, written down. Roll-call of non-regulars – Patsy ‘I’ll remember you in my will’ Rowlands, Patricia Hayes, William ‘kindly old gentleman’ Mervyn, Pat ‘cereal’ Coombs, Peter Butterworth, Wilfrid ‘onions’ Brambell, ‘On scoremeister Eric Rogers leading the band at the dinner-dance, and Bob Todd on a ventilator.

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. Lee James Turnock

    August 31, 2011 at 3:41 pm

    At the risk of sounding completely humourless, I always thought the fuse box meltdown scene was a prime example of how NOT to do destruction-based physical slapstick. Jim Dale’s obviously putting tons of effort into it, but it all falls flat. The part where a floor polishing machine drags its operator under several beds is clearly intended to be hilarious, but even seen in context (i.e. not during the title sequence of an ITV compilation) it’s jaw-droppingly unfunny.

  2. Richardpd

    July 4, 2023 at 10:56 pm

    Michael Caine’s future wife appears as one of the native women.

  3. Glenn Aylett

    July 6, 2023 at 10:59 am

    The Carry On franchise peaked with Camping and then went into a terminal decline with rehashed films like this, a growing level of crude humour, and the regulars starting to leave. Where in the 1960s, people would queue round the block to see the latest Carry On, by the mid seventies people were avoiding them in droves.

    • Richardpd

      July 6, 2023 at 10:19 pm

      Convenience was the first Carry On that lost money, I’m not sure if Matron & Abroad did, but after them it seemed to a race to the bottom, almost literally with Emmanuelle! This & England supposedly spent only a week at the cinema.

  4. Glenn Aylett

    July 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm

    Carry On At Your Convenience was a brave attempt at a satire on the unions, but the unions and many of their members boycotted it as a protest and it was the first not to be a box office success. Then it was down the drain for the franchise with far more crudity, weak jokes and weak plots. I think Peter Rogers and his friends were becoming narked by the success of the Confessions films and upped the adult humour, which backfired as Carry Ons were seen more as family entertainment. Also sit com spin offs seemed to be the in thing for most of the seventies.

  5. Sidney Balmoral James

    July 7, 2023 at 10:13 pm

    They perhaps rather overdid it once they reached the 70s; they made seven films (!) between 1970 and 1973, when they perhaps might have concentrated on one good one a year. I’ve often wondered how they wrote them – they presumably started with a concept, and then built up characters to fit the cast (you can see in some how they were unable to get certain people, e.g. Frankie Howerd is clearly in the Kenneth Williams role in Up the Jungle, and I think Charles Hawtrey’s role in the unlovely Loving would seem to have been intended for Williams also). Some of the films don’t make very good use of Joan Sims or Hattie, and there is something very perfunctory about the modern day ones – the cast seem to make much more of an effort in the historical ones (compare Henry for example with the pretty tired Convenience, which apart from the mini-storyline of the budgie predicting the winners, has nothing going for it). Sid in particular doesn’t seem very interested in events, and Dick should have been a cracker, but is defeated by how old and tired the cast are – again, Williams the exception – he was worth his weight in gold to that series, as Peter Rogers knew.

  6. Richardpd

    July 7, 2023 at 11:22 pm

    A few of the regulars were having health problems as well as aging by the 1970s, which didn’t help their performances. Not to mention Talbot Rothwell leaving the series in the mid 1970s & the writing suffering.

    The day Trip to Brighton is worth watching in Convenience, especially as WC Boggs is so stressed out by the strike that he feels the need to let loose!

    Had they decided to call it a day with Abroad they would have with their dignity intact.

  7. Droogie

    July 8, 2023 at 12:51 am

    Jim Dale is an underrated member of the Carry On universe. He had a youth and energy that none of the other cast had that allowed him to do great physical comedy. The Trolley scene in this film ( and Dale jumping over the hospital beds ) is magic. Imagine Terry Scott attempting any of this.

  8. Glenn Aylett

    July 8, 2023 at 2:13 pm

    Convenience does try to send up the union and management strife of the seventies, and is probably the only seventies Carry On I enjoyed as it has some really funny scenes like Bernard Bresslaw going to watch a porn film, the outing to Brighton and the talking budgie that predicts race winners. Also Sid James drives a very early Morris Marina in Convenience, a car that was produced by a company just as strike prone as WC Boggs.

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