Carry On Nurse (1958)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1958
Running Time	82:58
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Gerald Thomas
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Kenneth Connor Shirley Eaton Charles Hawtrey Hattie Jacques Terence Longdon Bill Owen Leslie Phillips Joan Sims Susan Stephen Kenneth Williams
Case	?
RPI	$17.50	Music	Bruce Montgomery

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, in hospital!
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Carry On Nurse was the second of the Carry On films. Filmed in 1959, it is a wonderful old film, and that is the key to understanding and even enjoying this film. You must place this film in the context of the late 1950's. If you don't, then you are in for a very quiet and uninteresting night's viewing.

    The clearest example of this is in the sexy close-ups. Today this includes everything up to full nudity. Previously in the Carry On films, this usually meant cleavage. In this film there are two wonderful close-ups of a very shapely calf muscle! That's right, not even a thigh is in view - the knee is as high as we get.

    The comedy is quite low key and the laughs are some distance apart. The storyline is typical of the majority of Carry On films where there is more an overall situation rather than a serial story. Within this context, in this case the men's ward in a very typical national health British hospital, each of the patients and the staff have a small story and a number of comedy lines or situations to get in and out of. There is the usual combination of mild sexual humour (although in this film it is so mild as to be near invisible), situation comedy and slapstick.

    Within the staff there is a bumbling trainee nurse along with the regular staff nurses, but by far the best performance is from Hattie Jacques as the matron. Among the patients is a chap needing a bunion removed (or he won't get his dirty weekend away), a boxer with a broken hand, a nuclear physicist that suddenly discovers girls and a chap addicted to the radio programs that are piped in via headsets for the patients. After the first and second acts that move somewhat slowly, the third act involves the whole family wherein the patients all get together in the operating theatre to try and perform the much-delayed bunion operation by themselves. The anaesthetic used is the comedy standard laughing gas and the usual hijinks ensue.

Video

    Presented at what is probably it's original aspect ratio of 1.66:1, the transfer is unfortunately not 16x9 enhanced.

    The variance in source material quality affects probably every aspect of the transfer. The sharpness varies from good to very poor, as does the shadow detail. There are variances in the contrast covering quite a range with some scenes quite light and others obviously dark. On the other hand there are some scenes, particularly some of the close-ups of people's faces (well all right, the good-looking nurses), that are very nice black and white images.

    This is a black and white film and seems to be free of any false colouration.

    There are no MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There is motion blur, but this is most probably in the source material. Film to video artefacts are very rare but film artefacts abound. Again some scenes are relatively clean, with even the grain being only minor, but other scenes such as the short sequence that starts at 16:07 show a series of scratches both general and vertical down the emulsion. There is some dirt and marks such as at 48:15, but these are minor irritations compared to the scratches.

    There are no subtitles on this disc and it is a single layered disc, so there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue quality is good but the audio sync is a real problem. As it seems to vary in the amount of delay, this probably isn't a mastering problem but it can be quite distracting, such as at 12:00.

    The music reflects the period of the film's era but with the Carry On stamp of musical cues for on-screen actions, although I am not sure that you could get away with using a tuba solo to cue the matron's entrance these days.

    There was naturally no surround activity nor did the subwoofer get a look in.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    As these films are released in R1 as either a pair or in a boxed set the comparison will be against the two movie set from R1 that contains this film and Carry On Sergeant.

    The R1 version of this film misses out on;

• nothing

    The R4 version of this disc misses out on;

• The film's trailer
• 16x9 enhancement.

    This obviously gives us a clear R1 winner due to the 16x9 enhancement.

    Whilst this is not my favourite of the Carry On films it certainly contains some classic moments, none more memorable than the daffodil scene. Many of the Carry On favourites are here, they just all look very young indeed. Nurse Dorothy Denton, the femme fatale for this film, played by Shirley Eaton, is both the owner of those wonderful calf muscles and later the golden girl in Goldfinger.

    The video is not so good even allowing for its age.

    The audio is out of sync.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall