Critical reappraisal of the Carry On films has gone through many phases since they came to an undignified and sloppy ending with the ghastly Carry On Emmannuelle in 1978. Throughout the '80s they were either ignored or scorned as a bit of regrettable tat that kept the unsophisticated lower orders amused but didn't warrant any serious attention. Stuck-up ponce Leslie Halliwell's original Film Guides sum up the wearisome snobbery of the 'discerning' cineast, with his derisive sneering at their crude, "ragbag" populism. In his Diaries, Kenneth Williams himself fell into this line of thinking, the prick. By the '90s, we were told, they'd become a 'cult' - whatever that actually means other than "some people watch them on video" - with certain titles like Cleo (1965), Screaming (1966), Up The Khyber (1968) and maybe Nurse (1959) attaining a kind of semi-ironic respect. "Yeah, we all know they're shit, but they're alright when you get back from the boozer" etc.
Still though, like Hammer horror films, there exists a snobbish disdain for the Carry Ons of the 1970s. It's true that as the first half of the decade passed the Carry Ons lost many regular players - Charles Hawtrey being excommunicated after 1972, Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor and writer Talbot Rothwell bowing out after 1973 - but the 1970-75 period contains some of the best films in the series, and ergo, some of the greatest comedy films ever made. Case in point: although invariably overlooked in favour of earlier medical Carry Ons, Carry On Matron is a fantastic farce, with a cracking extended cast giving a little more than their usual all. The entire Carry On team (minus Peter Butterworth and I suppose Jim Dale) is in this one, and they all wring floods of laughter out of Rothwell's audaciously-plotted script.
In fact, y'know, Talbot Rothwell deserves to be spoken of among the greatest British comedy writers. Plots as ludicrous as this can't be easy to co-ordinate, especially not with such a gigantic number of speaking characters, all of whom have their own crazy little stories going on. Of course, the Carry On team were just about the most talented concentration of British comedy performers that has ever been assembled, so they can get the best out of a string of admittedly hoary gags that probably pre-date Music Hall, but nobody ever gives him credit for building the team's personas, for recognising the performer's natural strengths and playing to them beautifully. Nobody ever mentions his winks to the audience, little lines that acknowledge and parody the absurdity of the weird fantasy Carry On world.
Sid James was used to playing small-time crooks - it's what made him famous - but here his character is boldly unlikeable. He emotionally blackmails his own son into helping him steal contraceptives from a maternity hospital by forcing him to dress up as a nurse, complete with black lace knickers. It's a fucking mental idea, and they all know it. One of those little nods to the audience comes just as Sid is trying to convince Cyril to put on the frilly undergarments:
CYRIL: Couldn't I go in dressed as a male orderly?
SID: Are you raving mad? Whoever heard of a male orderly wearing black lace knickers!
And with Sid cackling in the face of plain common sense, the Carry On world gets back on track.
In that world, Kenneth Williams plays a hypochondriac surgeon who feverishly consults himself for evidence of Asian flu and diseases of the bowels (incidentally, the face he pulls and the voice he uses while staring madly at his textbook and intoning "Diseeeases of the boooowels..." - that's what I'm talking about right there, that's why Carry On Matron is at least as good as any film you think you prefer). He begins to suspect that he might be turning into a woman, which is just a scream. He decides he has to prove himself as a man by having sex with Matron, so he bursts in on her while she's watching television with psychiatrist Charles Hawtrey (he hides in the cupboard, still smoking his cigar) and begs her for it. Matron has always really fancied Sir Bernard, so although she's concerned that Charles Hawtrey is in the cupboard, she visibly weakens and is torn between succumbing to this sudden outpouring of desire and getting Charles Hawtrey out of the fucking cupboard. Hattie is a revelation in this, playing a much gentler, more rounded (ho ho!) Matron than she was ever previously allowed. No fearsome battleaxe here, she plays a real, decent woman with authority and heart and she plays it with beautiful restraint. You feel for her when she tells Kenneth Williams "I am a simple woman with simple tastes and I want to be wooed!" You feel her disappointment when Kenneth snaps back "Ooh, you can be as wuuude as you like with me!"
It's just funny.
Then there's Sid's little gang - Bernard Bresslaw doing very little but getting massive laughs every time he's on screen (watch him when Sid's on the phone saying "You went to the GENTS to pin up your KNICKERS?") and the lovely, untroubled Bill Maynard with his infectious laugh. The argument they have about London bus routes is one of the greatest instances of being sidetracked by obsessive banality in the entire history of British comedy (another would be Python's Arthur 'Two Sheds' Jackson). Barbara Windsor's great too, again just playing a convincing pleasant young lady but a fearless Rothwell gives her the line "I don't fancy being a gangster's moll!" which is a hoot. Terry Scott is always great, but his entire character is more or less another nod to the audience - this podgy, pudding-bowl-haired middle-aged schoolboy has to play a predatory Lothario who beds all the student nurses. This makes his persistent pursuit of Cyril - the lad dressed as a nurse - even more disturbing. But his timing's spot on, especially the bit where he says "pinning up her knicker-er-no...". Brilliant.
Special mention must also go to the scene where Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams are having a blazing row about Matron's affections and then they discover that they're both Newts - some frighteningly plausible arcane secret society that sounds like a cross betwen the Freemasons and the Cub Scouts. It's not every film that contains the line "I am a Grand Salamander Newt of the Watford Pond! Glub glub!"
And Sid's face when he walks in on Cyril, still dressed as a nurse, snogging Barbara Windsor. "Cor blimey" is technically what he says, but it undergoes so many convolutions and emerges as a genuinely breathless exhalation, his face a priceless blend of utter shock and confused excitement.
I mean, I could go on. Carry On Matron fucking rules.
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