Wonderfully offbeat film!

A different way of telling a story

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Around the time that Carry On Matron was made there was a concern in the United Kingdom about a declining birthrate. You couldn't prove it here by all the kanoodling and attempted kanoodling going on at this maternity hospital.Birthing babies and the prevention of that is the subject for the satire of Carry On Matron. Right about then birth control pills were at a premium in the British Isles and Sid James and his cronies have an idea to rob the Maternity Hospital of its supply of the pills. But first in order to pinch them they have to know where the hospital keeps them.That's when James gets the idea to have his son Kenneth Cope go in a disguise drag as a new matron. Of course Cope is a red-blooded British male and the job proves difficult to concentrate on, especially after he's roomed with Barbara Windsor who packs naturally what he has to use some socks to convey.Carry On regular Joan Sims is the way overdue expectant mother who is enjoying all the service the hospital provides and milking every bit of it while her husband Kenneth Connor a railroad worker has taken up residence in the waiting room waiting for his first child. Kenneth Williams is the head of the hospital, a man with issues whom he hopes that head nurse Hattie Jacques will solve. Solving everyone's issues is hospital psychologist Charles Hawtrey.It was with poignancy also that I watched Kenneth Williams pursuing Jacques and trying to explain his problems. It was a little too close to home for the real Kenneth Williams.The final robbery is borrowed somewhat from The Lavendar Hill Mob which is only right since Sid James was in that film as well.A real Carry On classic.

Of all the Carry On movies this one is my favourite The cast is excellent and the plot is silly but fun. Kenneth Williams is brilliant as the hypochondriac Sir Bernard Cutting. Hattie Jacques and Kenneth have a really good screen interaction happening in this movie. Although the main plot is about the intended theft of the pill by Sid James's character Sid Carter and his gang there are also sub plots like the romance between Sir Bernard and matron. Joan Sims plays a character called Mrs Tidy who eats the hospital out of house and home having false alarms galore while her long suffering husband camps in the hospital waiting room. Sid James's son who goes undercover as a female nurse falls for his room mate Barbara Windsor and ends up delivering a baby. It is also nice to see Wendy Richard (aka Miss Brahms from Are You Being Served) in a small role as wait for it......Miss Willing (an unwed mother).

The 23rd film in the Carry On series and the fourth (and last) of the medical themed adventures. Sid Carter (Sid James) leads a gang of thieves who plan to break into Finisham Hospital and steal a load of contraceptive pills to sell abroad. But where are they kept? Sid decides to send his son Cyril (Kenneth Cope) in undercover disguised as a nurse...They probably seem like cheap gags now, but much mirth is mined from the scenarios set up by a man undercover as a female nurse. Cue him having to share a room with a foxy babe (Babs Windsor), having to fight off the attentions of the randy Doctor Prodd (a brilliant film stealing Terry Scott) and him getting involved with medical issues he has no idea about (yikes this is a maternity hospital!). Elsewhere Joan Simms portrays a human eating machine that is three weeks over due, while her poor railway worker husband (Kenneth Connor great as always) goes insane in the waiting room. Kenneth Williams is the hypochondriac hospital manager and the wonderful Hattie Jacques gets great scenes in a film thats title and script acknowledges her work in the medical Cary On films.Briskly paced by the ever reliable Gerald Thomas, "Matron" is one of the more likable and funny Carry On entries of the 70s. 7.5/10

One of the weaker Carry On adventures sees Sid James as the head of a crime gang stealing contraceptive pills. The fourth of the series to be hospital-based, it's possibly the least of the genre. There's a curiously flat feel throughout, with all seemingly squandered on below-par material. This is far from the late-70s nadir, but Williams, James, Bresslaw, Maynard et al. are all class performers yet not given the backing of a script equal to their ability.Most of the gags are onrunning, rather than episodic as Carry Ons usually are. So that instead of the traditional hit and miss ratio, if you don't find the joke funny in the first place you're stuck with it for most of the film. These continuous plot strands include Williams – for no good reason – worrying that he's changing sex, and Kenneth Cope in drag. Like the stagy physical pratt falls, the whole thing feels more contrived than in other movies, and lacking in cast interest. Continuing this theme, Matron lacks the customary pun and innuendo format, largely opting for characterisation and consequence to provide the humour. In fact, the somewhat puerile series of laboured misunderstandings and forced circumstance reminds one more of Terry and June ... so it's appropriate that Terry Scott is present, mugging futilely throughout.Some dialogue exchanges have a bit of the old magic, such as this between Scott and Cope: "What about a little drink?" "Oh, no, no, I never touch it." "Oh. Cigarette then?" "No, I never touch them." "That leaves only one thing to offer you." "I never touch that either." That said, while a funny man in his own right (livening up the duller episodes of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) no end), you do feel that Cope isn't quite tapped in to the self-parodying Carry On idealology and that Bernard Bresslaw dressed as a nurse would be far funnier. This does actually happen, in part, though only for the last fifteen minutes.Williams attempting to seduce Hattie Jacques while Charles Hawtrey is hiding in a cupboard is pure drawer room farce, but lacks the irony to carry it off. That said, Williams's description of premarital relations is priceless: "You don't just go into the shop and buy enough for the whole room, you tear yourself off a little strip and try it first!" "That may be so," counters Jacques, "but you're not going to stick me up against a wall." Williams really comes to life in his scenes with Hattie, and you can never get bored of hearing a tin whistle whenever someone accidentally flashes their knickers.Carry On Matron is not a bad film by any means, just a crushingly bog-standard one.