John Davis, the dreaded executive producer at Pinewood was so wary of setting a film in a hospital he made the cast wear sports jackets rather than white coats in the publicity pictures; fortunately it went on to be a big hit, and the rest is history.
Lavishly produced, it provides the pleasure of seeing plenty of familiar faces in Technicolor (not to mention Kenneth More's loud waistcoats), recording in colour a London in which people still carried ration books, a phone call cost thruppence and ten quid constituted a hefty fine.
Serving as the ego to the id of the Carry On's, some of whose regulars put in fleeting appearances (including a very young Shirley Eaton bearing very little resemblance to the svelte young sixties chick she ripened into), James Robinson Justice doesn't quite dominate the proceedings as he later did; while by bizarre coincidence Ernest Clark - who later took over his function as Professor Loftus in the seventies TV spin-off - is also in it. The lovely Kay Kendal briefly glides through it as a dinner date with a taste for caviare, while Lisa Gastoni also makes an uncredited but interestingly uncharacteristic appearance as a tart, bespectacled rival student.
