What's Up Nurse! (1978)

Derek Ford must have had some talent at some stage. During the sixties, he was a prolific writer for television and radio, and - along with his brother Donald - he crafted the screenplay for the awesomely tasteless yet really rather brilliant Peter Cushing shocker Corruption (1968), directed by the underrated Robert Hartford-Davis. Sadly, when he turned his hand to writing and directing - with a series of schlocky exploitation flicks in the seventies - his limitations became all too obvious. Outside of a genuinely fantastic psych-pop soundtrack, Groupie Girl is a fairly miserable experience, and whilst his sex films (among them the Sexplorer, allegedly one of Quentin Tarantino's favourites, and Diversions, which was notoriously available in a far more transgressive extended cut for overseas audiences) have their admirers, to me they look every inch the work of someone who simply left the camera running and buggered off, hoping something interesting would happen in his absence. Then,of course, there are his sex comedies. Oh dear God, his sex comedies... where do we even start?

What's Up Nurse! seems as good a place as any, as it's surely one of the most universally reviled British films of its age, a shabby and bedraggled attempt at dragging the moribund Carry On series up to date with bollock-naked frog hunting, grotesque homosexual stereotypes, unsuitable objects wedged up the fundamental orifices of unfortunate gentlemen, casual racism, a stalwart cast of reliable comedy actors struggling with a script that isn't so much end of the pier as the arse end of nowhere and a ton of gratuitous nudity. Add to this the production values of a public information film and a wretched score by Roger Webb, and you have a film that had no business being made in the first place.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a young doctor (Nicholas Field) arriving at an understaffed seaside hospital where he immediately clashes with the head surgeon (poor old John Le Mesurier) - as you'd expect, when he's wheeled into casualty with the head surgeon's daughter's vagina clamped around his penis. Graham Stark's befuddled porter notes that 'I've heard of this sort of thing happening to dogs', whilst a student nurse practices her ballet moves in the corridors, apparently to facilitate an extremely weak pun about pirouetting. If none of this seems funny to you, think yourself lucky - you're only having to read about it. I actually watched it.

Field comes across as a priapic Frank Spencer, a bumbling, accident-prone naif who's unable to turn down the chance of a quick leg-over whenever one arises. This should have been a decent springboard for some funny stuff, but the arrival of long-serving Dave Allen stooge Ronnie Brody with a jam jar wedged up his rectum immediately tells you what kind of level this thing is working on. Worse is to come when the 'secret lemonade drinker' from the old R. White's adverts turns up as a chronically constipated gay man who is convinced he's pregnant. Yes, they do the old 'those suppositories were useless, I might as well have stuffed them up my arse' joke. Ford's screenplay duly scrapes the bottom (no pun intended) of the bad taste barrel when an escaped chimpanzee from the circus finds its way into the constipated man's bed, and when he wakes up, he thinks he's given birth. British smut expert Simon Sheridan notes that this is a nasty scene, played with utter contempt. I think he's being too kind.

Around this point, the film - literally and honestly - seems to get bored with itself and starts rambling on like a lunatic. There's a pointless set-piece in a restaurant with a fire eater and Andrew Sachs plays a slightly more aggressive variation on Manuel. They do the 'prick his boil' gag, which was ancient even when it was on one of the old Bamforth's postcards. Regular Spike Milligan stooge keith Smith turns up as a man with a frog in his throat, which naturally leads to a spot of nude frog-hunting, before Smith decides he's got rabbit DNA or something and hops off. Olive from On the Buses, Frank Williams from Dad's Army and Bullet Baxter from Grange Hill contribute thankless cameos. Saddest of all, Peter Butterworth and Jack Douglas turn up as the local bobbies, before the whole thing is summarily wrapped up with a truly insane (but still desperately unfunny) happy ending involving a king-sized bed and a merry-go-round. Roll credits, and another rusty nail gets hammered into the coffin of the British film industry. Cardew Robinson at least had the good sense to get his cameo over and done with before the opening title sequence.

Amazingly, What's Up Nurse! does have its admirers, I still get the feeling that anyone who actually praises this thing with a straight face must be gritting their teeth so hard that they're in danger of showering anyone in the immediate vicinity with enamel chips. Yet the film was sufficiently successful to spawn a sequel, What's Up Superdoc, in which dear old Harry H. Corbett makes an arse of himself and Hughie Green talks about wanking. It's as classy as it sounds. As for Derek Ford? With his surly bruiser's face, he would have made a good partner in crime for the villainous Cliff Brumby in Get Carter. Ford directed his last film, Attack of the Killer Computer (AKA Urge to Kill) in 1989, and it was never properly released, though an iffy VHS-quality bootleg did leak out on the internet. Remembered by his colleagues as 'generally miserable', Ford spent the last few years of his life chasing work in America (where he sought to gloss over his grimy past) and writing detective fiction. He died of a heart attack outside a branch of WH Smith's in 1995.