The eighteenth Carry On and third medical instalment sees Jim Dale (in his last outing) being sent into exile onto the tawdry tropical isle of Beautific to be corrupted by witchdoctor Gladstone Screwer.
Half the film is set on the island, where he discovers a miracle slimming tonic – and Sid James steals all the best lines – and the rest back in Blighty where his luck takes a turn for the better and romance with Barbara Windsor beckons, if he can better of hissing enemy Kenneth Williams and his stooge Charles Hawtrey. There are also inevitable appearances by “Matron” Hattie Jacques, endowed with a name (Miss Soaper) for the first time and Joan Sims as the millonairess with whom he sets up business.
The fast moving plot and changing locations keep the show moving, and makes this one of the more successful entries in the series. Although the nearest the film crew got the tropics was Maidenhead, the locations were more in tune with the saucy seaside postcard humour of Rothwell’s script.