Doctor in Trouble

The seventh and final Doctor film in the series produced by Betty.E. Box and Ralph Thomas, is a bit like Doctor at sea. Only with a much more straight-forward plot and no-Dirk Bogarde, who’d long left the series by this point. The main character of this film is Tony Burke (Leslie Philips, who bizarrely revisits his role from the third film, despite playing a different character in the previous film), a sly, womanizing amateur doctor dating an American model named Ophelia, (Angela Scolar) who goes on a publicity cruise which is more of a busman’s holiday for her. Though when Antony goes to say goodbye to her at Southampton, she’s already boarded the ship, and he isn’t allowed on with a board pass. So he sneaks onto the ship, by dressing up as a member of the crew, though he accidently falls asleep and by the time he wakes up, he finds himself still on the ship sailing through the ocean, as an accidental stowaway, who does whatever he can not to get caught by the ship’s authorities Master at Arms (Freddie Jones) and the ship’s captain George Spratt (Robert Morley), who both strongly suspect an issue onboard ship and try to catch out the rat they smell onboard.

Although In Trouble was ripped to pieces by the press at the time it came out and was even later lambasted by the film’s director Ralph Thomas who said he “couldn’t bear” to make any more films in the series and was instead given a TV series titled Doctor in the House (which is incidentally also the title of the first film). This is a very nice farewell to the series as a whole. As I’ve already pointed out it’s essentially a much better made remake of Doctor at Sea with some of the funniest moments of the entire series, which are mainly made by a bad-tempered pools-winner/ passenger Lllweyn Wendover (Harry Secombe). An eccentric photographer (Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame) and Leslie Phillps in his funniest role in the series.

Granted the film isn’t flawless, there are a lot of jokes and gags that fall as flat as a pancake and are quite frankly painful to watch. But as a whole this is still a fairly impressive instalment for a seventh film in a comedy series and is a lot better than either Thomas or the critics at the time claim it to be.

7/10 – Calum Roberts