| Rose Dixon – Night Nurse | |
| Director: | Justin Cartwright |
| Producer: | Frank Bevis |
| Based On: | novel by Christopher Wood |
| Starring: | Beryl Reid John Le Mesurier Arthur Askey Debbie Ash |
| Music: | Ed Welch |
| Cinematography: | Alex Thomson |
| Editing: | Geoffrey Foot |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | £300,000[1] |
Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse is a 1978 British comedy film directed by Justin Cartwright and starring Debbie Ash, Carolyne Argyle, Beryl Reid and John Le Mesurier.[2] It is based on a novel by Christopher Wood.
The film is one of several softcore sex comedies released in the 1970s to cash in on the success of the Confessions series (also written by Wood under the pseudonym Timothy Lea). Like the Confessions films, it was adapted from a book, the author's credit going to the fictional Rosie herself. It is the only one of the nine Rosie Dixon novels to be adapted into a movie. The character of Penny Sutton – Rosie's best friend in the movie and in the books – is the star of an earlier series of similar novels that depict Penny as an airline stewardess.
Debbie Ash was a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip. Her sister Leslie Ash plays Rosie's sister Natalie.
A new student nurse at a hospital and attracts interest from the staff with comic consequences.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This basic hospital comedy closely follows the minimal lines of scriptwriter Christopher Wood's Confessions movies. Characterisation – or rather caricature – is of the crudest variety and the narrative only just strong enough to support a string of antique situations long since drained of the little humour they may once have contained. Now that nudity – rather decorously rendered here – has become part of the stock in trade of this sort of comedy, the fusillade of innuendos which formerly provided slight if incidental pleasure seems to have been abandoned in favour of cartoon-style exaggeration: thus, a writhing couple cause their vibrating bed to explode. The lack of exuberant ensemble playing is the film's most telling fault."[3]