Three Stooges

The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 2: 1937-1939

By 1937, where Volume Two of this long overdue chronological collection picks up, Moe, Larry, and Curly had been performing together for over a decade, and appeared in several feature films and 19 short subjects for Columbia. They were just getting warmed up; there is nary a clunker among the 24 shorts on this two-disc set. Several rank in the Stooges pantheon, including "Grips, Grunts and Groans" (with Bustoff the wrestler), "Violent is the Word for Curly" (with "Swinging the Alphabet"), and "Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb" (the Stooges live the hotel high life after Curly wins a radio contest). These comedies must have been a great escape for Depression-era moviegoers, particularly the ones in which the rich are reduced to food-throwing goofs ("Three Sappy People"). For the Stooges, it's not prosperity that's around the corner, but more often, con men on the lookout for "suckers" to swindle ("A Ducking They Will Go," "Playing the Ponies"). Reflecting America's can-do spirit, the Stooges are nothing if not resilient. These shorts may find them down, but they are never out. The boys are ungainfully employed as Calvary spies ("Goofs and Saddles"), janitors ("Three Missing Links"), dog washers ("Mutts to You"), firemen ("Flat Foot Stooges"), traveling salesmen ("Saved by the Belle"), and vets ("Calling all Curs"). Some of the best shorts turn on mistaken identity: They are confused for college professors in "Violent is the Word for Curly," high society escorts in "Termites of 1938," and famous decorators in "Tassels in the Air." For all the hair-tearing, eye-poking, and shovel-clobbering, the Stooges surprise with the odd musical grace note, such as their rendition of the silly "The Lollipop Song" in "Wee Wee Monsieur," and their music box-accompanied pas-de-trio with pilgrim lasses Faith, Hope, and Charity in "Back to the Woods." One also does not ordinarily look to the Stooges for pathos, or, for that matter, heartwarming happy endings, but "Cash and Carry" delivers both as the boys set out to raise $500 for a crippled boy's operation. "Flat Foot Stooges" is something of a milestone. It marks the debut of "Three Blind Mice" as the Stooges new theme song, which would replace the twittering "Listen to the Mockingbird." The shorts are presented complete and uncut, which means the PC police are standing by to issue citations for such egregious stereotypes as the grunting, shrieking "savages" in the colonial comedy, "Back to the Woods," and the Stooges' turn as Yiddish-speaking Chinese launderers in "Mutts to You." --Donald Liebenson

Get ready for more outrageous antics as The Three Stooges return in this second collection of chronological masterpieces.System Requirements:Running Time: 415 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/SLAPSTICK UPC: 043396257993 Manufacturer No: 25799

The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 1: 1934-1936

Finally, the studio knuckleheads got it right! The way that the Three Stooges have been presented on home video has been a real slap in the face and a poke in the eye to fans. The Stooges have been anthologized, colorized, and public domained. Their shorts have been released and re-released in varying degrees of quality. In the immortal words of Curly, they have truly been victims of circumstance. This two-DVD set, then, is for what Stooge-philes have long been waiting. Spanning the years 1934-36, it presents the first 19 Stooges short subjects chronologically. These shorts hail from the Curly era, which makes them essential. The first, "Women Haters," comes billed as a "musical novelty" and is performed entirely in rhyme. More interesting is that Moe, Larry, and Curly appear as Tom, Jim, and Jack. In the second short, "Punch Drunks," they are again not quite a team, but teaming up to make a boxer out of put-upon waiter Curly. This is the one in which Curly "pops" when he hears "that 'Weasel' tune." And the hits just keep on coming.

Remember the prologue of The Twilight Zone: The Movie, in which traveling companions Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks trade favorite "Zones"? Many of the shorts gathered here are the ones most quoted or referenced by Stooges fans, such as "Men in Black," the only Stooges short to be nominated for an Academy Award, and the one with the immortal page "Calling Dr. Howard, Dr Fine, Dr. Howard." "Hoi Polloi" is the first Stooges short to tackle the "environment" vs. "heredity" conundrum by introducing the Stooges to high society, reducing the well-heeled stuff shirts into a slap-happy mob. "Pop Goes the Easel" introduces another recurring theme in the Stooges oeuvre as the boys pose as artists in the art school in which they take refuge from a pursuing cop. This short contains a signature Curlyism, "Look at the grouse," as does "Horses' Collars," in which the mere sight of a mouse completely unnerves Curly ("Moe! Larry! The Cheese!) "Three Little Pigskins" is another mistaken identity gem, as the boys pose as three football players (look for a very young and very blonde Lucille Ball). Like the Little Rascals, the Stooges in these shorts were very much of their Depression-era times, but "Uncivil Warriors," "Restless Knights," and the decidedly un-PC "Whoops, I'm an Indian" get their anachronistic kicks by placing the boys behind enemy lines during the Civil War, in the medieval castle of a kidnapped Queen, and in the Old West. Collectors who have suffered through, say, "Disorder in the Court" on one of those $1 bin Stooges collections will be heartened to know that this set at last does these comedy classics justice. More than 70 years old, and they look better than ever! So spread out and get your n'yucks on! --Donald Liebenson

When The Three Stooges first signed with Columbia Pictures their deal was for one short. 1934's Woman Haters done entirely in rhyme wasn't a huge success but the Stooges hit their stride with their second short Punch Drunks and began to settle into their definitive roles -- Moe as boss Larry the middleman and Curly as their foil.Witness the rise of these comedy icons in this high-spirited collection containing the first 19 Columbia Pictures shorts all of which have been remastered for the best quality picture and sound. You'll experience the eye-pokes face slaps hollow head knocks and knuckle cracks like you've never heard or seen them before. So go ahead nyuck yourself out!Includes:Woman HatersPunch DrunksMen In BlackThree Little PigskinsHorses' CollarsPop Goes The EaselUncivil WarriorsPardon My ScotchHoi PolloiThree Little BeersAnts In The PantryMovie ManiacsHalf-Shot ShootersDisorder In The CourtA Pain In The PullmanFalse AlarmsWhoops I'm An Indian!Slippery SilksSystem Requirements:Running Time: 340 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 043396211049 Manufacturer No: 21104

The Three Stooges: Curly Classics

Fun with The Three Stooges in six zany episodes:

A Plumbing We Will Go(1940): Three would-be plumbers mistake pipes filled with wires for water pipes. Dudley Dickerson's battle in the kitchen is a highlight.

Men In Black(1934): Medical malpractice is an understatement when describing what the Stooges do to the Los Arms Hospital, where they dispense unorthodox advice, flirt with the nurses and battle a babbling intercom system. With: Dell Henderson, Jeannie Roberts and Billy Gilbert.

Micro-phonies (1945): When Curly is mistaken for an opera diva, the Stooges find their calling on the stage as Senorita Cucaracha (Curly) and Senors Mucho and Gusto (Larry and Moe). With: Christine McIntyre, Symona Boniface and Gino Corrado.

Punch Drunks(1934): Larry's rendition of Pop Goes The Weasel transforms Curly from a harmless cream puff into a vicious contender, but when Larry's violin breaks, it threatens Curly's boxing career with a TKO. With: Dorothy Granger and Al Hill.

Three Little Pigskins (1934): When the Stooges are mistaken for star football players, they not only find themselves running for goals but running for their lives when they get mixed up with the gorgeous girlfriends of a group of mobsters. With: Lucille Ball, Gertie Green and Phyllis Crane.

Woman Haters(1934): When Larry breaks his oath to the Woman Haters Club by marrying, he is treated like a traitor by his fellow members. But getting out of the marriage may be even more harmful than anything his friends could ever do to him. The Stooges' first short was done entirely in rhyme. With: Marjorie White.

The Three Stooges Meet Hercules

Very much in the tradition of such Columbia Three Stooges period shorts as "Back to the Woods," the 1962 costume epic The Three Stooges Meet Hercules is 100% pure Moe-Larry-Curly Joe comedy, with the barest of a ho- hum love interest to detract from the nonsense at hand. Working at the pharmacy of an ill-tempered boss (George N. Neise) and friends of a budding time-machine inventor named Schuyler (Quinn Redeker), the Stooges and Schuyler, along with the obligatory attractive female, Diana (Vicki Trickett), are transported back to the time of Hercules. Here the legendary hero (Samson Burke) is the enforcer for King Odius (Neise in a double role), and anachronisms are rampant in an English-speaking ancient Greece.

Twice condemned as galley slaves, the Stooges see that Schuyler now has the muscles but not the self-confidence to rescue Diana and the rest of Greece from the odious Odius. Schuyler is tricked into thinking himself all-powerful and performs many Herculean labors (with many a stuffed animal and some decent backscreen projection).

Although Curly Joe seems a few notches above his namesake in the brains department (which is not saying all that much), his reactions at times of real and supposed danger are quite ordinary compared with the old Curly. In fact, it is Moe who takes on the Curly bark at a recalcitrant prop. But the old sound effects are there to punctuate blows to belly and head, although eye pokes are out, due to parental objections to the influence of the trio, newly popular on television. --Frank Behrens

The Three Stooges hop in a time machine and are transported to the era of the Roman Legion in Greece. Dressed in sandals and togas they are trapped on a galley ship battle cyclops and wind up in a madcap chariot chase. Former professional football players and real-life twins Mike and Marlin McKeever are along for the ride playing a Siamese-twin cyclops.System Requirements:Running Time: 89 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 043396114456 Manufacturer No: 11445

The Three Stooges: Stooges at Work

BOOBY DUPES (1945): The Stooges find out what that sinking feeling really feels like when they decide to increase the profits of their fish business by catching the fish themselves. Things are going swimmingly until Captain Curly goes overboard using an ax on his catch. CRASH GOES THE HASH (1944): When an editor mistakes laundrymen Curly Moe and Larry for rival reporters he hires them to get the scoop on a pressing story. As they iron out the details the Stooges cook up more trouble than can be foung in the paper's headlines. DUTIFUL BUT DUMB (1941): When the editor of Whack magazine sends photographers Larry Moe and Curly to Vulgaria which prohibits cameras under penalty of death nothing but problems develop and they're the ones who wind up almost being shot - literally. HOW HIGH IS UP? (1940): Fix-it men Larry Moe and Curly find themselves in a riveting situation when they get hired as riverters for a constuction company. Assigned to a skyscraper they reach new lows in safety while working on the 97th floor. THREE MISSING LINKS (1938): The Stooges aren't exactly leading man material but that's why they call it acting! When Curly is cast as a gorilla and Larry and Moe as cavemen they go to Africa to shoot the film where a real gorilla teaches them the "method" to the madness.System Requirements:Running Time: 86 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 043396024472 Manufacturer No: 02447

The Three Stooges: The Three Stooges in Orbit

The Three Stooges in Orbit has the team playing not only themselves but themselves trying to make it big on a television show. Since they keep breaking leases by cooking in their apartments, they rent a room in a spooky castle that houses not only a wacky professor (played by "the fourth Stooge," Emil Sitka, veteran of many a Stooge short) and his pretty daughter, but a pair of Martians who are waiting for him to perfect his latest invention and use it to conquer the Earth. After an old situation-device in which the craft is too large to leave the workroom, the Stooges make a trip into space that adds nothing to the plot, and finally defeat the invaders by hoisting them on their own petard. The usual chase routine is replaced here by a fairly well done sequence in which the team is outside the craft trying to thwart the two Martians locked inside the craft, while a death ray is wiping out most of California. (The use of stock footage from other monster-invasion films is unintentionally hilarious.)

The love interest, deemed so necessary in films aimed at young audiences, is brief and tinged with mild comedy. The Martian make-up is obviously based on the original Frankenstein head shape, and it is a relief to hear them speak in some babble other than English as subtitles "translate" for us. In fact, the cleverest bit in this film is Moe's reading a subtitle to learn of the proposed destruction of this planet--a gag worthy of Mel Brooks. The film reveals its age when the chief Martian bangs his boot on the table in the manner of Khrushchev and his shoe at the United Nations. But the only real weaknesses are Curly Joe's fright reactions, so much funnier when done by Curly or Shemp in the past. --Frank Behrens

Moe Larry and Joe star as the Three Stooges in this science-fiction farce that has a pair of Martians trying to steal an all-powerful submarine-tank-rocket military weapon. As the Martians are flying away with it the Stooges hang on and force it to crash-land in a television studio.System Requirements:Running Time: 87 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 043396018709 Manufacturer No: 01870

Three Stooges- Nutty But Nice

Back when the "Blondie" comic strip was very young, Dagwood wanted to marry a flapper against the wishes of his rich family and staged a hunger strike for her sake. This is the basic premise of "The Sitter Downers" (1937, short number 27 in the Columbia series) in which the boys want to marry against a father's wishes and camp out in his living room. The second half is concerned with the now married Stooges trying to build a home for their brides with predictable disastrous results. Very funny at the start, stale material in the second section.

"Nutty but Nice" (1940, number 47) has the boys trying to help a melancholic girl by finding her kidnapped father. It starts interestingly with the boys as a team running a musical restaurant, but it turns to more familiar material as they try to escape from an apartment using the dumbwaiter. (They will never learn not to send Curly down first.) What makes this entry more interesting is that Vernon Dent gets to play a straight, sympathetic part that calls upon him actually to laugh at the Stooges' routines.

"Slippery Silks" (1936, number 19) starts with the boys as "fine" woodworkers--destroying a precious Chinese box brought in by Vernon Dent for reproduction--and then finding they have inherited a gown shop. After they reason that designing furniture and gowns is all the same, the results are truly funny as Larry's cabinet-like creations are displayed by attractive models who play it straight. However, the director (Preston Black) decided that the script needed a good pie throw (or cake throw in this instance) ending, and the last sequence offers nothing new along those lines. --Frank Behrens

A DUCKING THEY DID GO (1939): Hiding out after a daring watermelon heist the Three Stooges take jobs selling Duck Club memberships. But things aren't all they're quacked up to be and Larry Moe and Curly soon find they're decoys in a scam involving the club.HOI POLLOI (1935): You can take out the garbage but you can't take the garbage man out of the Stooge as a respected professor finds out when he wagers his colleague $10000 that he can transform even the Stooge-est men into gentlemen.HALF-WITS HOLIDAY (1947): In this remake of Hoi Polloi the Three Stooges are plumbers who plunge to great depths to be introduced to high society. This was the last starring role for Curly and features the first appearance by Emil Sitka.HIGHER THAN A KITE (1943): Mechanical failures Larry Moe and Curly take refuge in a bomb shelter while attempting to escape after they rearranged the engine of their Colonel's shiny new car. When they drop in on a meeting of German officers they somehow manage to overthrow the enemy.FALSE ALARMS (1936): The Three Stooges make a date with disaster when they try to keep up with their social affairs while working for the fire department. Larry and Moe are determined to resist temptation but when Curly needs dates for his honey's friends everyone gets hosed.NUTTY BUT NICE (1940): In order to cheer up a girl whose father has been kidnapped two doctors prescribe laughter to be administered by the Stooges. It doesn't work but when they find out her father always answers his daughter's yodels they discover the real cure for the problem.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 043396054943 Manufacturer No: 05494

Three Stooges - Dizzy Doctors

Includes 6 hilarious episodes:

Dizzy Doctors (1937): Larry, Curly and Moe make a grand mess of things when they mistake the medicine they're selling for auto polish.

Goofs and Saddles (1937): The Stooges make the Wild West even wilder, when they take on cattle rustlers and rope in the bad guys along with a ton of laughs.

Three Little Sew and Sews(1938): Anchors aweigh for fun when the Stooges enlist in the Navy. The zaniness is non-stop as the boys chase down a spy in this high seas hijinks classic!

The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze

The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963) has some distinction among the few features made by Moe and Larry with Joe DeRita. Basically a retelling of the Jules Verne classic, the plot has the added twist of Phineas Fogg III having to emulate the experience of his ancestor but without paying a penny in doing so. Again there is a bank robbery that is blamed on Fogg, but this time the culprits actively attempt to stop his progress since the perpetuator is the very villain who made the bet to begin with.

A personable Jay Sheffield plays the circumnavigator straight and love interest Joan Freeman does what acting she can, given a stereotyped role. What is interesting is that the Stooges, at least in their opening scenes, try to play English servants, accents and all, but they fall into more familiar patterns as the film progresses. While in India, the three get to reprise the vaudeville routine of the nearly blind Maja who goes "Aha?" (done better by Curly in "Three Little Pirates"). While in San Francisco, they reprise the fight sequence of "Punch Drunks" (again surpassed by Curly in the second Stooges short way back in 1934) in which Curly Joe can win only when driven berserk by the sound of "Pop Goes the Weasel" as played by Larry.

In lieu of the expected chase at the end, there is the wild attempt to get to the club just before midnight to win all the side bets Fogg had placed on his 80-days deadline. Their arrival through a solid wall is a fitting ending to a film that just might induce youngsters to read the original book. A very respectable Three Stooges effort. --Frank Behrens

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Media Type: DVD
Artist: THREE STOOGES
Title: THREE STOOGES GO AROUND THE WORLD IN A DAZE
Street Release Date: 12/21/2004
Domestic
Genre: COMEDY VIDEO

Three Stooges - Healthy Wealthy & Dumb

Includes 3 hilarious episodes:

Disorder in the Court (1936): The Stooges are key witnesses in a murder trial, and create havoc when reconstructing the crime.

Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb (1938): When Curly wins $50,000 in a jingle contest, the Stooges check into a swank hotel and begin living the high life...at least until they get the lowdown on exactly how much money they are left with after taxes.

Pardon my Scotch(1935): During Prohibition, the Stooges are asked to mix spirits for a bootlegger.