Product Description

Five Three Stooges shorts:

Idiots Delux: Testifying from the witness stand, Moe defends himself against Larry and Curly's accusations that he attacked them while camping out in the woods, claiming they were responsible for frazzling his already frazzled nerves.

Pop Goes the Easel: The Stooges paint themselves into a corner when they hide from a cop in an art school. Accused of stealing brooms from a shopkeeper, they're actually innocent of that crime...but now they're guilty of creating some really bad art.

The Three Trouble Doers: The Old West wilder than ever when the Stooges are enforcing the law. After Blackie kidnaps Nell's pappy to force her to marry him, Sheriff Curly and Deputies Moe and Larry will have only until sundown to save the day.

Yes, We Have No Bonanza : Larry, Moe and Curly strike pay dirt - literally - while prospecting for gold to pay off their girlfriends' father's debt to Maxey, the wicked saloon owner they all work for. But when they find out the money is Mazey's stolen loot, it's payback time.

In the Sweet Pie and Pie: The Mushroom Murder Mob - Larry, Moe and Curly - are to be hanged in twenty-four hours, and three lovely ladies have a midnight deadline to marry or lose a $10 million inheritance. But even though the Stooges are pardoned after the nuptials, they're not exactly free.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60073 in DVD
• Brand: SONY PICTURES HOME ENT
• Released on: 2004-03-02
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Customer Reviews

A NICE ALL CURLY SET WITH ONE CLASSIC!
This set of five stooges shorts all feature Curly in some excellent shorts including one bonafide classic.

"The Three Troubledoers" 1946..a late Curly where he clearly is not at the top of his game. Set in the old west The boys set out prevent a marriage between the villain Blackie and the heroine Nell (Christine McIntyre).

"Idiots Deluxe" 1945. Moe is on trial for assaulting Curly and Larry with an ax. Moe relates how Curly and Larry took him on a hunting trip for his nerves and how be came to go nuts.

"In the Sweet Pie and Pie" 1941 - The stooges are convicts about to be executed for some murders they didn't commit. The day before the execution they are tricked into marrying three rich girls who need husbands to collect a legacy. At the last minute the real murderers confess and the stooges are pardoned. The girls are now stuck with the stooges so they plot to get rid of them by making them become gentlemen. One of the many takes on a common Stooges plotline.

"yes we Have no Bonanzas" 1939 - Set in a western town, the stooges are working as waiters in a saloon with the three girls they hope to marry. The owner of the saloon is a crook who has buried $40,000 of stolen money. The boys go prospecting and dig up the stolen money, which the crooks recognize as their loot and abscond with. A wild chase ensues, ending with the bad guy's car crashing into the Sheriff's office.

"Pop Goes the Easel" 1935 The Classic of the set. The stooges are down and out. With a cop chasing them, they flee into an artists studio where they are mistaken for students. The cop continues to hunt for them and they use a variety of disguises and tactics to elude him. A wild clay throwing fight ends the film. Features the hilarious line when Moe says "My old Man used to draw" and Curly says, "yeah, he drew 20 years with one stroke of the pen!" Awesome!

Great Classics, But Worn Out "Themes"
These are among the best Curly-era shorts that the Stooges made and the prints look pretty good, but it's very apparent that Columbia has run out of ideas for DVD "themes" and have begun to repeat themselves ("Cops & Robbers" comes to mind). I feel the same as many fans that it would've been a lot easier if Columbia had simply released all 190 shorts in chronological order from the beginning instead of doing "themed" releases.

At long last, Columbia has finally listened to the many complaints from Stooge fans about not being able to watch the shorts straight through and have remedied the problem on this DVD as well as the previous "Stooges At Work" DVD. Thank goodness they've also done away with the annoying loadup intros that plagued some of the earlier releases, especially the pinball and slot machine sequences. You had no choice but to sit through it because you couldn't get past them.

Columbia also needs to include more shorts on the DVD's; they started out with 6 or more in the beginning, but they've now cut it down to 5 each. Maybe someday Columbia will get it's act together...one can only hope!

A pretty good selection
The good news about this DVD is that finally there's a "Play All" button. The bad news is that there are only five shorts included here. It's ridiculous how Columbia doesn't see fit to include a lot more shorts on these discs, particularly considering how these films are under 20 minutes long. They could easily include twice that amount, but then again, this studio was never exactly known for having a lavish budget like MGM or Paramount. However, the paltry five shorts included are all pretty good.

'Pop Goes the Easel' (1935) was their seventh short at Columbia. In these very early shorts one can see that they hadn't quite gotten the magic formula down pat just yet, though they are getting there slowly but surely (their screen characters are more developed by this point than they were in, say, 'Men in Black'). It would only take but a few shorts more for them to finally get that magic formula down pat. Though this is one of those early shorts, it is one of the best ones, though not one I'd consider one of their absolute all-time greatest. It seems as though a lot of these early shorts have been declared classics and totally great simply because they were done so early in their career, and not because of any other factors, like a solid plot or truly memorable lines. There are great moments, like the clay fight at the end and when Larry speaks Yiddish to the cop (since I love hearing them use Yiddish words and Jewish references), but overall it's not paced as tightly and quickly as their shorts would be just a short time later, instead having a more improvised feel to it. (This one is also notable because Larry's daughter Phyllis and Moe's daughter Joan are featured in a brief scene.)

'Yes, We Have No Bonanza' (1939) is actually one of their best Westerns, though like in their other Westerns, this one too has a slower pace to it. It starts out kind of slow (particularly because of the musical number), but quickly picks up the pace. Maybe not one of their all-time greatest, but as far as their Western-themed shorts go, this one is terrific.

'In the Sweet Pie and Pie' (1941), which has a similar plot to the old Charley Chase short 'Long Fliv the King' and has one gag that was previously done in the Buster Keaton short 'Convict 13,' is a classic. It's pure entertainment all of the way through, with not a dull moment or wasted scene. Everything about it is great, although I can't quite grade this one as a 5-star short due to the unnecessary recycled footage of the dancing instruction scene from 'Hoi Polloi.' I think this was the third time that one of their shorts contained recycled footage, although at least here it's mercifully for only one short scene as opposed to how heavily stock footage was used by the mid-Fifties.

'Idiots Deluxe' (1945) is another great classic, perhaps a bit slower-paced than usual, but great nonetheless. It's also an interesting perspective to have the meat of the short be a flashback, since usually these shorts have an episodic structure to them. The cabin that most of the action takes place in and around was used in several of their later shorts (even into the dreadful Besser era), and without fail, there was always a lot of violence that broke out in that cabin. However, as incredible and perfect as this short is, it's kind of sad to realise that this was the last short made before Curly got sick. He did turn in a few more great performances after this, but he'd never look or sound this good again.

'The Three Troubledoers' (1946) is another Western, and expectedly has a slower pace. This one is the weakest of the lot, though at least Curly puts in a pretty good performance in this one despite being sick. However, that may be more due to the fact that these Western shorts had a slower pace anyway, and so his illness wasn't as immediately noticeable because he wasn't called upon to do any frenetic slapstick or anything else that requires rapid-fire energy. It's overall a mediocre short, but still not what I'd consider the bottom of the barrel.

One mediocre short out of five isn't bad, even though it wouldn't kill Columbia to put a lot more shorts on these discs. And once again we see that not all of these shorts really relate to the supposed theme (e.g., the opening and closing scenes of 'Idiots Deluxe' take place in a courtroom, but the main body doesn't; the beginning of 'In the Sweet Pie and Pie' has the boys in jail, but the majority of the short finds them as free men). It's also a bit too close to one of the previously-issued discs, 'Cops and Robbers.' And these supposed themes are that different because...?