The Three Stooges | Stooged & Confoosed | 1938 | Moe | Larry | Curly | clown ministry | Reviews

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Stooged and Confused - Three Stooges - Moe Howard - Larry Fine - Curly Howard - You Natsy Spy - Violent is the Word for Curly - No Census, No Feeling - An Ache in Every Stake - DVD - Colorized

Editorial Review of The Three Stooges - Stooged & Confused courtesy of Amazon.com

A quartet of Three Stooges shorts (three new to DVD) make up this solid disc, all with mid-period Curly in woo-woo-woo form. Violent is the Word for Curly somehow morphs the three stooges from gas-station attendants to European college professors. Not only does it feature Curly roasting on a spit, but the Three Stooges instruct the students of Mildew College for Women in the intricacies of ”Swinging the Alphabet,” a memorable nonsense song. You Nazty Spy is the Three Stooges’ answer to Duck Soup and The Great Dictator, as a cabal of businessmen install Moe as the dictator of Moronika. With an accidental mustache and jibbering German, Moe does a convincing Hitler. (But didn’t he always?)

No Census, No Feeling”is a rangy, so-so bit that begins with a lame premise about the Three Stooges as census takers (it was 1940, after all) and ends up at a football game. But the best gag has Curly mixing up a noxious fruit punch. You know An Ache in Every Stake will be a goodie from the moment Moe and Larry attempt to remove a block of ice from around Curly’s head by using a chisel and mallet. Its centerpiece is a variation on the flight of stairs from Laurel and Hardy’s “The Music Box,” but Curly does nicely stuffing a turkey, too.

Stooged & Confoosed is presented with Columbia’s “ChromaChoice” device, which allows for easy toggling between the original black-and-white shorts (which appear in great shape) and a colorized version. The colorized images are sensibly rendered, but they still have that washed-out paleness they’ve always had--eggshell greens and light browns abound. Stooges purists will stick to black-and-white, the better to appreciate the subtleties of a cheese grater being scraped across Curly’s face. --Robert Horton

You Natzy Spy!: In this satire of the Nazis the three stooges are paperhangers in the country of Moronica. When evil cabinet ministers overthrow the king, they decide to make Moe the new ruler as he’ll be stupid enough to follow their orders. Moe becomes Dictator, Curly is a Field Marshal and Larry becomes Minister of propaganda. After successfully preventing a female spy from committing mayhem, the boys are run out of office by a mob and eaten by lions.
An Ache in Every Stake: The three stooges are icemen who, while delivering ice to a house on the top of a high hill, destroy several cakes that a wealthy man is trying to bring home. When their antics cause the servants at their customer’s house to quit, the boys are hired to take their place and prepare a dinner party. What they don’t know is that the party is for the man whose cakes they wrecked. When Moe’s gas filled cake explodes and the man realizes who they are, they must leave in a hurry.
Violent is the Word for Curly: The three stooges are left in charge of a gas station and manage to blow up the car of their first customers, three famous European professors. The stooges steal some of the academics’ clothes and wind up at “Mildew”, a women’s college where the three professors are expected. Mistaken as the real thing, the boys take their place on the faculty. When the real professors show up, the stooges try to convince a rich woman, the schools benefactor, that an athletics programs is more important. Their athletics demonstration comes to an explosive end when the real professors slip them a nitroglycerin basketball.
No Census, No Feeling: The three stooges get jobs as census takers and wind up in a fancy mansion looking for people to survey. Moe and Larry are recruited to join a bridge game, while Curly adds Alum to the lemonade. The resulting concoction is consumed by everyone, resulting in puckered lips and shrunken clothes. The boys next try to take the census at a football stadium. They disguise themselves as players and wind up in the middle of the game. Curly runs off with the ball and all the other players in pursuit.