You expect to see things flying around in a Three Stooges comedy.
But sometimes those things didn't really "fly" as much as they...floated? Anyway, it just sorta adds to the comedy!
Here are the Three Stooges shorts used in this video and their release years:
Pardon My Scotch – 1935
Yes, We Have No Bonanza – 1939
Spooks! – 1953
Pardon My Backfire – 1953
Video by Porfle Popnecker. I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
(I wrote this short story way back in 2008. While entirely fictional, I like to think that it could have happened, or perhaps even should have happened.)
Back when I was Christopher Walken's personal chef, I never knew
what random horrors each day would bring. I remember one day in
particular, in which Mr. Walken sat in his darkened study, lost in one of
his strange, pensive moods. He summoned me just as the grandfather clock
in the drafty hallway struck noon.
I stood there, awaiting his orders, for quite a long time. He sat in a
large leather-bound chair, hands pressed together under his chin, as
though pondering his options with grave consideration. Finally, in his
familiar low, halting voice, he spoke.
"I would like...the Buggles," he said. "For lunch."
"The Buggles?" I repeated, not sure I'd understood. "You mean, the 80s 'new wave' musical duo?"
"Yes, exactly," he said, relieved that I was familiar with them. A
slight smile played upon his lips as he nodded, relishing some mental
image that I daren't even imagine.
I wasn't sure what to say. Where the hell had this idea come from? "The
Buggles broke up a long time ago," I informed him. "They're, uh, not a
duo anymore."
"Then..." he said thoughtfully, "you could get...the ingredients for the Buggles...and make some new ones."
I thought about this seemingly nonsensical request for a moment, when
suddenly the horrifying truth dawned on me. By "ingredients", he meant
that he wanted me to kidnap Trevor Horn and Geoffrey Downes, the
original members of the Buggles, and cook them for lunch. His lunch.
"I can't do that," I said firmly. "I...I won't do that. They're human
beings, not just 'ingredients' for some ghastly lunch for you." I
cringed, waiting for him to explode in a fit of anger, or at least send
me packing.
"Oh," he said softly, as though my words had actually made some kind of
sense to him. "Okay. Well, then...I'm not sure what other...lunch
options...are available to me. Let's go into the kitchen and...explore
them. Shall we?" He rose from his chair and waited for me to lead him
into the kitchen, since he had no idea where it was. So I did.
When we got there, he gazed around in silent wonder at all the utensils
and appliances. Finally, he spoke. "Where do you keep...the people?" he
asked, gesturing with his hands.
"The people? What people?" I inquired, baffled.
"The people that you cook," he explained. "Where...do you store them
before preparing them...for my meals?" He asked this as though it were
the most normal thing in the world.
Forcing back a retching wave of hot bile, I contained my revulsion long
enough to respond. "I don't cook people!" I exclaimed. "I cook food!
FOOD! Nobody cooks PEOPLE! That's HORRIBLE!"
He looked at me with a sort of serene puzzlement for a moment, then
shrugged. He noticed something on the counter. "What is that?"
"That," I said, grateful for the change of subject, "is a sandwich that I made for my own lunch."
"Ah," he said, amazed. "A...sandwich. Could you make one of those...for me?"
"Sure," I said, relieved. "What kind of sandwich would you like?
"Are there...different kinds?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "You can put whatever you want in a sandwich. Any
kind of meat, in addition to things like tomatoes, lettuce, cheese,
pickles--"
"Make me," he said with growing excitement, "a Buggles sandwich."
I slapped my forehead. "No...no, you don't understand," I said, exasperated. "You can't--"
"With some of that pickles and...er, cheese things that you indicated,"
he added. "And I...I really am hungry today, so...make me two of these
Buggles sandwiches. Each of them containing half...of each separate
Buggle. With cheese." He took a deep breath and stood back with his
mouth open, eagerly waiting for me to confirm my understanding of his
instructions.
"Look, Mr. Walken," I said, finally tiring of this charade and spelling
it out for him, slowly and plainly. "I cannot and WILL not cook people
for you to eat for lunch, or for any other meal. You're asking me to
commit MURDER, for heaven's sake...so that YOU can indulge in
cannibalism, one of the most utterly HEINOUS acts a person can commit.
Why, the very notion of this fills me with an inutterable HORROR which I
can scant express with mere words!" I leaned wearily against the
counter, drained by my emotional turmoil.
He thought about this for a long time, then held up his index finger and
began to speak. "Are you...trying to tell me..." he said slowly, a look
of concern on his face, "that we...are out of cheese?"
"NO!" I screamed. "WE'RE OUT OF BUGGLES! YOU'LL HAVE TO EAT SOMETHING ELSE!"
"Ah," he nodded, appearing to understand me at last. I waited anxiously,
fearfully, for his next words. He extended his arm so that his sleeve
would retract and reveal his wristwatch. He looked at it, furrowing his
brow. "It's five minutes after twelve," he announced. "Is my lunch ready
yet?"
"No," I said. "You told me you wanted the Buggles for lunch, and I told
you I could not and would not kidnap and cook them for you. Therefore,
you have yet to present me with a viable alternative meal to prepare for
you."
"I understand," he affirmed. "Well, then," he said breezily, "I'll just
invite some friends over for lunch, and you can cook some of them." He
pulled an address book out of his pocket, went over to the phone, and
began calling people while I simply stared at him in disbelief. Thirty
minutes later, the livingroom was filled with guests milling around
drinking cocktails.
"There's Meryl Streep," he said to me in a low voice, pointing. "I'd
like some spaghetti and Streep balls as an appetizer. And over there,"
he added, indicating a gentleman standing next to the Picasso, "is
Dennis Hopper. As an entree, I'd like some thick, juicy Dennis Hopper
steaks. Ribeyes, of course."
"Of course," I said wearily.
"And to snack on...umm, who's left...oh, just do something fun with
Steven Spielberg. Maybe a sort of festive meatloaf. Or some jerky. But
you'd better hurry, because he never stays long."
"So...I just slaughter them now?" I asked.
"Yes, yes, just slaughter them now," he urged. "I'm famished."
Steeling myself, I clutched the meat cleaver and began to inch forward.
Suddenly a wave of hysteria swept through me and I screamed at the top
of my lungs: "NO! NO! I WON'T DO IT! I WON'T SLAUGHTER AND COOK
HOLLYWOOD'S ELITE FOR YOUR LUNCH!"
With that, I flung the meat cleaver aside and ran shrieking from the
room. On my way out, I could hear Mr. Walken explain to his guests,
"Well, you just can't get good help these days."
Later, he found me hiding in the kitchen, trembling. He noticed my
sandwich sitting uneaten on the counter. "Are you...going to eat that?"
he asked.
"No, you can have it," I said in a quavering voice. "I couldn't bear to eat anything right now."
He picked up half of the sandwich and took a bite. "Mmm, this is very good," he appraised. "Who is it?"
It was Underwood Chicken Spread, but I lied. "It's Tom Cruise. I got a good deal on the cast of TOP GUN at the meat market."
And so, for the next several weeks, I gave Christopher Walken chicken
spread sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and told him that we
were working our way through the entire cast of TOP GUN. When that was
over, I switched to deviled ham and told him we were starting in on PULP
FICTION. This eventually presented a problem, since I'd forgotten that
he was in it. So one day, two weeks into PULP FICTION, he asked, "When
do I get to eat me for lunch?" Thinking fast, I opened up a can of Spam
and pointed at it. "This is you," I said. "Oh...I look good," he
drooled.
Originally posted on 10/20/2018
If you're already an ardent collector of Stooge-iana, you may have most or all of this material in your collection. But for the Stooge fan who doesn't yet have it all, or for new fans just wanting to get started, Time-Life's new three volume, 13-disc DVD collection THE BEST OF THE THREE STOOGES might be a good bet for big Stooge entertainment.
The eight discs in volumes one and two are from Sony's "The Three Stooges Collection" and contain the first 87 Columbia Stooge shorts--namely, all of the Curlys save for the last ten or so--from 1934 to 1945 (ending with "Micro-Phonies.") For those who don't own the entire Columbia short subjects output from Sony this would be a good place to start.
For those who do have all the shorts on previous discs as I do, the five discs in volume three contain the really interesting stuff. Disc one features the Stooges made-for-TV biopic from 2000 co-starring Michael Chiklis as Curly, as well as three vintage Columbia cartoons from the 30s and 40s in which the boys pop up as guest stars. Since I don't remember ever seeing any Columbia cartoons before, this was of special interest to me as a fan of vintage animated cartoons in general.
When Shemp Howard died in 1955...
...the Three Stooges still owed Columbia Studios four short films under their current contract.
So the studio cast frequent Stooge co-star Joe Palma to impersonate Shemp in those films-- along with lots of existing footage -- to create four "new" comedies which were, in fact, mostly remakes.
And thus were created some of the oddest entries in the Three Stooges' filmography.
Video by Porfle Popnecker. I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Nothing beats watching poor Moe try to decorate the tree...the Stooge way!
His long-suffering wife (Mary Ainslee) can only observe in horror.
And when the Three Stooges celebrate the Christmas season...
...it's Season's Beatings for the three knuckleheads!
HE COOKED HIS GOOSE (1952)
MALICE IN THE PALACE (1949)
BLUNDER BOYS (1955)
TRIPLE CROSSED (1959)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Originally posted on 12/18/11
THE H.P. LOVECRAFT COLLECTION, VOLUME 4: PICKMAN'S MODEL, conceived and produced by Andrew Migliore for Lurker Films, is part of their continuing effort to bring us the best of the short films based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The previous volumes were entitled "Cool Air", "Rough Magik", and "Out of Mind." Here, Lovecraft's chilling tale "Pickman's Model" is presented in three different interpretations, supplemented by two other short films. Collectively, they add up to a couple of hours of solid entertainment for the Gothic horror fan.
I was unwilling to start another Lovecraft film review with the disclaimer "I've never read any of his stories, but...", so I found a website containing his complete works and gave "Pickman's Model" a read. It's the eerie story of Richard Upton Pickman, a deranged artist whose paintings depict scenes of carnage and depravity so realistic and repellent that he is shunned by the "tea table" art crowd. All except for a man named Thurber, who is morbidly fascinated by Pickman's work and wants to see more. Pickman obliges him by inviting Thurber to the dark, haunted cellar where he does his most gruesome work and showing him exactly from whence springs his malevolent inspiration. Which, as you might guess, turns out to be a rather unsettling experience for the unsuspecting art lover.
It's a very short story told in flashback by Thurber to his friend Eliot after the fact, and any filmization must be augmented by extra dialogue and events. At 43 minutes, the 2000 TV-film "Chilean Gothic", directed by Roberto Harrington from an adaptation by Gilberto Villarroel, is the longest and most altered version on this disc.
Here, the "Thurber" character is a journalist named Gabriel (Rodrigo Sepúlveda) who is investigating the violent death of his friend Anibal, whose last known whereabouts were in the company of the renegade artist Pickman. He interviews Pickman's only friend, an eccentric old professor named Mattotti, and the slovenly caretaker of a crumbling apartment house where Pickman once lived. Both meet a violent end on the same night that Gabriel is lurking through the hidden tunnels beneath the apartment house, where he finds human remains.
Tracking Pickman down to a remote island, he finds him inhabiting a large, shadowy mansion surrounded by paintings and sketches of unimaginable, otherworldly horror. Here, Pickman is played by Renzo Oviedo as a frizzy-haired wild man--the other versions will each interpret him quite differently. Gabriel's confrontation with Pickman leads to an event which is common to each of these films, which is the emergence of some terrifying, unnameable beast from a brick well within the cellar of Pickman's house. This leads to a final revelation for Gabriel which is unique to "Chilean Gothic" and not found in any other version. It comes as a pretty satisfying shock ending.
Sepúlveda and Oviedo are intense in the lead roles and the film unfolds as a scintillating mystery that is well told, with an atmosphere of dread that lets us know things aren't going to end on a happy note. Aside from some shock cuts of Aribal's ravaged body, most of the horror is left to the viewer's imagination, including Pickman's paintings themselves. As Thurber tells his friend Eliot in the short story: "There's no use in my trying to tell you what they were like, because the awful, the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness and moral foetor came from simple touches quite beyond the power of words to classify." Director Harrington reveals only oblique glimpses of the paintings to give us an idea of their content, with one notable exception: a full-on view of Francisco Goya's horrific "Saturn Devouring His Children", which will also pop up in the Italian version next on the disc.
Producer-director Giovanni Furore's "Pickman's Model" (2003) begins with a young woman answering an ad for a painter's model and ending up as an entree for the creature in Pickman's cellar. Then we veer a bit closer to actual Lovecraft territory as a distraught Howard (Vittorio de Stefano) stumbles into the home of his friend Russel (Alessandro di Lorenzo) one night with a cloth-covered painting and a strange story. The painting is a Pickman original, which piques the interest of art-lover Russel, and the story is similar to Lovecraft's, with Howard and Russel standing in for Thurber and Eliot.
This time, the Pickman that Howard meets at an art exhibition is portrayed by Lorenzo Mori as a twisted, spidery hunchback with a really evil leer. He leads Howard through some creepy old Italian backalleys to a dark, spooky house with stone passageways dripping with water and a cellar with the usual brick well. As before, the content of Pickman's paintings is only hinted at, but this time we get a disturbing impression of them via subliminal flashes of some truly demented photographs--you'll want to go back and do some frame-advancing to get the full effect. At one point, the wooden lid to the well starts to rattle violently, and Pickman grabs a gun and locks Howard out of the room, saying something about "rats." Well, once we hear the blood-chilling racket going on in there, we know it ain't rats--the sound effects alone are enough to give you a large case of the willies.
The rich cinematography here is nice after the grainy visuals of the Chilean effort, and Lorenzo Mori's scuttling, sinister Pickman is delightfully loathesome. The story builds nicely to an ending that explicity follows the one in the short story, right down to a shot of the cellar creature itself. It's still a bit less than our imaginations are capable of conjuring up, but the set-up and pay-off for the twist ending are well-handled.
Next comes my favorite of the bunch, Texas director Cathy Welch's 1981 college thesis film "Pickman's Model." The low-budget black and white photography makes it look like something out of the 60s--in fact, the dark, moody atmosphere and nightmarish locations give it the same oppressive aura that hung so heavily over Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13 and Herk Harvey's CARNIVAL OF SOULS. This time we finally get an actual Thurber, although his friends call him "Bill" (Mac Williams), and he's relating his strange story to his gal-pal Ellen (Nancy Griffith), which is pretty close to "Eliot."
Bill and Ellen are members of an art club that consists mainly of straight-laced conservatives with little appreciation for the ghastly canvases of the eccentric Pickman (the director's brother, Marc Mahan). As Bill enthusiastically tells Ellen, "Pickman dredges up our darkest fantasies...the ancient terrors in our collective subconscious," while she cautions him, "There's a trick to being fascinated with the perverse without becoming perverse yourself."
Marc Mahan portrays Pickman as a man with a deceptively bland yet somehow ominous appearance which masks the keenly decadent and ultimately dangerous intellect within. When he is expelled from the art club, Bill goes with him, intent on finishing his manuscript about Great Painters He Has Known with a special section on Pickman. He gets invited to the man's house for a look at some of his latest works, and after proving his worthiness, is then taken to Pickman's super-secret studio where he does his really undiluted and downright freaky stuff.
Deep in the heart of old Boston, a richly-historical setting haunted by the ghosts of the past and resonating with leftover evil from the days of the Salem witch trials, Pickman's crumbling old mansion is a nightmare-inducing spook house. The well in the cellar, which in the other versions of the story is simply a generic doorway to Hell, is here directly related to the Salem witchcraft days in that it is a doorway to the underground passageways that were said to allow the witches and other creatures of the night to secretly commune with one another, and which may still contain something best left alone. Pickman himself is part of that lineage--as he tells Bill, his four-time great-grandmother was hanged as a witch under the stern gaze of none other than Cotton Mather.
Bill becomes increasingly disturbed by Pickman's paintings as we finally get to see some of them as described in Lovecraft's short story. The renderings are crude but interesting, especially a portrait of a Puritan family in quiet prayer. They're all bent in solemn communion with God except for the little boy, who is leering at the viewer with anything but pure thoughts. Other paintings show victims being attacked and devoured by strange canine-human hybrids in graveyards and subways. One of them, which depicts one of these beasts killing a boy, is brought startlingly to life in a shocking makeup-effects shot that is cheap but effective. But most disturbing to Bill is the fact that Pickman's paintings are starting to dredge up primal fears within him that seem to be connected to past experiences that his memory has suppressed.
The sequence in which the unknown creature begins to emerge from the well is handled better here than in any of the other versions. Bill is locked out and must listen to the blood-curdling noises behind the door until finally Pickman emerges. There's something different about him now--he's hairier, his hands and face are twisted, and his teeth are sharper--in other words, he's beginning to resemble one of those creatures in his paintings. At that point, Bill suddenly remembers something he had to do somewhere else, and gets his hindquarters out of there.
Lovecraft's story ends with the main character revealing that he swiped a photograph that was pinned to one of Pickman's canvases and stuffed it in his pocket. Pickman always took photographs from which to better render the background details for his paintings--or so he said. In the short story, as in this and the Italian film version, a final revelation concerning Pickman's photographs supplies the twist ending. But here, there's an added sequence that pushes Cathy Welch's interpretation of the story even further into horror film territory and gives it a chilling ending that's right out of your worst nightmares. Which is just one of the reasons I consider this film to be the highlight of the collection.
The six-minute short that follows is a distinct change of pace. Based on a single sentence from an unfinished story by Lovecraft, Holland's "Between The Stars" (1998) features Jos Urbanis as Minnekens, an increasingly self-absorbed office drone whose only pleasure in life is to lie on his back with his head sticking out the window and gaze up the airshaft between the surrounding apartment buildings at a single square of star-bedecked night sky. Another beautifully-shot black and white entry, Djie Han Thung's film is reminiscent of David Lynch's ERASERHEAD in style and content. We really get into this guy's head as he wanders totally detached through his daily life, preoccupied with the facial pores of a chattering coworker or the miniscule white specks in the printed letters of a book. A strangely upbeat ending ties this odd entry off rather neatly.
Finally, we get some primitive, old-school computer animation in the form of Geoffrey D. Clark's adaptation of Lovecraft's "In The Vault", the story of a vile cemetery caretaker named George Birch. This drunken old sot isn't above tossing the dear departed into mismarked graves, robbing them of their valuables, or burying two of them together to save the effort of digging separate holes. When a long freeze makes gravedigging impossible, the bodies are stored together in a vault until the spring thaw. As fate would have it, George gets locked into this vault one night and must figure out a way to escape. But before he does, the meanness and cruelty he has shown to his vault-mates in both life and death comes back to haunt him in a big way.
Clark's rendition of the story is short and simple--more of a childlike fairytale than a horror story--and it comes and goes leaving little lasting impression. So I read the original story to see if there was more to it than that, and sure enough, it's a dark and disturbing tale of terror that could've yielded a much better adaptation than this. As it is, Clark's "In The Vault" is a pleasant diversion, sort of like the cartoon that theaters used to play along with the feature, but it had the potential of being memorably frightening if only the source material had been better utilized.
I'm glad I watched THE H.P. LOVECRAFT COLLECTION, VOLUME 4: PICKMAN'S MODEL, because not only did it prompt me to finally start reading Lovecraft after all these years, but it also provided me with a highly-enjoyable evening's worth of really good Gothic horror. Seeing how a single short story can yield such a mix of wildly-different styles and interpretations makes it consistently interesting. And it's a great example of how mood and atmosphere can be just as effective, and sometimes more so, than a bunch of shock cuts and gore effects.
When Joe Besser replaced Shemp, a new intro was filmed...
...in which the boys sing their patented "Hello, hello, hello!"
But when it fades in, we see that Moe isn't quite ready.
He's still glancing from side to side...
...and clearing his throat.
But that's why we love him.
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Pancakes are a pretty simple thing to cook...
...until the Stooges get behind the stove.
When that happens, it's "batter up"!
MOVIE MANIACS (1936)
BUSY BUDDIES (1944)
SING A SONG OF SIX PANTS (1947)
RUSTY ROMEOS (1957)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Sometimes Curly sang actual songs...
...and sometimes he just musically mumbled to himself.
Here are a few examples of his Stoogey singing!
THREE LITTLE BEERS (1935)
GOOFS AND SADDLES (1937)
VIOLENT IS THE WORD FOR CURLY (1938)
AN ACHE IN EVERY STAKE (1941)
LOCO BOY MAKES GOOD (1942)
SOCK-A-BYE BABY (1942)
I CAN HARDLY WAIT (1943)
G.I. WANNA HOME (1946)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
"What's a web page? Something ducks walk on?"
"Ha ha, very funny."
"No, it's the name of the different sites you can look up on the internet."
Original video "Kids Guide To The Internet"
Wendy & Lisa "White"
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
The Stooges enjoy a nice stack of hotcakes dripping with syrup.
Unless the syrup somehow gets switched for glue.
Leading to a rather sticky situation.
HEALTHY, WEALTHY, AND DUMB (1938)
A MISSED FORTUNE (1952)
GOLDRIGGERS OF '49 (1965)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
To help pull out the third Stooge's bad tooth...
...Moe does the old trick where you tie one end of a string to the person's tooth...
...and the other end to a doorknob, then he slam the door shut.
But instead of the tooth being pulled out, the doorknok gets pulled off instead...
...and when the third Stooge sees the doorknob, he thinks that it's his tooth pulled out.
I CAN HARDLY WAIT (1943)
PARDON MY CLUTCH (1948)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
When a supporting character or Shemp gets stabbed in the behind with a pointy instrument...
...the instrument gets bent afterwards.
Shemp looks at the now-bent pointy instrument and says...
"He/I must have iron in his/my blood!"
LOOSE LOOT (1953)
TRICKY DICKS (1953)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Curly poses as a fighter and says...
..."I stood like that, but not for long!"
The line itself isn't that funny...
...but Curly delivers it as though it is!
DIZZY DOCTORS (1937)
A DUCKING THEY DID GO (1939)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
A Stooge sniffs a jacket or pair of pants...
...and says something like "Must be imported - I smell the ocean."
It's the sort of gag that's tailor-made for the Stooges.
SAVED BY THE BELLE (1939)
SING A SONG OF SIX PANTS (1947)
UP IN DAISY'S PENTHOUSE (1953)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
When a Stooge is being hit by someone, he dares him to do it again.
Without a pause, that person hits the Stooge again...
...then the Stooge says something like "By golly, he did it!"
NO DOUGH BOYS (1944)
THREE LITTLE PIRATES (1946)
PARDON MY CLUTCH (1948)
FLYING SAUCER DAFFY (1958)
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
