The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 7: 1952-1954
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Shemp HowardBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 356 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-11-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 7: 1952-1954
Movie Review: The slide of the Stooges continues!
Summary: 3 Stars
This is volume#7 of the Three Stooges Collection featuring their shorts from the period of Jan/52 to Nov/54...and what a bumpy ride it was.Columbia continued to ramp up it's cheap tactics and it shows as this volume,even more so than the previous volumes,is replete with remakes using the same routines and/or old footage(wait until we get to volume#8!).
Just a few examples of many:Missed Fortune is a remake of Healthy,Wealthy and Dumb,Corny Casanovas was remade w/footage from Rusty Romeos,He Cooked His Goose is remade w/footage from Triple Crossed,Up in Daisy's Penthouse is a remake of Three Dumb Clucks,Bubble Trouble is a remake w/footage from All Gummed Up,Scotched in Scotland is a remake w/footage from Hot Scots,Pals and Gals uses footage from Punchy Cowpunchers,and on and on.This last short was not edited very well as a few minutes into it the bad guy gets killed only to be resurrected later in a short scene listening to Christine McIntyre singing!
In a totally bizarre entry called Cuckoo in a Choo Choo,we have a totally despicable and unlikable married Larry living in a train car on a siding(!!???)and after,and making trouble with, his best friends wives!Bad,bad and bad again!
This is the volume which contains the Stooges only two entries into the then popular 3-D craze,Spooks and Pardon My Backfire.Neither short is anything to write home about and a television screen doesn't do justice to the 3-D effect at all.They are shown in widescreen format but again they were meant to be seen on a theater screen.However both come in a non-3-D format which is a blessing.Speaking of widescreen,as this technique had also come into its' own in the early 50s,the next two shorts after Pardon my Backfire are full screen.After that the rest of the shorts in this volume and the next,are in widescreen format.And you will notice that the subsequent use in the widescreen format of the reused full screen footage sometimes results in the picture getting chopped off on the top and bottom!
By the the way this volume does INCLUDE two pairs of three 3-D glasses to view the appropriate shorts with.I'm use to the red and green lenses but these are purple and green.
Shemp is still on the ball filling in for Curly but as the shorts progress I personally noticed Shemps joie de vivre waning.His energy and vitality are noticeably ebbing away from him.Then I recalled Shemp suffered a mild stroke in late /52 which probably would account for it.And of course earlier that year in January we lost Jerry Curly Howard.Speaking of which one can often see Moe,Shemp or Larry going into a Curly moment in the blink of an eye;whether going in a circle on the floor,over-crying at a frustration or barking like a dog.And this never changed right to the end of the Stooges tenure on film.
Technically the films have been remastered,like the ones before,in Hi-Def and they look terrific.
In this the next to last volume,the Stooges continue their downward spiral in quality.Columbia cheapness along with Jules White's leaden direction,is more than evident at this stage as the gag writers seem to have been given instructions not to come up with original material so much as to watch all the old films and see what kind of story they could come up with them!So simple an idea a child could have done it....and would have probably done it better! So it's on to the final volume and the worst of the worst.
Summary of The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 7: 1952-1954
These 22 digitally remastered shorts from 1952-1954 were made during a tumultuous time for The Three Stooges. First, in 1952 Curly succumbed to the illness brought on by his stroke six years earlier; he was only forty-eight when he died. Shemp had really hit his stride by this time and he is at the top of his game in the new shorts from this period, but budget cutbacks at Columbia forced director Jules White to recycle some old footage, so although the work in this collection is first-rate, one can't help but wonder what could have been done if they'd had the opportunity to develop more new material. Fortunately, this era did leave us with such classics as the Stooges' first 3-D shorts, "Spooks!" (1953) and "Pardon My Backfire" (1953) ; "Shot In The Frontier" (1954) a parody of the classic film High Noon ; and Larry's hilarious spoof of Brando in "Cuckoo on A Choo Choo" (1952). These shorts are all presented as they were projected in the theaters; some in widescreen for the first time since their original release. The Three Stooges Collection Volume 7 shows how the genius of Moe, Larry, and Shemp rose above all obstacles and enabled them to be the best at their craft.What chills, what thrills! While the Three Stooges' best days were behind them, these 22 slaphappy shorts produced between 1952 and 1954 demonstrate that the enduring comedy team still had a lot of hair-pulling, eye-gouging, and head-banging life in them yet. You can be forgiven a certain amount of d?j? vu when watching some of the shorts. Studio budget cuts necessitated the use of recycled footage. "Booty and the Beast," for one, contains Curly's now-poignant cameo in "Hold That Lion." Still other shorts recycled plots from the team's Curly days ("A Missed Fortune" is a remake of "Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb"). While none of these shorts rank in the Stooges pantheon or are likely to change anyone's anti-Shemp bias (can't we all just get along?), they are knockabout fun for die-hard fans. The highlights of this set are "Spooks!" and "Pardon My Backfire," the team's pioneering forays into 3-D (two pairs of glasses are included). An engagement anniversary cake, water, fire, and hypodermic needle comin' at ya are crude but effective. Other shorts offer sublimely surreal silliness. In "Cuckoo on a Choo Choo," a T-shirted Larry storms around like a Marlon Brando wannabe, while a soused Shemp hallucinates a giant canary. The vaudeville tradition lives on in "Tricky Dicks," with god-awful gags (the old "wooden leg named Smith" bit) and bizarre dialogue ("How dare you look like someone I hate," a woman greets Larry). The political satire "Three Dark Horses" is a fine example of the classic Stooges formula, in which villains seek three patsies "who are too dumb to think and will do what we tell them. Now where do we find such guys?" Enter the Stooges. But others, like "He Cooked His Goose," break convention by presenting Moe, Larry, and Shemp as individuals rather than a team. While the Stooges themselves may be showing their ages, the slapstick, expertly timed and exquisitely choreographed, never gets old. --Donald Liebenson
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