Customer Reviews

The Three Stooges: 75th Anniversary

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

A 3-disc reissue of 2002's 75th Anniversary 2-disc edition from Madacy and C3 Entertainment. My earlier review of that collection follows, with these additional notes/warnings to this updated edtion...

- Disc 1 is unchanged, with the Stooges' 4 public domain Columbia shorts transferred from mediocre 16mm, Screen Gems, dupe prints.

- Disc 2 contains the same material as the earlier edition.

- Disc 3 is a new addition, featuring 1970's TV pilot KOOK'S TOUR. Previously licensed to Anchor Bay Entertainment, rights owner C3 Entertainment has transferred home video distribution rights of this film to Madacy... the Super8mm source material is unfortunately/inherently bad for both, but this Madacy version is further degraded with digital pixelation problems.

- All bonus features on Disc 3 DUPLICATE the content of Disc 2!

On the plus side, this new version comes in a tin case with a sound-chip mechanism containing a grand total of 4 Stooge sound-bytes, from the 4 public domain Columbia shorts on Disc 1. Uh, yeah.

Review of the earlier edition, from 2003...

"With the title 'Three Stooges 75th Anniversary Collectors Edition,' and a very nice packaging presentation, you may have expectations of a wide selection of the comedy team's best work, or even some rarities. But...

It's a collection of public domain material, much available since the dawn of home video on many tape and disc offerings from numerous distributors. You'll find the four pd Columbia shorts, DISORDER IN THE COURT (1936), SING A SONG OF SIX PANTS (1947), BRIDELESS GROOM (1947) and MALICE IN THE PALACE (1949), plus a handful of NEW 3 STOOGES (1965) cartoons. Original material is limited to a 10 minute video of hellos & introductions from Stooge family members taped at a 1998 convention in CA, plus some brief hosting segments by a Curly-impersonator. Visual quality of the shorts and cartoons is lacking, dark and non-contrasty, sourced from 16mm and vhs dupes. The cartoons are 'split up,' i.e., the live-action segments are under one menu, & the animated segments under a separate menu; the return to each menu contains annoying freeze frames that cut off approx. the last second of film, rather than seamless segues. From the perspective of a low price, maybe you'll feel you got what you paid for. But if you're looking for a collection worthy of the label '75th Anniversary,' you will be very disappointed. Definitely not recommended!"

I bought this set thinking I was going to enjoy many hours of The Stooges. It only has a few shorts that are all over-played on TV, having seen them a hundred times already.

Charging a full retail price for a set like this, containing just a few shorts, is shameful. You're paying an extra 10 bucks for the tin box, little more. This set is a bargain-bin type item worth maybe four to five bucks at most.

It's my fault for being suckered out of my money. This purchase has taught me to read the content descriptions VERY CAREFULLY before buying future "special collections."

Now I'm off to buy the REAL complete chronological collections of The Three Stooges being released by Sony Pictures.

When I bought this set from wal-mart, I should have taken my own advice:"Let the buyer beware."

Given the number of shorts the 3 stooges made, the content of this set is lame. How they get away with calling this "75th anniversary collection" I'll never know. I enjoyed watching what is on this set-but there's not a whole lot to brag about. "Kooks ture" is about the best thing here-but still it's not worth it.

Don't buy this set! Now you've been warned.

Curly, perhaps the most popular and most imatated stooge is on the cover, on the back and in all the pictures that come with this slick looking boxed set.
But he is in only one of the three short films. (Also, there are hardly any short films that come with this. The other filler is cartoons, a movie without Curly and interviews and other junk.)
This is not a good collection for fans of Curly. It is however good at misleading the 3 Stooges fan into thinking that he or she has found a gold mine of 3 Stooges material at a great price. Sadly, that is not to be.
Instead of wasting your time and money on this blatent rip-off, you would be better off at building your 3 Stooges library on other collections that don't contain the words "75th Anniversary Collection."

This collection amounts to three dollar-store discs jammed into a pretty package. For those who prefer substance over style, look elsewhere for this material, which is given a pretty shoddy presentation overall.
Disc 3 (which was unplayable on the two DVD players I tried it on) repeats the entire contents of Disc 2, and adds the TV pilots Kook's Tour and Jerks Of All Trades -- making Disc 2 a pointless redundancy. Avoid it at all costs.

If you're looking for a true "collection" of some funny Stooge moments, it's best to buy the Sony pictures chronological series. This "collectors' edition" contains the same old shorts and other material you've probably seen countless times.

That's not to say the four included shorts aren't funny (in fact, "Brideless Groom," with Shemp as the lead character, and Malice in the Palace, also with Shemp, are both probably in my top five favorites), it's just that this set leads one into thinking they're getting some real gems here, and not just the old public domain stuff we've seen for years, and that we could get cheaper at any dollar store.

One version of this "collectors' edition" from Madacy is packaged in a fancy-looking tin lunch box, with a whoopie cushion inside, like that's going to fool anyone into thinking you're not just getting Brideless Groom, Sing a Song of Six Pants, Malice in the Palace, and Disorder in the Court again, along with the same old unfunny animated cartoons from the 60s, and live-action segments with the almost aggressively unfunny Curly Joe DeRita. Those live action segments are only worth it to see Larry and Moe, and also Emil Sitka from time to time, but it's best to just tune out Curly Joe. Talk about sucking the air out of a room.

In summary, four public domain shorts and a small batch of unwatchable animated cartoons and some obvious filler do not justify this release's claim to being a collectors' set, nor does the actual product you're getting merit its fancy packaging. To claim that this is a "75th anniversary collection" is an absolute insult to the stooges.

Also, the Curly impersonator who intros some of the fluff material needs to shut up already.

My dad bought this item online without reading any comments on it at all, he is a big Stooges fan and thought that he was in for a real treat. He popped this in on Christmas day ready to savor his favorite trio.

Was he in for a surprise.

The first DVD had only 4 shorts on it and only one of these shorts had Curly, the rest had Shemp. Since Curly is my dad's favorite he was understandably outraged. This was 75th Anniversary collection, you think it would actually have some new content and more than a handful of shorts. Instead the only good thing about this collection was the biographies of the Stooges that was in a little booklet with the DVD. Of course since most of that information could be found online my family wasn't impressed.

While my dad grumbled about how worthless this collection was, I went online to read the reviews on it...and what do you know? Turns out he could have saved himself a lot of pain if he had done a little research ahead of time.

The good news is that during my reasearch I found the huge collection of The Three Stooges that Sony released and so my Dad wil be getting a nice surprise for his birthday. But this collection will be going in the back of the closet until we can get rid of it at a garage sale

I bought this as a Christmas Gift for my husband. He liked the extras, but said that the shorts are of lower production quality than the ones produced by Columbia pictures. He says that everyone has seen these clips because they are less expensive to purchase and thus show. It turned out he like the other collection I bought him better: The Three Stooges Collection: Volume One 1934-1936.

Half of these feature Shemp instead of Curly, which nobody wants. The second disc is only cartoons, which nobody wants. So really you're only getting a couple decent episodes for your money.

I'm gonna adress the pros/cons of this three stooges box set.

PROS:
NICE PACKAGING
PLAYABLE SOUND BYTES
SOME FILMS ON THESE DISCS I'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE
BIOGRAPHY PAMPHLET
PHOTOS
VIDEO BIOGRAPHY
INTERVIEWS WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF STOOGES
JERKS OF ALL TRADES

CONS:
WHENEVER I OPEN THIS SET, SOMETIMES THE DISCS HAVE FALLEN OUT
ONLY SHORTS ON THERE ARE IN PUBLIC DOMAIN AND CAN BE FOUND IN BETTER QUALITY ELSEWHERE
CONTENT ON DISC 2 ARE SAME AS BONUS FEATURES ON DISC THREE
THE LIVE ACTION CLIPS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE WITH CARTOONS
ON THE LISTING OF WHAT'S ON EACH DISC, THEY MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THERE IS MORE THAN WHAT IS OFFERED
CARTOONS/LIVE ACTION CLIPS & KOOK'S TOUR ARE NOT BAD, BUT NOT THE BEST FILMS OF THE STOOGES

SO, IN CONCLUSION: THE PACKAGING IS NICE, BUT THE QUALITY OF WHAT'S ON THE DISCS ARE LESS THAN GOOD. IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR MORE, BETTER LOOKING SHORTS, SPEND YOUR MONEY ON THE THREE STOOGES COLLECTION OF 8 DVD VOLUMES.The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 1: 1934-1936
The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 2: 1937-1939
The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 3: 1940-1942The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 4: 1943-1945The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 5: 1946-1948The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 6: 1949-1951The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 7: 1952-1954
The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 8: 1955-1959