5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome. Brilliant., November 11, 2009
This review is from: The Three Stooges: Chronicles (DVD)
These contain some well known Stooge shorts that beg to be revisited time and again.
No Stooge-ologist should be without these episodes in his library.
Buy it.
....for Duty and Humanity!
And Shemp.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
For the MGM shorts only!, January 18, 2006
This review is from: The Three Stooges: Chronicles (DVD)
This DVD has the four public-domain shorts, and the the three surviving MGM Stooge shorts: "Plane Nuts","Nertsery Rhymes", "Beer And Pretzels". "The Big Idea" also survives, but it is a cameo appearance by the Stooges, and therefore not here. As far as I know, this is the only in-print DVD to contain all three in their entirety. Skip the four public-domain shorts, as I have never seen worse sound and picture in my life! The MGM shorts are in pretty good shape, but the others are so blurred, you'll think you just left the eye doctors office! I won't even mention the sound! If someone would restore the MGM shorts the way Fox did with the public-domain shorts, this DVD would be obsolete!
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Early stoogery mixed with the familiar, April 23, 2005
This review is from: The Three Stooges: Chronicles (DVD)
At first, this appears to be one of the many run-of the mill DVD collections of public domain stoogery that includes DISORDER IN THE COURT, MALICE IN THE PALACE (one of the few Shemp Howard episodes worth watching, this also contains Larry Fine's classic "Hot Dog when it comes to cooking I'm the Cat's Meow" scene), SING A SONG OF SIX PANTS, etc.
This set is distinguished by the inclusion of 3 ultra-rare Ted Healy & the 3 Stooges MGM flms directed by Jack Cummings from 1933-34. Pre-stoogery you could say, prior to the Columbia Curly Classics. "Nertsery Rhymes" is not so hot. Shot in crude early technicolor that is very faded today, it has Culy Larry and Moe keeping their father (Ted Healy) from going on a date. This is mixed, as most of the Healy-MGM films, with musical numbers discarded from other MGM epics. One such segment in this film, a musical segment about the old woman in a shoe, is the best thing in this whole film! Incidentally, "Nertsery Rhymes" was the first Stooge film with the famous sound effects.
"Plane Nuts," cut from a feature film which was intended to tell the story of the Stooges and Healy on an around-the world flight (that footage is now lost), bascially consists of Healy and the Stooges performing their actual vaudeville act that led to their career in films. Pretty amusing. Some pre-code off color and sexual gags will shock those who are familiar with the Columbia Curly Classics, but it makes this plotless picture more interesting. This is also the first time we hear Moe give his famous order "SPREAD OUT!"
"Beer and Pretzels" (1933) is the one that bears the closest resemblance to the Columbia Curly classics. Healy and the Stooges get a job in at a beer joint and make a mess of the place. Nuff said. Bonny, the female "fourth stooge," does some really terrible singing and dancing that provides additional unintended laughter. Curly also gives his first recorded "Nyuk" in this picture. I would say that this film and PLANE NUTS are the clearest inications of the Stoogery that was to come.
Some clips from another Healy/Stooge comedy "The Big Idea" are shown, but this film is not included in its entirety. This foursome's best work, MEET THE BARON (1933) needs to be on DVD. Nertsery Rhymes and Beer and Pretzels appear in slightly edited form in the Leonard Maltin documentary THE LOST STOOGES. In either case, these early films are a cut or two below the post-Healy Columbia Curly Classics and a notch or two above the Curlyless abominations with Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, and Curly Joe DeRita.
Good both for historical reasons and for a laugh after a hard day at work.
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