Customer Reviews

The Three Stooges - Stooged & Confoosed (Colorized / Black & White)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

'The Three Stooges- Stooged and Confused', is without a doubt the best example of colorization I've seen, and couldn't have looked better had it been filmed in color to begin with! I can't understand those who criticise these discs, after all, you also get the original black & white prints, so how can you go wrong? O.K. as with all such discs, some shorts may be better than others, but that's just a matter of which ones are your favorites, but as far as the color goes, it's very realistic, and it's a great way to see the 'Stooges' as close as possible to how they would have been seen if color was the norm back in those days. I personally hope they do it to all of them.
Girvan Paterson, Melbourne, Australia.

Regardless of the questionable quality as well as quantity of what's on here, I really wanted to praise this DVD for it's inclusion of the brilliantly done short called "You Nazty Spy" which does a spine-splittingly hilarious job of spoofing Nazi Germany during the end of the 1930s and early 1940s. In fact, it was the first of any kind of film that actually spoofed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Here Moe Howard plays a fascist bumbling dictator named Moe Hailstone who is installed after the country of Moronica's kind is deposed and sent into exile. Moe's imitation of Hitler's speeches is scary at times but the way he barks in his version of German is so funny you may end up shedding tears from laughing so hard.

While nowhere near "You Nazty Spy", the other three shorts included are also entertaining but "An ache in Every Stake" is my second favorite. Moe Larry and Curly star as icemen who deliver ice to customers during a severe heatwave but during that time destroy two birthday cakes that were meant for a police chief's birthday party. As they escaped from losing their icebox which actually crashes into the chief at the bottom of the stairs, the boys wind up as cooks after the original chef quits. The chef actually was assigned to make the birthday for the police chief who when he meets the new cooks is unaware that it's the same guys who ruined two of his previous birthday cakes.

While I'll give credit for the colorizing job on the DVD, I'll always prefer the black & white version because it always feels more true to the spirit of the Three Stooges. There are certianly better buys out there than this one but the inclusion of "You Nazty Spy" and "Ache In Every Stake" make this DVD a five star for me.

That's what a friend's 12-year-old son told me when I gave him a video compilation of stuff I loved when I was his age. That is why all you huffalumps should quit complaining about the amazing colorization technology used here, unless you want the Stooges to become a relic. It's obvious to me that trying to appeal to a new, young audience is the main reason for offering both versions on one disc. To a 12-year-old who has never seen it in black & white, they would never know the difference, but being in color it would at least hold their interest. Get over it.

The colour in these shorts is brilliant - it looks authentic for the era and highlights so much more detail in the scenes. One can now empathise with the action rather than view it simply as a relic of the dim past. The Stooges come alive as flesh and blood people, young and vital again! Let's hope the studio produces many more of these remastered and coloured shorts.

Screw the nitpickers! So what if there's only four episodes, it cost bucks to do colorization as good as this. And so far this is the best I've seen, and I have seen a lot. If you are into the Stooges you are gonna love the colorization and it has the option to be seen in B/W. I love it so much, I'm gonna purchase all the colorized dvd's.

The real problem with these new Stooges releases is that Columbia has used the excuse of the colorization to present only four shorts, some of which have been released on other DVDs previously. Furthermore these retail for 24.99 while most others containing more shorts retail for 19.99 so we are asked to pay more for less. I bought both of them used for under $10 each and suggest you look for them used if you must have them. I have already seen many used copies in stores, probably because there are many disappointed buyers. Advantages of buying used: you'll pay less and Columbia won't make any money off the sale. The sad fact is that if these sell well enough this is all we can expect in the future.

As for the colorization: it may be the best I've seen, which is still pretty awful. Very unrealistic hues, jarring color combinations, unpleasant pastels. If you know anything about film you'll know that if the filmmakers had made these in color they would not have looked anything like this. What is the point of researching what the actual color of a prop was on Ebay (see the self-congratulatory featurette)? The props and costumes were chosen for how they would photograph in black and white. They would have done better to just try and make everything look as natural as possible.

I can't help thinking the choice of the stooges for launching this new colorization line is an odd one. If there is any B&W material that seems almost immune to the objections of people who won't watch black and white it's the stooges. My five-year-old daughter loves the stooges in black and white and so do many people who refuse to watch B&W movies.

In summary because of the colorization we get less entertainment.

But if you find color more important than laughs, this disc is for you.

It is a great idea to be able to toggle from black and white to color, but it would be much more enjoyable to watch if there wasn't the camera icon on the upper center screen throughout the whole DVD. I have two DVD players and both of them show this annoying icon and there is no way to get rid of it. Great idea for a Three Stooges DVD but not enjoyable to watch at all with that spot on the screen. I have done a little research on the net and found out that it does this on several models of DVD players.

Great to see the Three Stooges in colour,any fan should get this dvd, hope there will be more colour stooges. GET IT Now

Leaving aside the issue of colorisation for a moment, it is great to see the classics 'You Nazty Spy!' and 'An Ache in Every Stake' finally on DVD. It's also great to see the second-tier classic 'No Census, No Feeling' also represented here. However, the joy over that is quickly put into perspective by the fact that there are only 4 shorts on this disc (with one of them a repeat) and that there are colorised versions also available. Although at least the B&W originals are also available (and are in beautifully restored prints), together with a "Play All" button, a feature that was nonexistent on all but a handful of the previous discs in this series. The shorts themselves:

'Violent Is the Word for Curly' (1938) is a classic, though I do understand why some people feel it's a bit overrated. It does sort of have the feel of being more like a series of loosely connected sketches than one smoothly flowing whole. However, all of the individual scenes themselves are great, and it's generally felt that this was the best of the shorts the great Charley Chase directed for the boys. Although as great as this short is, it makes no sense for it to have been selected for inclusion here, seeing as it was already on 'All the World's a Stooge.'

'No Census, No Feeling' (1940) might not perhaps be one of their topmost classics, but it is very strong and funny regardless, perhaps one of their second-tier classics. There's not a dull or wasted scene or moment, with everything flowing so perfectly from start to finish. It's also a joy to see (and hear!) the wonderful oft-forgotten silent comedian Max Davidson in a bit role, as the shopkeeper. However, there are some dated jokes and references in this one; I don't think that most people under a certain age, unless they're already very into the Golden Age of Hollywood and classic films, with more than just a casual passing interest, will know who Will Hays was (the head of the Production Code and an infamous censor), and there's also a joke about the changing date of Thanksgiving (in 1939 its observance was set for Thursdays).

'You Nazty Spy!' (1940) is an absolute bona-fide classic, without a doubt one of the best they ever did. Even though 'The Great Dictator' was already in production when this was made, it was released before Chaplin's masterpiece, a fact that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of. This was the first Hollywood film to spoof and ridicule the Nazis, and seeing as the three stars of the short, in addition to the director, were all Jewish, this was personal. It took a lot of guts to make such a film when America was still in the grip of isolationism and didn't really fully look upon Hitler as a full-out enemy or threat just yet. It's a brilliant satire and also absolutely hilarious, a dead-on spoof of not just the Nazis but all fascists and dictators in general. I also love how much Yiddish was used during this film (most people probably thought it was just gibberish or pretend German, not some rather funny and witty wordplay in a real language).

'An Ache in Every Stake' (1941) is also routinely held up as one of their most classic. This one also flows perfectly from start to finish, not a dull or wasted moment, with too many great scenes and moments to count (such as the shaving of the ice, the attempted delivery of the ice up that massive flight of stairs, and Vernon Dent's misadventures with the birthday cake). It seems like a lot of fans have this one in their personal Top 10 lists. However, it is a little lame how some of the "ice blocks" in the wagon are so obviously solid boxes (which have somehow magickally transformed themselves into actual ice by the time they reach the top of the stairs). That's just as lazy as the numerous times when the faces of stunt doubles were clearly exposed!

Overall, the material is great, but the execution isn't. It makes no sense for one of the shorts to be a repeat (if they were going to repeat anything, it should have been the full-length 'Three Little Beers'), and for there to be only 4 shorts. That's asking the consumer to pay much more for much less. And the colorisation may look more realistic than the stuff that was done in the Eighties, but that's still not saying much. The self-congratulatory featurette misses the point. Doing all of the research in the world into what colors might have been used still doesn't change the fact that seeing a B&W classic with Chroma Color dubbed in looks fake and artificial, and even wrong. There are just some people you can only ever imagine in B&W, who exist in B&W for all time, and to just imagine them in color seems wrong. These colorised discs sold predictably poorly not because people weren't interested in the material, but because they knew what a rip-off it was, and didn't want colorisation. (I had no problems with any toggle icon; it seems as though that's an issue with specific DVD players or the control menu, not something that automatically appears on every screen and won't go away.) Overall, this is great material that deserved so much better. It's not right that the two classics on this disc should FINALLY make their DVD debut, only to be rammed onto a misfire like this.

Their style of humor was copied so much by Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons that colorizing the Stooges just seems right. There's nothing cinematically dramatic about these films. They're just going for laughs and seeing the colors that they were actually working with as they made these comedies is great. Except for skin tones which don't look quite natural, the colors are very realistic. So who cares if the've been in b&w for 70 years. The world is in color and now so are the Howard Bros. and Fine.