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The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 1: 1934-1936

EE.UU.| Comedia| 1934-1936|340 minutos
Título original: The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 1: 1934-1936
Dirección: Varios
Intérpretes: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard
Idioma: Inglés Subtítulos: No
Formato: DVD-R [2 discos]

Primera entrega de la antología de la filmografía completa de Los Tres Chiflados, en versiones remasterizadas y ordenadas cronológicamente.

Esta entrega cubre los años 1934 a 1936 con los siguientes 19 cortos:

 

Woman Haters (1934)
The team's first Columbia short is an anomoly directed by Archie Gottler and written by his son Jerome, neither of whom did any other shorts with the Stooges. It's closer in content and spirit to their earlier shorts with Ted Healy. Told entirely in verse, this "musical novelty" has the team joining a women's anonymous fraternal organization, only Larry is set to get married and go off on his honeymoon that very night. Though more silly than funny, it's a strangely endearing little film, due in no small part to the perky charm of top-billed Marjorie White, a fireball of Betty Boop/Thelma Todd-like energy who died too soon, in an automobile accident shortly after this was made. One of the Stooges' best foils, silent comedy veteran Bud Jamison, makes his series debut; indeed it's Jamison, not Moe, who delivers the series' first "eye-poke." The real surprise for some will be the uncredited appearance of a rail-thin Walter Brennan as a train conductor, just two years away from his first Oscar-winning performance in Come and Get It. (****)

Punch Drunks (1934)
Boxing promoter Moe finds a heavyweight champ in cafe waiter Curly, who goes bananas anytime he hears Larry play "Pop Goes the Weasel" on the violin. This is the only short in which the Stooges are credited as writers but this is overstated: they sat in on the development of most of their shorts, contributing gags and bits of business, and it's seems likely that notoriously stingy studio head Harry Cohn balked at paying the team twice. In any case this is one of the team's all-time best comedies. Among the highlights, Larry's mad chase through the streets of Hollywood after his fiddle gets busted, and Arthur Housman (who spent the vast majority of his career playing comic drunks) as a frustrated ringside timekeeper. (*****)

Men in Black (1934)
The only Three Stooges short ever nominated for an Academy Award (it lost to La Cucaracha, remembered today only for its early 3-strip Technicolor photography) has the team running amuck in the "Los Arms Hospital." It's basically another transitional work, a throwback to a kind of anarchic style of comedy that had been popular in the late-1920s and early-'30s (best personified by the Marx Bros.), with wild sight gags and weird, surreal moments. Jeanie Roberts' Gracie Allen-esque hiccuping nurse is pretty hard to take, but some of the material is priceless, particularly Larry's demented behavior throughout. Around this time, Hal Roach and other producers were getting out of the short subjects business, and many veterans from the "Lot of Fun" turn up in these shorts, in this case Laurel & Hardy favorite Billy Gilbert as an insane patient. (****)

Three Little Pigskins (1934)
Gangster/gamblers (including tough guy Walter Long, another Laurel & Hardy favorite) recruit Moe, Larry, and Curly as ringers for their private football game, a hilarious companion to the finale of the Marx Bros. similar Horse Feathers. This short is remembered for Lucille Ball's supporting role as a gangster's moll; she was just 23 at the time and her hair is platinum blonde. (****)

Horses' Collars (1935) [new to DVD]
Weird but very funny short starts out as a contemporary private eye spoof, then abruptly shifts gears and becomes a Western parody! A la Punch Drunks, Curly goes ape-shit every time he sees a mouse, placated only when Moe and Larry stuff his face with cheese. ("Moe, Larry, the cheese! Moe, Larry, the cheese!") Perennial comic cop and hotel dick Fred Kelsey appears unbilled as Detective Hyden Zeke, in a surreal bit that finds Curly with creepy eyes painted on his eyelids. (**** 1/2)

Restless Knights (1935)
Moe, Larry, and Curly are, respectively, the Count of Fife, the Duke of Durham, and the Baron of Graymatter in this medieval spoof, which features Walter Brennan as the trio's ancient father. Another early short made by hands not normally associated with the team, including silent director Charles Lamont, who later would helm a number of Abbott & Costello's lesser features. (****)

Pop Goes the Easel (1935)
The Stooges are mistaken for art students in this short, memorable for its clay-throwing finale; it's also the first Columbia short to find the team as low-brow destructors of high-brow pretentiousness. One of the lesser shorts in this collection, though still quite funny. Moe and Larry's daughters appear unbilled as the girls playing hopscotch. (*** 1/2)

Uncivil Warriors (1935) [new to DVD]
The Stooges go undercover as Union spies masquerading as Confederate officers in this hilarious Civil War comedy, one of their finest. Full of laughs and Curly's wonderfully manic energy, and it includes a routine the team would frequently revive: the old pastries filled with feathers gag (literally!). Highlight: Curly's attempt to tell a joke: "I got a better one for the Colonel. There were three men in three beds, they only had two blankets. How'd they keep warm? They turned on the heat! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!" (*****)

Pardon My Scotch (1935) [new to DVD]
Watch Moe break his ribs! Heralding the end of Prohibition, this short finds the Stooges whipping up their own special brand of "scotch," and later masquerading as Scottish whiskey-makers at an upscale party. The real fun, however, is the opening set piece, with the Stooges as inept carpenters. In one scene, Moe is standing on a table Curly saws in half, sending Moe crashing to the floor. The gag went wrong and Moe broke several ribs and suffered a concussion, but you'd never know it. In a remarkable bit of the-show-must-go-on dedication, Moe gets up, says his line, and manages to slap Curly before the take ends. In a bit of Yiddish humor, soon to vanish from the shorts, Larry toasts a whiskey distributor with Ver derharget! ("Drop dead!") (****)

Hoi Polloi (1935)
It's Pygmalion, Stooge-style, as a professor tries to fashion three garbage men (guess who?) into "gentlemen." Variations of this theme turned up again and again in the team's comedies; this short was remade at least twice (as Half-Wits Holiday, Curly's last, and as Pies and Guys with Joe Besser), while a big chunk of footage (a funny dancing lesson sequence) turned up in another Curly classic, In the Sweet Pie and Pie. (****)

Three Little Beers (1935)
Another of the team's all-time best, this great short sets brewery delivery men Moe, Larry, and Curly loose on a golf course where they create all manner of havoc. Moe fills the fairway with divots, Curly chops down a tree, and Larry, trying to pull a pesky root, ruins a green. The swell finish has them running from from beer barrels when they roll off their truck, parked on a steep hill. (The neighborhood where this was filmed is still much the same, just north of Echo Park, on the other side of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.) (*****)

Ants in the Pantry (1936) [new to DVD]
This was the first of seven Stooge shorts directed by "Preston Black," actually Jack White, producer-director Jules White's brother, and for my money the Stooges' best director. All of his shorts with the team are distinctive and have strong comic pacing, and the humor is a bit wilder and anarchic. This one starts off with a great sight gag: Curly grabs a ladder leaning against a telephone pole and, perfectly timed, moments later a utility worker crashes to the ground. The trio play pest exterminators who, for want of business, also provide the pests. The humor here is atypical but uproariously funny nonetheless because the Stooges are so gleefully amoral: at an upscale house they unleash a veritable plague of rats, moths, and ants, literally tossing vermin on passersby. (**** 1/2)

Movie Maniacs (1936) [new to DVD]
The Stooges may "know nuthin' about makin' movies," but as Moe says, "There's a couple of thousand people in pictures now who know nothin' about it. Three more won't make any difference." Alas, this short doesn't live up to its potential, though film buffs will enjoy the references to Mutiny on the Bounty and the scene where Curly tries to emulate John Barrymore. Charlie Chaplin's ex-wife Mildred Harris plays the put upon leading lady. (***)

Half Shot Shooters (1936) [new to DVD]
Duped into reenlisting into the army, the Stooges become the charge of their sadistic sergeant (the great Stanley Blystone) from their doughboy days. ("Where you born in this country?" asks the enlistment officer. "No," Larry replies, "Milwaukee.") The highlight is one of the team's all-time funniest set pieces, where they blithely shoot off a big cannon destroying everything in sight. Curly highlight: an impromptu ditty about the big gun, "Oh the first shell went in there; it round and round, wo-o-ah...and it goes out there!" (**** 1/2)

Disorder in the Court (1936)
Another great "Preston Black" two-reeler, with the Stooges as star witnesses in murder trial. Full of hilarious dialogue and wild sight gags, while Larry's in fine form in one of the team's most surreally funny moments: Larry grabs a wad of Curly's chewing gum that's landed on Moe's nose, stomps on it and for no apparent reason lets out a strange victory cry. "You're in a court, not in the woods, Tarzan!" admonishes Moe. Look for the Howard's parents, who appear unbilled as members of the court audience. This is one of a handful of shorts that fell into public domain, but the presentation here is outstanding. (*****)

A Pain in the Pullman (1936) [new to DVD]
Somewhat unusual short has the Stooges more or less playing themselves, The Three Stooges, vaudevillians, whose act revolves around a trained monkey, ironically (in retrospect) named Joe. This is the one set aboard a train in which demanding, hammy actor James C. Morton (a wonderful, bald character comedian always good for a toupee gag) constantly demands service from "John-son!" (Bud Jamison), who keeps hitting his head on the ceiling of his berth. Features one of the series' best gags, the kind of vaguely politically incorrect joke that would never be done today: a very Jewish-looking booking agent picks up the phone, and in a thick Yiddish accent answers, "Goldstien, Goldberg, Goldblatt & O'Brien...O'Brien speaking!" (**** 1/2)

False Alarms (1936)
The Three Stooges are firemen in this short but, being stooges, are more like the firemen in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Lots of great footage of Hollywood near Columbia's studio at Sunset and Gower. There's a funny, extended scene where the trio take their girlfriends for a joy ride in the firechief's (Stanley Blystone again) new car, with the expected disastrous results. (****)

 

Whoops, I'm an Indian! (1936)
The Stooges play crooked gamblers in a frontier town, on the run after their scam is discovered. What follows are some great wilderness gags, including a side-splitting running gag with an impatient, never-satisfied Moe using increasingly bigger fish he catches as bait: "Go fetch your old man!" Moe growls. Bud Jamison is terrific as a French-Canadian trapper duped into "marrying" Indian squaw Curly. (*** 1/2)

Slippery Silks (1936) [new to DVD]
The stooges play woodworkers who inherit their uncle's classy dress shop, but as Larry only knows how to design furniture, their new line of dresses all look like chests of drawers! (Larry's designs are revealed after a straight-faced fashion show, an odd sequence that really seems designed to impress wealthy, sophisticated women, hardly the Stooges' core audience.) Though not quite a pie fight, the cream puff-throwing finale is a highlight, clips from which Moe proudly ran as an example of the team's comedy on an episode of The Mike Douglas Show in the 1970s. This final short features a different take of their closing theme. (*** 1/2)

Fuente: DVD Talk