Edward Bernds
Moe (Moe Howard), Larry (Larry Fine) and Shemp (Shemp Howard) are moving men / cleaners who've been hired to straighten up private detective Sam Shovel's office. After they finish, naturally making a mess with paint and a feather duster in the process, a terrified “beautiful dame” barges into the office claiming to be in terrible danger. She – Louise (Christine McIntyre) – informs them that someone's been following her and that her life is in danger. While the stooges are out examining the hallway, a man in a black coat, hat and gloves sneaks into the office and snatches her up. She's nice enough to leave behind some of her jewelry as payment, as well as a note telling them to come rescue her at 275 Mortuary Road.
Meanwhile, Professor Potter (Philip Van Zandt) and his assistant Ralph (Stanley Price) are busy at work trying to create an army of indestructible robot men. Only problem is, they've thus far been unable to keep the robots from walking into things and destroying themselves. You know, because they can't actually see anything. A light bulb goes off. What if they could somehow transplant a human head onto the robot? The Professor already has a handy machine (a table with a guillotine blade activated by the push of a button) for a clean decapitation. Now they just need a head donor. The doorbell rings...
Moe, Larry and Shemp arrive at the address on the note, which also happens to be the mad doctor's hideout. Though he likes Larry's prominent forehead, seeing how Moe is the "brains of the operation" Ralph picks him to go see Potter. The Professor then attempts to decapitate him with the machine. When that fails, he tries to stab him with a sword. Larry gets a Venus flytrap stuck on his face while Shemp locates a tied-up-and-gagged Louise. After freeing her, someone attempts to stab him and much of the rest of this is one long chase scene as the Stooges try to avoid the doctor and his assistant (who are revealed to actually be mental home escapees) as they run around with knives and cleavers attempting to cut off their heads. Fun for the entire family!
This has the expected Stooges-style slapstick involving constantly hitting each other over the head with things, running into walls, etc. accompanied by cartoon sound effects, along with lots of secret passageways and Grade A hamming from the bad guys, whose obsession with killing the Stooges actually borders on creepy! It's pretty funny.
While the comedy team Abbott and Costello have a genre reputation for their series of horror-comedies, the Stooges do not despite starring in even more. The difference? A&C made features with top stars like Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. and got to use the Universal stable of classic monsters while T3S only starred together in shorts featuring lesser known actors. Their others include We Want Our Mummy (1939), Spook Louder (1943), If a Body Meets a Body (1945), The Ghost Talks (1949), Who Done It? (1949; also directed by Bernds), Spooks! (1953), SCOTCHED IN SCOTLAND (1954), which stole most of its footage from Bernds' 1948 short The Hot Scot, and Creeps (1956).
The Stooges shorts are all available on DVD collections from Columbia Pictures. Dopey Dicks is included on Volume 6, which includes 24 shorts made from 1949 to 1951.
★★★
14 comments:
ha! volume six was the first set i got, 'cause i wanted to see A SNITCH IN TIME (1950) again for the furniture shop bit. i ought to get back to these!
I'm going to at least watch the four from the 1950s that have horror elements. If you run across any other genre ones let me know! I had to go by IMDb classifications so I suspect I may be missing some.
nothing in the first two years. i'll see how long it takes to get bored with them.
you may want to check out IDLE ROOMERS (freak show wolf-man loose in a hotel) & DIZZY DETECTIVES (antique store at night; some "scaredy-cat" routines).
Thanks!
last of these for now: THREE PESTS IN A MESS (chased around a pet cemetery by guys wearing halloween costumes) & A BIRD IN THE HEAD (similar to DOPEY DICKS, with a gorilla instead of a robot).
Thanks again! I've bookmarked the ones you've mentioned so I don't forget to check them out though I'll only review the 1950s ones on here.
after almost 100 of these, their best film is still MEN IN WHITE (1934), probably because it's more marx bros. than stooges. i've got 1937-'39 lined up, then i'll be doing the post-curly shorts.
^
MEN IN BLACK, jeezus!
pre-1950 again, but thought you may appreciate another columbia short -- GET ALONG, LITTLE ZOMBIE (1946), starring hugh herbert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsf-X_4B0WA
That one was pretty fun. I wonder if they ever made a full length movie going at about the same pace the ENTIRE time? That would be overwhelming!
first and IMO best of the four herbert & dickerson scare comedies. it also has a "real" monster, where (as in their later TALL DARK AND GRUESOME) the closest you usually got was somebody running around in a gorilla suit. the lone possibility for your index is ONE SHIVERY NIGHT (1950), set in a not-haunted old mansion.
I'll definitely check that one out as my 1950 index is pretty barren anyway!
Need to ask something unrelated. Another regular visitor here has just told me that for the past week the sidebar has disappeared from the blog and he's tried using different browsers and the result has been the same. Have you been having similar problems? I just tried Edge, Chrome, my iPhone and tablet and it all looks fine on my end.
i've noticed that if you visit the site securely -- using https -- the sidebar always appears 30 seconds later than the rest of each page. unsecured, everything comes up instantly. this is on chrome.
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