Product Description

The three films in this entry in the Columbia series of Three Stooges shorts are all concerned with World War II anti-Axis plotlines. In "The Yoke's on Me" (1944, short number 79), the boys are less than honorably discharged from the army and want to do their bit by becoming farmers. Cheated into purchasing a tumbledown farm on which the only livestock are a stray duckling and an ostrich, they find themselves chasing three stereotyped Japanese soldiers separated from their submarine with predictable results. It is difficult to overlook the cartoonish treatment of the Japanese, but one must consider the circumstances at the time of filming. "No Dough Boys" (1944, #82) begins with the Stooges themselves in Japanese military costume posing for a propaganda picture and being chased by a patriotic waiter, whose store just happens to abut that of a Nazi spy (Vernon Dent). The two key gags in this short include Curly's ability to smoke his fist (an idea lifted from the Laurel & Hardy "Blockheads") and the boys attempting an acrobat routine to prove their identities as Japanese. Here the real Japanese are simply menacing rather than clownish. "Higher Than a Kite" (1943, number 72) is one of the most plotless in the series. Half the film is taken up with the Stooges somewhere in Great Britain trying to find a squeak in a car. ("What does a squeak look like?" asks Curly in a more reasonable moment.) The close-ups of Moe's head caught in a pipe as the other two try to extricate him are painful rather than funny. Hiding from their boss, they find themselves in a bomb that is dropped into a house (in France?) filled with German soldiers. Moe and Curly pose as German officers while Larry does a Carmen Miranda (or Moronica, in this case) drag routine. It is very uneven and stretches too far for laughs, even for this series.