Calling All Curs

Yet another 1939 Stooge short that I reviewed: 

(Short # 41 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

Calling All Curs is another short I saw often as a kid. Hopefully nostalgia isn’t clouding my judgment; the Stooges in an animal hospital-but it’s mainly dogs and a few cats-is still quite humorous. A prized poodle named Garcon is kidnapped (or rather, dognapped) by a pair of heels cosplaying as newspaper reporters.

The routines in the hospital are quite humorous, whether they revolve around surgical tools or dinner, where all the dogs are at the dinner table. After a failed attempt to have a mutt disguised as Garcon for Mrs. Bedford, they find the dognappers. There are routines, new, old, and modified. For me it was nice to see pooches as part of their mayhem. The short moved at a fast pace so there was nary a dull moment…

From seeing a pooch use its tail like a finger to motion them forward to Curly sitting on a thorn and Larry having some hair accidentally torn from his scalp… good times. If you want to be insufferable like those Cinema Sins bellends, you could nitpick some aspects of the Stooge shorts like the moments where you can see the wires in effect shots or obvious dummies being used when they fall from high places. However, I’d like to shout out those who worked on these behind the scenes as cinematographers, set designers, editors, etc.

By the late 50’s there were budget constraints and other problems which hampered these productions but you can never proclaim that these projects were amateur or inept productions. Those individuals played unheralded roles in my enjoyment of the Stooges at Columbia.