Dizzy Pilots

(Short # 74 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

In this super-early Friday morning posting of a review, this is a short I’d deem a classic… except for the usage of footage from a previous short for the conclusion. The boys (The Wrong Brothers!) live in a fictitious country and receive a letter that if their new idea for an airplane fails, they would be required to join the Army. Of course the plane looks standard to the aircraft of the era; perhaps that country’s aviation is behind everyone else. 

The usual bungling occurs in the airplane hangar, culminating in several minutes spent with Moe landing in a literal bathtub full of self-sealing rubber and the chaos resulting from the failed attempt to remove the rubber after filling up the suit with hydrogen.

All of that was hysterical, and the laughs continued once they got the bird up in the air, and it goes haywire. For some reason, the final few minutes are taken from the 1940 short Boobs in Arms, but without the context that they had a previous beef with the drill sergeant Hugh Dare. Those moments are still funny but it was even better in Boobs. Why this was done is unknown; if they had new footage that led to a proper climax, I would rate Dizzy Pilots even higher. Alas, this still flew high…