Two More Stooge Shorts

Beer Barrel Polecats: 

(Short # 88 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

The title is the best aspect of the short. The setting is in the past as Prohibition is ongoing so the trio make beer in their own home. Curly looked and sounded old but this was fine, if not spectacular or even very good. They made 185 bottles of beer (they weren’t on the wall) when suddenly, a smash-cut to jail. An offscreen arrest and conviction was made because for some reason they sold beer to an undercover cop, and for some reason Curly brings a small keg into the prison…

That was when this became nonsensical and bad as stock footage is used from both So Long Mr. Chumps and In the Sweet Pie and Pie as both featured prison scenes. Originally, it was funny in context but used in this form, the old footage is nonsense and utter drivel. Now, people speculated that this was done last-minute due to Curly’s health. However, according to threestooges.net, what actually happened involved… Harold Lloyd!

He sued Universal because they used material from one of his old shorts for a feature film. He then threatened the same to Columbia; Columbia got skittish because Polecats was going to steal a scene from the Laurel & Hardy movie Pardon Me-something not seen by me but I know features the duo in prison. Worried that Hal Roach and MGM would sue them, at the last minute they took stock footage from older shorts, regardless of how well it fit with the new footage or the difference in Curly’s appearance.

Polecats (the title references the song Beer Barrel Polka) was also the last time that longtime supporting player Eddie Laughton-who performed w/ the Stooges during live shows on tour-was on screen via stock footage. He was around since almost the beginning & was a familiar face. Unfortunately, this was a miss.

A Bird in the Head: 

(Short # 89 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

“Curly’s brain is about to be implanted into a gorilla’s body” sounded promising-at this stage in Curly’s life, the result was only average. The blue-collar job they had this time was “wallpaper hangers.” Some old gags slightly modified happen; those were fine. They happen to be across the hallway from a mad scientist who wishes to find “a brain small enough” to implant into his gorilla. Of course, Curly’s the one with the small brain; this is determined by head size; that can be questioned but this is the least of this short’s problems.

It's that Head feels tired and not that inspired, despite some chuckles, a wacky moment where the gorilla then Curly drinks grain alcohol-which doesn’t really lead to much except for a pun-and the visual gag where Curly’s head is in the 1940’s version of an X-ray machine & the image is an animation of his head, blank except for a cuckoo clock.

Those moments aside, Curly seemed especially weak in this installment and aside from Vernon Delt OOT as the mad scientist and some antics w/ Igor the Gorilla, Bird was for the birds with me. 

However, there’s the surprising revelation that Burnett Guffey was the cinematographer, for the only time in a Stooge short. He’s not the most familiar name but he won TWO Oscars for cinematography, for From Here to Eternity and Bonnie & Clyde, along with sitting in that chair for other familiar movies-In a Lonely Place, All the Kings Men, Bird Man of Alcatraz, The Harder They Fall, etc.

A shame that A Bird in the Head was totally mediocre.