Two More Stooge Shorts

The Ghost Talks: 

(Short # 113 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

Peeping Tom and Lady Godiva are part of this short! Those that only know the phrase Peeping Tom from the movie and the concept of it referring to a voyeur, its origins are tied to the Lady Godiva legend. He allegedly was blinded and/or killed for spying on her. How it was portrayed in this short was of course greatly sanitized. She was a real lady but the tale that she rode through a town naked only covered by her long hair may be apocryphal. 

They are present as this is a rare case where supernatural occurrences happen instead of people cosplaying as ghosts or other spooky spirits. The blue-collar the Stooges have this go-around: movers who are tasked with transporting furniture from a spooky old castle. What a fright they receive then when a suit of armor starts talking to them! It’s inhabited by the spirit of Peeping Tom, who wishes to see Lady Godiva again. She appears at the end, but not in the buff-she has on a one-piece swimsuit.

The Ghost Talks is odd in general—that said, I still laughed between the slapstick, the puns, and the supernatural elements. Sentient skeletons appear, including two that play chess and another that walks about; one of them identifies himself as “Red Skeleton,” an obvious yet funny pun. There’s also milk and a frog-like I said, odd. Much to its credit, that helped made this a pretty good time.

Who Done It?

(Short # 114 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

This was one of the best Stooge shorts no matter who comprised the trio. I must have seen this sometime before in my life—however, it must have been literally decades ago. Well, thankfully that mistake has now been fixed. An explanation will be provided for my rare granting of such a high rating.

The short’s pace is QUICK; the premise is established right away then executed. Emil Sitka is Mr. Goodrich, a rich dude fearing that The Phantom Gang will kidnap him next. Well, they do, but not before calling the Stooges, this time detectives. After they were literally tied up but freed by Black actor Dudley Dickerson (who actually received a credit this time despite the brevity of his one scene), they sprint to his mansion, where they deal with the gang, including Christine McIntyre as the femme fatale and Duke York as Nikko, a scary-looking giant goon.

The Stooges beat each other up even more than usual, there is an onslaught of puns, they spoof the trope of scary houses having false panels in walls and hiding behind paintings, Moe imitates Curly in one scene-well, this was written so long ago that it was when Curly was part of the act-and there was what TV Tropes refers to as the “Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo.” McIntyre poisons a drink and offers it to Shemp; they distract each other and switch the drinks several times, w/ Christine faking a switch on one occasion. It’s a more common trope than I realized; it’s not just The Princess Bride that has played with the trope.

There is no shortage of great moments; not even Moe injuring his ankle stopped the shoot. It’s obvious in the final few minutes but I guess the short must go on. As for Duke York, he appeared in several previous Stooge efforts in a “goon” sort of role. He never filmed anything with them again-York died a few years later at a young age, due to reasons that’ll be upsetting to some & I’ll leave it at that. He was also a prolific stuntman that worked on some films that many will know: Saboteur, Winchester ’73, The Gunfighter, & Destry Rides Again.

As I don’t want to end this on a sour note, instead it will be mentioned that due to the constant mayhem (many are hit over the head w/ a shovel in the concluding scene, for example), the pace, the number of laughs, the puns, and there’s also a blackout gag where the lights go off and on a few occasions, wackiness occurring whenever a match is lit… what a gem Done was. I’d be happy to see another Shemp-starrer as good as this.