Stooge-O-Rama

The movies made The Three Stooges famous.  TV made them immortal.  Once Columbia sold off the classic shorts for TV syndication in the late ‘50s and entirely new generation had the opportunity to practice face-slapping, eye-poking and head-thumping right in their own living rooms!  After that, Stooge-mania never slowed down, keeping the character’s voices and likenesses alive in everything from T-shirts, bath towels and Scooby-Doo episodes (you can still watch them every Saturday on retro TV network MeTV).

 While nothing compares to genius of the original shorts themselves, if you need a crash-course in all things Larry, Curly, Moe, Shemp (not to mention Joe and Curly Joe) you couldn’t do better than Stooge-O-Rama, a new three-disc Blu-ray set that collects over 8 hours of rare clips, commercials, interviews and live performances from the classic comedy team.

 

Things kick off with the expanded, remastered and HD updated version of A & E’s Biography episode Stooges: The Men Behind the Mayhem.  It’s an hour-plus long profile of the Stooges genesis as a vaudeville act turned Hollywood money-machine who seemed to make cash for everyone but themselves.  A series of strokes and heart attacks forced the team to reshuffle its core members every decade or so but the physical comedy itself never changed.  The documentary is a bit slow-paced but it’s a concise history featuring interviews and anecdotes that don’t pop up anywhere else.

 

Discs two and three are loaded with rare footage, home movies, one-off promotions, commercials, radio and TV interviews and a few live performances.  It’s an overwhelming amount of material and just goes to show how in-demand the team was for nearly 50 years.  There are no actual shorts or features included, just glimpses into the behind-the-scenes lives of performers who made an art form out of hurting each other.  It’s probably best suited for the Stooge completist rather than the casual fan.  But given the rarity – and sheer amount – of material included, those folks should be blissfully satisfied.  

 

 

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