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.  

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tormented

Image
The west coast always struggled to create a creepy atmosphere on screen.  All that southern California sunshine just doesn’t lend itself to ghostly apparitions or gothic castles.  But  Tormented  (1960) gives it a good try, staging its opening scene in an abandoned lighthouse where blackmail turns into murder - and one cover up leads to another.  Director Bert I. Gordon, better known for his giant-sized - but low-budget - monster movies, works well at this level, turning in a film that delivers small scares but perhaps his most  professional finished product. Tom Stewart (played by genre regular Richard Carlson) is a fairly successful jazz pianist whose impending marriage to Meg Hubbard (Susan Gordon) will put him in an entirely new tax bracket.  Trouble is his old flame, Vi (Juli Reding), isn’t taking this lying down.  After  allowing  her to fall to her death in the opening scene, Tom is haunted by disembo...
Read more

All Ladies Do It / Frivolous Lola

Image
Every semi-professional review of erotica probably starts off with the same question:  what’s the difference between porn and art?  The internet age has essentially done away with foreplay; sex is merely the act of completion itself, minus the threat of any malware or suspicious browser activity.  But the work of Italian director Tinto Brass, for all its leering upskirt shots of derrieres and pubic hair, still communicates something that websites like Pornhub never will:  the art of seduction.  All Ladies Do It  (1992), a breezy sexual adventure, follows Diana (Claudia Koll) whose marriage is threatened by her fantasies of dalliances with other men, stories her husband believes are nothing more than exciting role play.  But her loose definition of adultery inspires plenty of promiscuous hook-ups, taking advantage of any (ahem)  loophole  that provides a quick thrill.   Flirting with some hardcore sequences (there...
Read more

The Cat and the Canary

Image
My favorite directors have always been showoffs:  Hitchcock, DePalma, Spielberg (when he’s feeling frisky) and gonzo auteurs like Sam Raimi.  There’s just something about their cinematic ambition, constantly reminding the audience that, yes, there actually  is  someone behind the camera calling the shots.  And that directorial discontent shines through even in the early days of the medium, such as Paul Leni’s 1927 adaptation of  The Cat and the Canary .  While the rest of the industry was still learning the basics of visual language, Leni fills his frame with tracking shots, POVs and dramatic lighting that set the standard for every spook show to come!  Gathered for the reading of the last will and testament of eccentric recluse Cyrus West,  the potential heirs meet up in his decrepit mansion to discover who will inherit the estate and family jewels.  Predictably there is some petty jealousy when young Annab...
Read more