BOOTLEG FILES 799: “The Seven Stooges” (2014 animated short inspired by the Three Stooges).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: The film did not clear the trademarks associated with the Three Stooges characters.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Definitely not.
I was not planning to devote this week’s column to an animated fairy tale inspired by the Three Stooges, but YouTube posted “The Seven Stooges” in a list of recommended videos and my initial reaction was “Huh?”
“The Seven Stooges” is a mix of “Hansel and Gretel” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” with the little people of the latter tale replaced by animated facsimiles of the seven men who starred in the Three Stooges act: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, Curly-Joe DeRita and Emil Sitka. The presence of Emil Sitka is puzzling, since he never appeared in a film as one of the Three Stooges even though he joined Moe and Curly-Joe in a series of publicity photos announcing his arrival in the trio after Larry Fine was incapacitated by a stroke.
In this film, which takes place in 1976 (for no obvious reason), the siblings Steven (age 11) and Raven (age 7) take a trek into the woods and get lost, but somehow wind up at the home of the Seven Stooges. The slapstick septet takes it upon themselves to entertain the children by baking a cake that explodes and engaging in a silly song and dance number.
Meanwhile, an evil witch named Danevil becomes aware of the children’s presence in the woods and dispatches a clumsy little witch and clumsier demon to abduct them. When her lieutenants fail, Danevil takes it upon herself to do the job – but after a bucket of water is dumped on her (paging Margaret Hamilton), she turns into a tree (paging Euell Gibbons). The kids find their way back home with the help of the Seven Stooges and everyone lives happily after ever – except for the witch who was turned into an Arbor Day symbol.
The film is the work of someone named Tom Lorenzetti, who executed all of the animation and voiced all of the characters. The animation was the product of inexpensive retail software, and while no one will mistake it for “Fantasia” it serves its purpose for a quickly-made Internet cartoon.
Lorenzetti also took it upon himself to voice all of the characters. It might have helped if he recruited other voice actors because all of the characters sound alike. To his credit, Lorenzetti knows his Stooges and attempts to replicate their individual vocal shticks.
But as for the Stooges themselves – well, this is interesting. He does an okay job doing caricatures of Moe, Larry and Curly, but Shemp is given long hair and sideburns that make him look like a rockabilly singer, Joe and Curly-Joe look alike except that Curly-Joe’s head is considerably fatter, and Emil looks absolutely nothing like the great Emil Sitka – he looks like a younger version of Shemp. (In the photo at the top of the page, Emil is on the far left.)
Oddly, Emil is given a considerable amount of screen time, including a plot twist where his flute playing attracts birds that save the day. Perhaps Lorenzetti chose to emphasize Emil since he never made a movie as one of the Stooges. But as a result, Joe is given little to do and Curly-Joe is given even less – though I suspect some Stooges fans won’t be upset over that.
From what I can gather in my minimal research, Lorenzetti is going to be 28 years old in June. He has produced a considerable output of animation that he shares on YouTube page under the Twoodland1994 banner, and most of his work features original zoomorphic characters including Oxxie Ox, Petey Platypus and Doogle the Dog. Lorenzetti doesn’t have his contact data online, so I am unable to provide more information about him.
However, I can share his “Seven Stooges” here and recommend that viewers explore his Twoodland1994 output on YouTube.
And as for “The Seven Stooges,” the only place you will be able to see it is on YouTube – Lorenzetti obviously didn’t clear the trademark rights to the characters with Comedy III productions, so don’t expect to see this on a commercially available DVD anytime soon.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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