Among Three Stooges fanatics, “They Stooge to Conga” is notorious for a few seconds of roughhouse involving a climbing spike and Moe’s head. But that’s just a one of too many brilliantly surreal moments that occur in this deliriously insane short film.
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No one approaches Heckle and Jeckle cartoons expecting art – or, for that matter, coherent storytelling, sophisticated dialogue or an ironic reflection on the emotional palette. But, of course, they were never intended to provide cerebral invigoration or display the fullest spectrum of animated creativity. As the producer of the cartoons Paul Terry once succinctly declared regarding the quality of his work compared to the master of the genre: “Let Walt Disney be the Tiffany’s, I want to be the Woolworth’s.”
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Jules White was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the greatest comedy director – but he might have been the resourceful. With the 1956 Three Stooges short “Scheming Schemers,” he created a new film by using stock footage from three different movies while putting forth a work where one of the stars had passed away six weeks earlier.
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Moe, Larry and Shemp receive a telegram from their roommate/landlord Bill that he just got married and they will need to move out. Rather than be upset by this abrupt eviction, the trio decide to surprise Bill and his new bride by cleaning the residence and installing a television that Bill ordered as a wedding gift. Needless to say, the best of intentions generates the worst possible results.
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One of the most polarizing films ever made was the 1952 Three Stooges short “Cuckoo on a Choo Choo.” You cannot be indifferent to this work – either you love it as an avant-garde excursion into daffiness or you loathe it as a misguided work of cinematic excrement.
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BOOTLEG FILES 797: “Have Badge Will Chase” (1959 8mm one-reel excerpt from “Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops”).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope.
Long before video cassette recorders invaded living rooms in the 1970s, movie lovers who wanted to replay their favorite films at home would purchase projectors and screens and create their own private cinematic viewing experience.
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BOOTLEG FILES 727: “Down Memory Lane” (1949 compilation film of Mack Sennett comedy shorts).
LAST SEEN: In a truncated form on YouTube and Internet Archive.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
By the late 1940s, silent movies had mostly disappeared from public viewing. Some Charlie Chaplin shorts occasionally turned up in kiddie matinees and museums and film societies would sometimes dust off an old print for one-time screenings. But for the most part, the films created prior to rise of “The Jazz Singer” were rarely on the big screen.
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