One of the most polarizing films ever made was the 1952 Three Stooges short \u201cCuckoo on a Choo Choo.\u201d You cannot be indifferent to this work \u2013 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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It is easy to understand why this offbeat film was made. By 1952, the Three Stooges franchise was starting to grow a little stale and producer\/director Jules White was eager try something a little different to spice up the formula. Weirdly, it was decided to create a double parody of two films with nothing in common \u2013 \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire\u201d and \u201cHarvey\u201d \u2013 and mix in the anvil-level slapstick one associated with Three Stooges mayhem.<\/p>\n
\u201cCuckoo on a Choo Choo\u201d takes doesn\u2019t take place on a streetcar named Desire, but on a stolen train car named Shmow. The train car is occupied by Larry Fine, who wears a white t-shirt and tries to channel Marlon Brando\u2019s Stanley Kowalski \u2013 don\u2019t ask why. Larry wants to marry his girlfriend Lenore (Patricia Wright), but because of a family tradition she will not agree to wed until her older sister Roberta (Victoria Horne) marries the wealthy Shemp Howard. Alas, Shemp is a hopeless drunk who is in love with a giant canary named Carrie that appears when he is in an advanced state of inebriation. (The unbilled Reggie Dvorak plays Carrie in a bird costume that has to be seen to be believed.) The third member of the Three Stooges, Moe Howard, is a railroad investigator who locates the stolen train car and is reunited with his one-time love Roberta \u2013 but she loves Shemp and is offended by Moe’s romantic efforts.<\/p>\n
Yes, this is an intriguingly bizarre concept for any film \u2013 especially for an early 1950s Three Stooges short \u2013 but screenwriter Felix Adler falls back on too-easy gags involving limburger cheese, a skunk who wanders into the train car and the tumult created with an electric razor falling down the back of Shemp\u2019s shirt. Instead of being a forerunner of Felliniesque surrealism, \u201cCuckoo on a Choo Choo\u201d devolves into second-rate Three Stooges rough slapstick. <\/p>\n
With better talent behind the camera, \u201cCuckoo on a Choo Choo\u201d could have rewritten the rules of avant-garde cinema. Unfortunately, it is simply a WTF anomaly in the Shemp-era Stooges flicks.<\/p>\n