THE THREE STOOGES

After a long, slow, and difficult drive home last night, I wanted to do absolutelynothing but sit back and relax with a vengeance. As luck would have it I was able to do just that. So I spent the better part of the night drinking cold ones, sitting with my feet up, and resensifying (is that spelled right?) myself to some of the greatest aspects of human culture to ever come down the pike.

I put in The latest Three Stooges DVD collection that I just acquired and set the controls for the heart of the sun.

I don't think that there is any argument about the legendary status of these guys. I mean even in these P.C., sanitized, and uninspiring times, these guys still do seem to carry some level of cred. I also realize that these guys were not necessarily doing anything groundbreaking (the silent film comedians were tromping along a lot of the same territory i.e Lloyd, Keaton) and the humor was lowbrow, but you are reading this blog; and here at Driver 13 hq, lowbrow is the coin of the realm.

Now I really do enjoy all of the cheap laughs, and zany humor that these guys, as far as I'm concerned, pull off on a level not touched by many, if any. But another thing that really gets me about these Three Stooges shorts is the surrealism of 'em. I think that you could easily slip one of these shorts onto a collection of avante-garde films from the 40's, 50's, and 60's, and it would fit right in. There's an otherwordly quality to a lot of these, or maybe I should say otherreality quality. When you come to think of it though, doesn't most of the really great comedy, the kind that has a lasting quality contain surrealism. Maybe I'm wrong but look at Monty Python and the early years of Saturday Night Live.

Anyway, the particular collection itself is volume #7. All of the shorts on thee discs have Shemp manning the third stooge chair, after Curly leaving the group for health reasons and eventual death. Many people out there in Three Stoogeland don't like Shemp at all, considering the post curly trio is unauthentic. I find Shemp to be pretty good, not better than Curly, just different. He's certainly bringing his best to the proceedings. The Columbia shorts on this collection range from the years 1952 to 1953. Some of the scripts are rehashed from earlier ones but they still work ok. Two of the shorts on here are 3D. You can watch them that way with the enclosed glasses or you can choose to watch them in 2D form.

If I have any complaint at all, it would be that there is no booklet or any kind of extras like interviews or things like that. There are short (couple of sentences) blurbs of info about each of the shorts, but a booklet with more in depth info about each one would have been nice. But all in all this is a minor complaint, and the collections are well worth buying.