I recommend both films. Gold Raiders suffers considerably when the Stooges aren't on screen, but when they are, it's rather enjoyable. Meet The Baron is pretty decent. Healy and the Stooges have some good scenes.
Monday is my 11 hour work day, so I need to save the one I didn't yet see for tonight.
Last night, I did watch GOLD RAIDERS for the second time, and the first time was years ago.
The only way, and it's kind of minor, that I can say the Derita features are better than GOLD RAIDERS is because those are films where the plots revolve around the boys and GOLD RAIDERS is a western with the boys in comic relief. I say minor point because the comic relief is plenty in GOLD RAIDERS and better than any of the Derita features. Moe, Larry and Shemp are in great form and that old guy in THE TOOTH WILL OUT dentist scene even appears as a drunken prop!
As for the non-Stooge moments, I actually am in a strange b-western mood lately, so I even enjoyed that aspect of GOLD RAIDERS. George O'Brien was good ( he's the lead in SUNRISE if there are any other fellow silent film drama dorks here), and while nobody's going to mistake this one for a John Ford film, it's a passable western programmer, and at 56 minutes, pretty easy to digest.
But man, early 50's, a feature film directed by Ed Bernds with The Three Stooges....I said the same thing when I saw those Bernds directed Bowery Boys films, and that's b-features are what the boys should have been doing the second Bernds left Columbia. There are maybe 3 or 4 classic shorts we'd miss out on, but something tells me the features with Shemp would've more than made up for it and we'd have no remakes.
MEET THE BARON tonight!