I agree that
Ants in the Pantry is somewhere in the middle or maybe just above the middle of the corpus of Stooge shorts as far as overall merit is concerned. A few observations:
(1) It strikes me that "A. Mouser" appears as the Stooges' boss in the short that immediately follows the one in which their boss is named "A. Panther." The formulaic joke may be feeble compared to "I. Slipp" and "Watts D. Mater," but it is one of those formulaic jokes that for some reason retain their charm for me. Until I read this thread, I had no idea that the actor was the same one who played Bustoff later, in
Grips, Grunts, and Groans. Aside from the versatility that this shows, what I would note about Harrison Green's performance in this role is that his German accent is dead-on. It is easy to affect an accent that will be recognizable to audiences as German, Itailan, or whatever, but to make it sound as if it is the natural speech of the character is a high level of mimicry that is much less often attained.
(2) The gag in which Curly responds to Moe's directive "Cut the cards" by raising a meat cleaver and chopping the deck in two was done four years earlier by Harpo in
Horse Feathers. It seems to me much funnier when Harpo does it; I venture the following analysis of the reasons why: (1) Harpo is not a participant in the game but is merely passing two card players when one of them asks the other to cut the cards, making his act all the more gratuitous and shocking. (2) Harpo quickly pulls the meat cleaver seemingly out of nowhere, whereas we see Curly deliberately retrieve one from under the table, as if he had placed it there for the purpose, which dulls the impact of the gag. (3) Harpo's act is completely in keeping with his character, which is constantly given to manic outbursts of mischievous energy, while the same act on Curly's part, even if it is supposed to be a manifestation of his character's literal-minded dimness, makes less sense. To put the point another way, in Curly's case, the inherent zany audacity of the act is underplayed, thereby weakening the gag.
(3) The use of Larry and the bear trap is a bit disappointing to me. I believe this is the earliest of the many gags about or with bears and bear traps in the shorts. I would take a moment to reflect that the writing and production staff had to set up this entire business just for the one gag of Moe replying to Larry's statement "We might meet up with a bear" by saying "Meet my bear [bare] hand" and giving him a slap in the face. What disappoints me is that nothing is done with the bear trap after that point. When Moe sets it down as he approaches Mouser, who is standing at his desk, I can't help feeling cheated that Mouser is not made to sit down on the trap and get his bottom clamped in it. This would not only add another characteristically Stoogean gag but would bring the scene to a climax rather than have an ending imposed on it by an arbitrary editorial cut. The writers failed to observe the rule of
Chekhov's gun: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off."
(4) The close-up shot of "that chatterbox Eleanor," the woman in riding habit whose approach alarms the hostess and her friend when they have just discovered the infestation of ants, persistently fascinates and horrifies me at the same time. There is something peculiarly grotesque about her, with her smug officiousness and her phony-sounding fluty way of talking. She seems to me one of the most repulsive female characters in all the Stooge shorts! Ugh!
Edited to add:(5) The ending sequence, in which the Stooges join in the fox hunt, seems to me the weakest of any short up to this point. Clearly the sequence was planned all along as part of the movie, since we have house guests in riding habits talking about going hunting, but, for all that, it seems utterly extraneous and tacked-on. Moreover, the one gag in it, in which Curly, because he (quite suddenly) has a cold, mistakes a skunk for a fox and catches it in a sack, is far too feeble to bear the weight of the sequence. A terrible anti-climax after the hilarious disaster with the cat-filled piano.
(6) I notice on re-reading this that I have mostly talked about the weaknesses of the short (apart from my observation no. 1). So I will just add that the whole business of Larry and Curly hunting mice around the living room (Larry applying a hammer to the guests' feet, mice flying through the air, Curly forcibly dancing with Phyllis Crane, etc.) is excellent and that the business with the cats in the piano, from the meow-meow version of the
Blue Danube waltz through Moe's administration of ritual punishment to Curly and Larry for putting the cats in the piano to the final debacle of the piano falling on Moe and Larry getting stripped of his trousers and pulled out of the instrument entangled in wires and hammers, is one of the Stooges' more inspired bits. This is not the last time that the Stooges will have a violent encounter with a piano, much to the detriment of the piano!
