I think all Stooge fans will agree that the best part of
Grips, Grunts, and Groans is the grand finale of Curly's Wild Hyacinth-induced furor. The felling of his victims in increasingly rapid succession as he whirls the bell around by its cord and brings it down on their heads—CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!—is enough by itself to place the short among the most memorable ones, at least as far as Curly-centered action is concerned.
I share Metaldams's misgivings about the character of Bustoff to some degree. It is the audience, not the characters in the short, who are supposed to think that the Three Stooges are funny (setting aside those cases in which they put on a comedy act within the action of the movie—though often even then the other characters don't think them funny!). When Bustoff laughs at their antics and says, "You guys are funny!", it makes them, strangely, less funny. But I think that the character of Bustoff is a kind of experiment on the part of the writer (Clyde Bruckman) to play with the basic conventions of the Stooge shorts. I am pretty sure that, the first time I ever saw Bustoff, it occurred to me right away that he looked a lot like Curly. It seems to me that this is not just a setup for the switch that occurs later but a suggestion that Bustoff comes, so to speak, from the same weird planet that the Stooges themselves come from (they surely cannot have been born on earth!). This seems to me most clearly suggested when Bustoff concludes his first conversation with the boys by giving them a three-in-one slap in the face à la Moe (which he caps with a kind of salute or flourish as a parting gesture). He is, in effect, playing Moe with all of them for the moment. I'm not saying that this was a good comic idea. I'm certainly glad that it was not done in any other shorts. But it's an interesting angle on the basic premise of Curly having a physical double (not just another character played by the same actor, as in
Three Dumb Clucks).
Bustoff is ostensibly unlike the Stooges in that he is indiscriminately, and fearlessly, violent toward anyone who thwarts him, as when he throws his boss's goon through a window into an open garbage can for knocking his drink from his hand. But, as far as this kind of violent spirit is from
normal Stooge behavior, it is not much different from what Curly is transformed into when he is exposed to Wild Hyacinth.
I know that nobody watches Stooge shorts for the plot, but I think that comedy is well served when the action is coherent, and this short seems to me very well written in that regard. There are four main actions: (1) the Stooges, hiding aboard a box car, are discovered and pursued by guards; (2) they stumble into a job, or rather press Curly into one, at the Hangover Athletic Club; (3) Tony, the tiny but dangerous-seeming boss, compels them to take care of Bustoff, who drinks himself into unconsciousness and then suffers even worse damage when left in the care of Larry and Curly; (4) Moe compels Curly to take Bustoff's place in the wrestling match. Hilarity ensues. Each stage of the action leads naturally to the next, and Moe's pressing Curly into service is crucial not once but twice, and in the end he pays dearly for it. In this short, in contrast to most others, I can think of no superfluous details, no loose threads, and almost no unexplained or implausible turns of events at all. (The one detail that doesn't make sense is the fact that the railroad guards pursue the boys out of the railroad yard and into the street: why should they bother? It is not likely that they are paid by the head for the freeloaders that they catch!) I agree that having the Stooges run over a baby carriage when they are fleeing the railroad guards was an unfortunate choice of device for getting them into the athletic club. But there are so many good comic bits that follow that I don't dwell on that particular bit when I am watching the short.
Other funny bits:
- "Who's in there?"—"Nobody—just us horses!"
- "If I'm going to get beat up, I want to get paid for it!"
- Curly and Larry take care of Bustoff: "Give me something that will straighten me out!" —BING! BANG! BONG! And then they knock the locker over on him.
- Curly getting his foot twisted around like a corkscrew by the wrestler and taking and eating the lunch of the girl at the ringside.
Oddities and production errors:
- The railroad guards chasing the Stooges practically have to wait at the corner for them to "disappear" into the athletic club.
- Travel stickers on the Stooges' suitcase: "Little America" (Antarctica), "Paris," "Rome," "Hotel Berk, Watertown."
- Larry seems to have resumed the two-part hat that he sported in Punch Drunks: when he removes the crown, the brim stays in place.
- Does anyone else notice that the fighters at the Hangover Athletic Club—Kid Pinky and Bustoff—both seem mentally retarded, Kid Pinky especially? And that is in comparison with Curly!
- When the Stooges drag Bustoff out of the restaurant, the restauranteur throws the door shut against Bustoff's head. I always wince at that bit, as I don't think that the door was made of balsa wood or that the action was planned that way. But Harrison Greene suffers like a pro, without showing the pain he must have felt.
