Definitely, this one's good all the way through, all it lacks IMHO is one of those iconic scenes, since the highlight is the reprise of the Nazi impersonations which is nothing new. Just fine, but not new. One wonders just where on board they dug up the uniforms. Blystone ( he really is always good, always on the job, always funny ) does his level best at a German accent and comes out sounding like a citizen of Helsinki until the line "Ve haff no brains", which for some glorious reason he nails.
I find that one of the most interesting parts of this is the color footage of the action with Jules White directing. From everything I know about him, he was an egomaniac, but directing with his shirt off, which is caught in this clip and in another place which I can't remember right now ( Uncivil Warbirds? ) is an exhibit I can do without. It's like a fat guy in a speedo, you just want to say Put some clothes on, Asshole. Obviously he knew that nothing like this would ever be released, but just as obviously it's a power play, an intimidation tactic, that would have grossed out the whole crew and was apparently a routine occurrence in his productions.
I'm not a big fan of Jules White as a director, though he is O K up to this point, and I get that as time went on he was subject to the same budget cuts as everyone else, but reports are unanimous as to how dictatorial he was , insisting that the stooges read the lines exactly his way ( Moe seems to be affected most from this as time went on, his acting getting hammier and hammier, Larry not so much and Larry in his retirement claiming that Moe disliked White ), and though it may seem that I'm wildly extrapolating the decade-long future of the stooges from one shirtless shot of White, I'll go out on a limb and say that White's kind of exhibitionism led to the degradation of the best stooge comedy. I feel strongly about this, and if it's O K with you guys, I'll be commenting on this more and more as time goes on.
