It has never occurred to me that the Asians are dead, and my guess is that they were not meant to be. People faint, pass out, get K O'ed, blown through brick walls, etc, etc, ad infinitum in these shorts, and with the exception of angel shots, I don't think it is meant for us to assume they're dead. Any of them. That would violate every rule of slapstick comedy, indeed Rule Number One of almost all comedies from Homer on, which is, in short, everybody survives. ( And, let's face it, even with wings on, they're still the same old stooges, still alive. ) This is new territory for me, having never before today having even considered the possibility, but if the stooges had killed all of the Axis Powers as shown in all those episodes, rather than just knocked them out, their kill ratio would be higher than Audie Murphy's, which I absolutely don't think was the intention in any of these wartime films. Humiliation, yes, death, no. I think it's important to remember that even the Asian-Americans appearing here were actors in a slapstick movie, and knew what they were doing, which was earning a paycheck by acting silly in a movie. The same as every other actor in this short. The alternative is way way too dark, like watching a Punch-and-Judy show and thinking " look at those two poor legless malformed dwarves beating the Hell out of each other for pennies."
Metaldams, when you said you didn't like Monte Collins as Ma Stooge in Cactus Makes Perfect, you described as your preferred mother someone more like this edition, someone more human and cuddly. Well, O K, but in this one, to get some comedic tension here, their Father has to be P O'ed. He's good, too, he gets angrier and angrier all through the scene, and apparently keeps a basket of tomatoes stashed behind the couch for ammo, so quickly do they appear. That's my favorite gag in the whole short. Quite a tumor on Pa's face, too...do you think Scarlett Johannsen would get any decent parts with a whopper like that?
