http://www.threestooges.net/filmography/episode/121http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042580/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1http://www.emilsitka.com/hugsandmugs1950.htmlhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TWRI7llPcEAWatch HUGS AND MUGS in the link above
I have never seen this short highly praised by someone other than me. Ever. Part of the problem is until the DVD release, this short was harder to come by. Every short until now was available pre DVD in the VHS market, but not this one. You guys who remember the AMC days and "The Missing 60," this was one of the sixty, meaning a short not included in the syndicated package. A true shame, because this is a short I really enjoy.
A few weeks ago, I made a comment of how this early 50's era starts what I like to call Three Stooges punk rock. What I mean by this is the budgets are lower, the scenery is less, and the films are stripped down to their bare basics - Stooge slapstick. For The Three Stooges, even more so than rock music, this absolutely works. After the first minute and a half, this short takes place in one room, and we pretty much have a barrage of nothing but slapstick linked around a story of three criminal women looking for a pearl necklace. Even the first minute and a half when it's just the girls, they partake in comedy doing some prison like gestapo march together and even get to squirt ink in poor Emil Sitka's face.
Let's talk about the girls. Yeah, they all look good, nothing new there. The difference is all three actually act, which is unusual. Think NO DOUGH BOYS. Christine easily carries that female trio in the acting chops. In HUGS AND MUGS, while Christine is still the best, all three girls get little scenes to themselves and do a fine job. Ms. Bordeaux (making her Stooge debut) and Ms. O'Malley (in sadly her only Stooge appearance), even do a short version of the filing cabinet routine! As for Christine, like Hugo mentions in last week's thread, she gets some slapstick here. Yeah, there's a Laurel and Hardy like reciprocal retaliation scene where clothing and hair (!) are being torn off, done at a faster Stooge like pace. It's a great scene, proves Christine can hang with the big boys, and shows last week's little bump on the head wasn't a slapstick apex, but instead a warm up for what was to follow.
The boys themselves are all in fine form here. As soon as they're on the screen a barrage of slaps, bonks, and backside stabbings take place, and their childish 50 year old virgin like chemistry with the three ladies is always fun to watch. Great watching Larry talking about his hair and scalp and them soaking in the comments about their looks. The scene in that big box of hay where the boys and the criminals do battle is always a pleasure to watch. Shemp is the man with the iron, and I always get a laugh when he burns his own ass with the thing! Happy endings prevail as Moe gives Christine a pearl necklace and Shemp and Nanette end with their little romantic patter and Shemp's extended scene with the fan in the bucket of water. A fun short all around, and since I love it so much and have never heard it praised elsewhere, perhaps their most underrated.
10/10