http://www.threestooges.net/filmography/episode/122http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042408/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8_nv4b1MQ3sWatch DOPEY DICKS in the link above
I don't have an official top ten, but if I did, I imagine this would be on it. This has always, easily, been one of my favorite Three Stooges shorts. Why? I just love the pacing of this thing. It has the bang-bang, hyper edited yet still literate pacing of A PLUMBING WE WILL GO, just with a different third Stooge and a lower budget. From beginning to end, this thing never lets up. I also love the mad scientist/spooky house element to this thing as well. I'm a sucker for old horror films and old b films in general, and this kind of short must have played very well on a Saturday morning in the fifties to a theater full of kids. Throw this in with a Bowery Boys feature and a Lugosi Monogram flick and I'm in Heaven. I'm also born thirty years too late.
I love the beginning with Moe acting tired carrying a feather duster thirteen floors, but poor Shemp, too stupid to realize he's being suckered, has to carry everything but the kitchen sink. Moe then makes Shemp move forward with a nice push, but not before adding extra insult to injury by resting the aforementioned feather duster in front of Shemp's face! Other little parts I love...well, all of it, but leaving it at that makes a bad review. OK, Larry sleeping while standing with his elbow rested on the vacuum cleaner is always good for a laugh. Larry with his head sticking out of the table, Shemp's Main 2468 bit....you'd be shocked there really are people that dumb. I have a job where one of the things I do is create a temporary password for a website that's ABCD1234 and you'd be shocked how many people struggle with that! I always think of Shemp struggling with Main 2468 when that happens. There's Larry with the flower in his mouth, Larry as the human lantern, Christine damsel in distress bit, (which speaking of The Bowery Boys, was used verbatim in one of their films after this, an Edward Bernds one if memory serves correct, I'll research this). The Shemp and Moe curtain scene involving puter......just so many great bits. Really a chase film like FROM NURSE TO WORSE, but for some reason, the more limited setting of this one is even better to me.
Stanley Price and especially Phil Van Zandt are wonderful here. The scenes where Moe and Phil are in the closet together and earlier on when Phil tries to chop Moe's head off, it's almost as if Moe is the straight man because Phil is so crazed. I always wish The Three Stooges could have worked with Lugosi and Karloff the way Bud and Lou did, and the Van Zandt role would have been great with Lugosi especially, but Phil Van Zandt is so great here I honestly don't mind.
Awesome short. The early 50's have more 10's than the 40's Shemp stuff, but the occasional clunker prevents this era from being as good as the '39 - '42 peak. Still, shorts like this, just fun, Saturday morning mindless entertainment, are always good to put a smile on my face.
10/10
